Posted on 11/09/2007 5:52:47 AM PST by Libloather
Fort Collins task force releases holiday policy proposal
Rebecca Boyle, (Bio) rboyle@fortcollinsnow.com
November 9, 2007
FORT COLLINS -- If city leaders adopt a proposed holiday policy announced Tuesday, Fort Collins' official holiday celebration will include an educational museum display, plain wreaths and garlands on city property, and trees with white lights.
If there is a Christmas tree at the Fort Collins Museum, it will be part of a display including other religious and cultural symbols. There will be no specified Christmas tree nor a Hanukkah menorah in Oak Street Plaza, home to a Christmas tree in the past, but there's hope that area artists will be commissioned to create art for that space depicting the winter season.
The museum display would feature a series of symbols, taken from a list from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, that could include a Nativity scene; a clay lamp commemorating the Hindu festival of Diwali; a yule log for the winter solstice; a menorah; and several others.
All those elements are the backbone of the recommendations of the city's Holiday Task Force, released Tuesday. The guidelines focus on the use of light as a symbol of winter celebrations, and they do not cover Old Town Square, where a Christmas tree has been a long-standing tradition. But the task force recommended to the Downtown Development Authority -- which owns Old Town Square -- and the Downtown Business Association that Old Town's displays also include white lights. At a meeting last month, Chip Steiner, executive director of the DDA, said the group would likely follow in the city's footsteps.
Fort Collins City Council will review the recommendations at its Nov. 20 meeting, and may adopt them or not.
Under the proposed guidelines, the exterior of city-owned buildings can be decorated with white lights -- not colored lights -- secular winter symbols, like snowflakes, icicles and penguins, and "unadorned garlands of greenery," according to the policy, which can be viewed online at www.fcgov.com/holidaydisplay.
Howard Cohen, spokesman for the task force, said the members tried to find a unifying theme that tied together the wide variety of cultural and religious celebrations that take place during winter.
"It seemed that light was common," he said. "In Buddhism, they use light in their celebrations. If you look at Christmas it's obvious, Hanukkah it's obvious. It was very hard to find one that did not use light, and that was the commonality."
Beyond the museum display, which the task force members view as the centerpiece of their proposal, the policy had to address other areas owned by the city, such as city buildings, a small area in Old Town Square, and Oak Street Plaza, where a Christmas tree was erected in the past. That tree was removed after renovations to the plaza's fountain, however, so no tree was planned regardless of the task force guidelines.
Oak Street and other city-owned areas may have white lights, unadorned greenery and winter symbols such as snowflakes or icicles. Colored lights, ribbons and ornaments are not under the guidelines.
"We wanted to keep the theme of light, and not have anything that might be construed as a religious symbol," Cohen said. "If a tree did have candy canes or red ribbons on it, that may appear to be a religious kind of representation, and we felt that the white lights would keep with the theme of light."
Cohen said Christmas trees were not forbidden -- any business or resident could put them up -- but those on city property will have white lights. He said that can still be considered a Christmas tree.
It's also recommended to have secular symbols like a "gift tree" or "mitten tree," and winter symbols like snowmen, in common areas of city buildings, like city hall or the police station.
The policy says additional displays, while not encouraged, are permissible at the direction of individual building managers, but should include at least three cultural or religious traditions. A Christmas tree, a reindeer and a menorah wouldn't be acceptable, for instance, but it would be OK to have a Christmas tree, a menorah and a candle symbolizing the Buddhist celebration of Bodhi Day, when the man who became Buddha achieved enlightenment.
City employees could do whatever they wanted at their desks, Cohen said; the city building policy deals with areas where the public commonly treads.
Including in Old Town, any business or place of worship can erect whatever display or symbols they so choose, Cohen said.
He said in the end, the proposed policy is just that -- a proposal, a list of recommendations and guidelines for property owned by the city.
"We knew this from the beginning, that it's still up to city council whether to accept the recommendations or not. I think we all knew that and we all accept that."
About the task force
The 15-member Holiday Display Task Force was created after a heated controversy during the past two years involving a request to place a menorah in Old Town Square. Representatives from the Chabad Jewish Center requested a menorah be allowed on city property just like a Christmas tree was. But the city council decided not to allow the menorah, fearing that it would open the floodgates to requests for everything from Wiccan symbols to reindeer to Nativity scenes.
That led to a temporary policy, initiated in October 2006, that specified the city's displays would include white or colored lights; trees, wreaths, garlands and other foliage; and written secular holiday messages, approved in advance by the city manager and city attorney.
Other displays were to be allowed at the discretion of department heads, but they must have been secular in nature. No menorah was allowed on city property.
CooperSmith's Pub & Brewing, in Old Town Square, decided to host a menorah last year, but that generated a mini-controversy of its own when the Downtown Development Authority was concerned the candelabra was encroaching upon DDA-owned property. In the end, Mayor Doug Hutchinson and U.S. Sen. Wayne Allard were among dignitaries who planned to attend a ceremony to light the menorah. But the first day of Hanukkah was interrupted by the first of several blizzards that smacked northern Colorado at the end of 2006.
The city council decided in July 2007 that it would be better to have residents review the display policy, and the task force convened in August. Members met for two months -- according to one estimate, 500 hours -- to come up with the policy announced Tuesday.
I smell a double standard...
Who cares!!! I never really noticed what cities do at Christmas (most of the time it looks cheesy anyway). What I do notice is what individual homes look like. As long as private homes can continue to decorate I am cool with it. I tell you some homes really do up christmas and that is fun!!!
Christmas isn’t about buddists, moslems, secularists, winter solstice, wiccans, etc. It’s about the birth of Christ, and is a christian holiday. This nonstop pretending that Christmas isn’t really Christmas is nonsense of the sort perpetrated by children in their fantasy games.
At the same time no public employee (speaking of boss types here) has the right to dictate adherence to one or the othe standards regarding religion.
Even the business about keeping public areas devoid of religious materials has a very weak justification.
Frankly, this country needs a law that requires the imprisonment for 60 days for any elected or appointed public official who gives an order that uses the word religion (or variations thereof). This would include judges.
Make it an automatic sort of thing ~ they say the word "religion" while on the job. The mutawan comes around, picks them up, tosses them in a hole for 60 days, and then lets them out.
Enough times and these guys might get the idea that other folks' religious standards and beliefs are NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.
Oh, yeah! Candy canes and red ribbons play a BIG part in my religion. We celebrate candy cane month and the season of red ribbons.
BUMP to number three above. Ya nailed it!
They had the guy (I can’t remember his name) from the Northern Colorado ACLU on the radio here earlier in the week. He had a big part in instigating this and was an absolute rude a**hole on the radio. He didn’t want to listen to the hosts at all and kept attempting to talk over them as if his was the only opinion that mattered. He even PO’d the liberal host so much that he said that the ACLU was hurting the “progressive” cause with this move.
I love it when they eat their own.
‘As long as private homes CAN decorate’ ??? means to me that we are at the city’s/ government’s call as to whether we can or not.
I don’t think the US works that way. “If the people elected do NOT preserve the freedoms for the citizens that they have been elected to preserve, then they need to be removed from office.” (My own version of the Declaration of Independence).
I think I will goop up my yard to the nines with Christmas decs this year ....
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