Storey submitted her resignation, effective January 7, on Friday a day after Hokanson proposed, and a majority of the council approved, a resolution to change the name of the borough’s public tree-lighting ceremony next week to include the word “Christmas”.
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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.
It was Mayor Carl Hokanson who reached out to Storey, who he described as “a very good councilwoman”.
A New Jersey city council’s decision to add the word “Christmas” to the name of its tree-lighting ceremony prompted one council member to step down because it “turned it from a non-religious event to a religious one”. She was raised Catholic, still has-been open about now being a “non-believer”.
The first family led the countdown as they flipped the switch to light up the tree at the Ellipse in President’s Park.
This is how the Grinch quit city council.
“There are also many other philosophies and religions outside of Christianity”, she wrote.
The name of the event was previously changed from “Christmas” to “Annual” in the mid-1990’s following a court case surrounding a Jersey City holiday display that contained multiple religious symbols on municipal grounds.
Starbucks came under fire for its new holiday cup, which lacks any holiday-themed artwork.
Storey says she regrets having to resign.
Although the new coffee cup design was meant to keep the holiday season pure and simple, former pastor Joshua Feuerstein took offense to the plain cups and accused Starbucks of removing “Christmas from their cups because they hate Jesus”.
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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.”
