Do you think It should be called a Christmas Tree Lighting event?
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A councilwoman in the New Jersey borough of Roselle Park has resigned over the council’s decision to change the name of a local event from “A Tree Lighting” to “A Christmas Tree Lighting”.
“I can not in good conscience continue to be part of a council that is exclusionary or to work with a mayor who is such”, Storey said in her resignation letter.
She says Mayor Carl Hokanson mentioned the change several days ago, but says it wasn’t listed on the meeting agenda.
Charlene Storey announced her decision just minutes after the Roselle Park council approved the change Thursday night, NJ.com (http://bit.ly/1ILdHHf ) reported. The ceremony will be called a Christmas tree lighting on December 11th, and this point forward, but Councilwoman Storey says this needs to be a topic of conversation, a discussion she will have with the committee moving forward.
“If the town wanted to display different religious symbols in Michael Mauri Park that would be nice”. After Roselle Park changed the name of its “The Tree Lighting” to ‘The Christmas Tree Lighting, ‘ Councilwoman At-Large Charlene Storey quit, saying the move endorsed one religion over others.
Hokanson said when he was a kid in Roselle Park the event was always called a “Christmas Tree Lighting”.
‘Yes, Christmas is a cultural holiday as well as a religious one. “For 64 years of my life, it was a Christmas tree”.
In her statement, she wrote that her decision was not a matter of political correctness but rather “a fundamental issue of freedom of religion – one of the basic freedoms that tens of thousands of Americans, including my uncle, died to defend over the years”.
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“You can represent people in different ways and, in some ways, you are free to speak more openly as a resident than you are as an elected official.”
