Happy Sparkle Season
The Item Below, Originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal
on December 22, 1997
Over in an attic at Jersey City's Department of Public Works, Frosty the Snowman and Santa
gather dust next to the Virgin Mary - soon to be known as the Special Spirit. All would prefer to
twinkle on the lawn in front of City Hall as they have for decades. But this is the time of year
when as sure as the days grow shorter and the wind gets sharper, common sense grows ever
dimmer in the ever-lengthening shadow of the ACLU.
This Christmas, the seasonal display in this New Jersey town's most prominent public space is
more minimal, modern, though very reflective in its own way. Forced to leave its holiday
decorations in storage, City Hall has erected two big wooden billboards.
Sign Number One says: "due to a lawsuit by the ACLU our traditional menorah and creche may
not be displayed this year. We are fighting in court to be able to return these beautiful displays to
you next year. Seasons Greetings! Mayor Bret Schundler."
Sign Number Two says: "As the Constitution of the State of New Jersey reads, let us remain
grateful to Almighty God for the civil and religious liberty which He hath so long permitted us
to enjoy,' and let us continue looking to Him for a blessing upon our endeavors to secure and
transmit the same unimpaired to succeeding generations.'" Those fighting words come from the
preamble of the New Jersey Constitution, itself a relic of an earlier time before the road through
life transpired under the watchful eyes of the self-anointed order of lowercased, gender-neutral,
affirmative action-obsessed civil servants.
Jersey City is just one of countless towns engaged in the annual ritual of struggling to express the
holiday spirit while suppressing enough religious expression to keep them out of court. The
great absurdity of the challenge is reflected in the ongoing decorative attempts of Mr.Schundler,
the conservative mayor of a multicultural town filled with immigrants and that includes Ellis
Island's original train depot. (Needless to say, he has yet to find himself in court for celebrating
the Hindu Festival of Lights).
After the town's traditional Christmas nativity scene and menorah provoked a lawsuit by the
ACLU in 1994 and an injunction by the U.S. District Court in New Jersey which banned the
display as insufficiently secular, the mayor came up with a new display guided by the decorating
directives of the Supreme Court and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. While the rulings
differed in details, they actually allowed municipal holiday displays of a "reasonable observer"
would not mistake them for a religious endorsement.
Short of dangling candy canes from the nine-branched menorah and stuffing an elf into the
manger, Jersey City complied. Frosty and Santa joined the line-up. Kwanzaa symbols were
added to the plaza's Christmas Tree. The Virgin was evicted from Her spot by the manger. But
while that was good enough to lift the court injunction, it did not protect the town from yet
another ACLU lawsuit.
This one argued absurdly and successfully in federal court that Frosty and Santa would lead a
reasonable observer to believe that they were "background witnesses to the Miracle of the Oils
and the Birth of Christ, respectively. However confusing the presence of a snowman in
Bethlehem may be from a canonical perspective, a reasonable observer informed of the history
and context of religious displays in front of City hall would invariably characterize them for what
they are - attempts at evasion of constitutional prohibitions through superficial secular
tokenism."
That kind of dumbed-down view of the typical citizen who must be protected at all cultural
costs from feeling either befuddled, offended or excluded is beginning to have an insidious
effect, spawning weird acts of self-righteousness and censorship far outside Jersey City's
denuded plaza. As the Becket Fund, Mayor Schundler's bipartisan, ecumenical law firm, readies
its appeal, it's been documenting countless examples of Christmas fright. One New Hampshire
high school principal recently prohibited the singing of Christmas music, even Jingle Bells,
because he assumed in the new United States of America, this was now verboten. (It isn't, not
yet anyway). He was happy to reverse himself. And in Hillsborough, New Jersey, the school
board has banned all references to Halloween and St. Valentine's Day. The correct formulations
are as follows: "fall festival celebration" and special person day."
Still, when the ACLU commissars sit down this Sparkle Season to award gold stars for the most
insanely politically correct act of self-policing, we hope they will put East Lansing Michigan, up
for a special constellation. In East Lansing, they now call the Easter Bunny the Special Bunny.
Can the Virgin Mary be far behind?
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Hudson County, New Jersey is a place of many firsts - including genocide and slavery.
Political corruption is a tradition here.
First in a series by Anthony Olszewski – Click HERE to find out more.
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