For the second time this season, the Veterans Administration has marginalized the religious beliefs of its workers.

Vietnam veteran Ethel Holloway has been hanging secular Christmas decorations in the 1C unit of the Audie Murphy VA hospital in San Antonio for 33 years she says, and paid for them with her own money.

They included Santa and his sleigh with the words “Merry Christmas,” as well as the words “be merry.”

Last Friday, she says she was confronted by administrators and told some found the decorations “offensive,” so they were take down and thrown away.

“They ruined our decorations. They threw them out,” Holloway tells KCEN.

Only Santa and the reindeer survived, but the accompanying words weren’t so fortunate.

“They have Santa and the sleigh but ‘Merry Christmas’ is gone,” according to Holloway. Another decoration, which included the words “be merry,” lost it’s meaning when administrators ripped “merry” off the wall.

Grace Martinez helped Holloway and her husband put the decorations up for the hospitalized veterans to enjoy.

“They literally took pieces from the middle of a whole train set, because the middle said ‘Merry Christmas,’ and the caboose and the engine were okay, so they left those two and took out the middle part,” Martinez tells the news station.

The VA defended removing the decorations in a statement:

VA greatly appreciates holiday donations and volunteerism by students and organizations on behalf of Veterans of all faiths and backgrounds. We continue to accept religious cards and Christmas carols for our patients who celebrate Christmas, as we do for Veterans who celebrate religious holidays of all faiths.

In this particular case, we received a number of complaints about the decorations being overly religious and offensive. Veterans entered the military to protect our freedoms, including the freedom to practice a religion of our choice. At VA, it is our duty to uphold and respect the honor and sacrifice of all Veterans, from all faiths and backgrounds.

Meanwhile, administrators as the Salem, Virginia VA sent an email shortly before Thanksgiving to all workers banning Christmas trees in “public places within the hospital.”

They contended that as a government institution, “the public should not think the government endorsed one religion over another,” according to the email.

“Displays must not promote any religion. Please note that trees (regardless of the types of ornaments used) have been deemed to promote the Christian religion and will not be permitted in any public areas this year,” the email reads, CBS 6 reported last month.

“Employees are permitted to engage in private religious expression in their personal work areas that are not regularly open to the public. Religious expression will be permitted as long as it does not interfere with carrying out of official duties and responsibilities.”

“Items must be displayed in a manner such that the viewing public would reasonably understand the religious expression to be that of the employee acting in their own personal capacity and not of the government itself,” the notice reads.

“If an employee’s supervisor has previously granted them permission to listen to music in their personal work area, they should be reminded that music travels and should be secular (non-religious) and appropriate to the work environment.”

The political correctness has veterans like Holloway fed up.

“This stuff of taking down Christmas and not saying ‘Merry Christmas,’ you have to say ‘happy holidays’ and everything, I think it’s gone overboard,” she tells KCEN.

Watch KCEN’s report here: