She promptly issued a resignation letter saying she “cannot in good conscience continue to be part of a council that is exclusionary or to work with a Mayor who is such”. She was raised Catholic, but has been open about now being a “non-believer”.
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Other lighting ceremonies around the nation – such as Washington, D.C.’s National Christmas Tree Lighting and New York City’s Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting – have long used the religious word.
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.
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.
“I like Christmas trees and the happy spirit that usually pervades this season”, Charlene Storey, the councilwoman-at-large in Roselle Park, also clarified in a statement when she announced her resignation Friday.
Yes, Christmas is a cultural holiday as well as a religious one.
He said he’s received dozens of calls and emails, a lot of them in support of the renaming of the event. Now, from this point forward, it will be called a “Christmas tree” lighting ceremony.
‘And that 33.8 percent doesn’t include non-Christians such as Hindus, Buddhists and Muslims, ‘ she said. She rescinded her decision late Saturday after Roselle Park Mayor Carl Hokanson put her in command of creating & chairing a diversity committee, the mayor stated in a press release.
“I can’t believe that people are going this insane over this”, he said.
NJ.com reports that Storey had checked tree lighting events at other municipalities and found none which included the word Christmas.
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“A Christmas tree is a Christmas tree”, Hokanson told NJ.com. ‘It’s not a holiday tree, it’s not a pear tree – it’s a Christmas tree, and this is the season’.
