Keeping peace even if God and Nixon share space on coin

The angry e-mails, which arrive just as I'm getting in my Christmas mood, pile up quicker than snow on a sidewalk. Gripes include:

A store clerk wishing people "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." (Probably the same witch who said, "Have a nice day" when I was anticipating a "Happy Arbor Day"); a flier that doesn't acknowledge that Jesus is the reason for the season - and His season's miraculously low prices on DVD players; a postage stamp in honor of the Muslim Eid festivals, which is assailed as a salute to evildoers by misguided people who must be stupid, prejudiced or willfully ignorant.

But the e-mail that gets me every year is the one blasting godless liberals in government for taking "In God We Trust" off our money. And that's not just because I find it sacrilegious to put God's name on all the money godless liberals use to tip gay strippers, buy terrorist stamps and donate to the ACLU.

During this holiday season, when the vast majority of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Kwanzaa-celebrators, atheists and Americans of all kinds treat each other with manners and respect, these e-mails are looking for a religious fight.

In the research needed to give them one, I stumble across something that makes me want to complain: Richard M. Nixon is getting his likeness on a $1 coin. If the government was going to use Nixon's profile, the time to do it would have been on a 1970s poster hanging in a post office next to other crooks.

Instead, Nixon will be rewarded with his likeness on a dollar coin in 2016. Gerald Ford will get one. So should Ronald Reagan. And if Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama or any other president dies before 2014, each could make the front of a U.S. dollar coin, too.

That doesn't mean they will be replacing God on our money - despite all those e-mails claiming God was removed from the presidential coins.

"Who originally put 'In God We Trust' onto our currency? My bet is that it was one of the presidents on these coins," reads one typically livid, and entirely wrong, e-mail.

For starters, the new presidential dollar coins (our first four presidents on the 2007 coins, the next four on the 2008 coins) have "In God We Trust" printed on the edge of the coin. It's right there alongside "E Pluribus Unum," the date and the mint mark. A minting error resulted in some early coins being printed without any words on the edges (you can buy a flawed coin online for $100), but that was soon corrected.

Even so, the angry mob already had picked up their pitchforks. Congressman Virgil Goode of Virginia ("Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as a bad Goode idea") introduced legislation demanding that "In God We Trust" be put on the front of coins starting in 2009.

"This is due to the hysteria created on the Internet and by the Christian Right that fueled rumors that God had been taken off the dollar coin," says Beth Deisher, the editor of Coin World (www.coinworld.com), the world's leading publication for coin collectors. Deisher wrote a scathing editorial blasting the "clueless legislators" for including the never-debated "put God on the front" coin design in the 3,565-page Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008.

"We have a very rich heritage of inscriptions being used on the edges of our coins. It hearkens back indeed to our Founding Fathers," Deisher says. And those Founding Fathers wouldn't be happy about any U.S. currency declaring "In God We Trust."

"George Washington and the forefathers took great pains to keep religion out of coinage. There were no mottos reflective of religion," Deisher says. "The coins they had in their pockets did not have 'In God We Trust' on them."

Only in the wake of the Civil War did "In God We Trust" get on coins. The religious affirmation was added to paper money in 1957. The Founding Fathers wouldn't have approved.

"They wanted emblems that would speak to the unity of the nation," Deisher says. The Founding Fathers didn't think a democracy should honor real people on money either - a tradition we began in 1909 with the Lincoln penny.

Our early coins featured allegorical symbols such as Lady Liberty, shields, the liberty pole and cap and the motto "E Pluribus Unum" - out of many, one.

That motto promotes unity instead of fighting. So whether you say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays," light a menorah or feast for Eid al-Adha, send out Kwanzaa cards or celebrate your atheism, just want a deal on a big-screen TV or are thrilled to see Dick Nixon on a coin, you have that right.

Happy E Pluribus Unum, everyone.