# Can an American town ban Christmas? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 6, 2019, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459 "2019-12-06T06:45:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/21 "2019-12-06T14:31:35Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > 25% of the plots to children movies seem to be around Christmas being banned/cancelled in some way, usually by way of the mayor or overpowered city council somehow having the ability to literally prevent people from individually celebrating Christmas in their own homes. Would that “25%” happen to be this one direct to video movie put out by the religious studio Peace Arch Trinity back in 2008-“The Town That Banned Christmas”? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/22 "2019-12-06T14:41:13Z")
> [@Asuka](#): > > 25% of the plots to children movies seem to be around Christmas being banned/cancelled in some way, usually by way of the mayor or overpowered city council somehow having the ability to literally prevent people from individually celebrating Christmas in their own homes. > [@Czarcasm](#): > > Would that “25%” happen to be this one direct to video movie put out by the religious studio Peace Arch Trinity back in 2008-“The Town That Banned Christmas”? In my experience, when the plot to a children’s Christmas movie involves Christmas being banned/cancelled in some way, the cause is that either Santa Claus is unable or unwilling to fulfill his duties, or there’s some entity (like a Grinch) who sets out to steal/ruin/prevent it. ---
**Author:** ![SuntanLotion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/suntanlotion/32/16165_2.png) [@SuntanLotion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SuntanLotion)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/23 "2019-12-06T14:57:18Z")
I wish they would at least Ignore it. Especially radio stations… ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/24 "2019-12-06T15:08:05Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > In my experience, when the plot to a children’s Christmas movie involves Christmas being banned/cancelled in some way, the cause is that either Santa Claus is unable or unwilling to fulfill his duties, or there’s some entity (like a Grinch) who sets out to steal/ruin/prevent it. Same thing I was thinking, It seems like a very rare thing, and I would like to know if they 25% claimed is close to the truth. But yes governments have banned certain things in the past present and I suspect the future as well, including religious practices and also thus holidays. Now in the US it is much harder to do, many would say that is due to freedom, but really freedom is preserved because there are many ruling authorities (checks and balances) striving to maintain their power and freedom is just one weapon they use to preserve their power. So it is a system set up in conflict with itself which allows us to celebrate christmas. But that is just a shortcoming of the inability to get a supreme leader’s will passed and enforced. Many other such governments are not hamstrung in this way and can more easily ban it. Since you asked about a american town, my take on it is unless power is consolidated to one ruler’s will, freedom to have Christmas will be preserved because the rulers will insist on it to prevent them losing power. However it may be banned temporally as the system sorts things out and corrects it. Thinking some more on this, there are some towns that are made up of people of a particular belief, some of which don’t celebrate Christmas. New Square in NY is one such town, and of recent anti-vax/measle outbreak fame. The town elected to separate itself from the city it was part of (New City IIRC), and become its own entity. I believe it is 100% Jewish owned, in that every plot of land is thus owned by a Jewish person. While Christmas is not legally banned, it is effectively banned in that you won’t seen any christmas decorations on public or private land there. Just a aside It is also quite incredible to see, Google maps shows just a hint of what it’s like to actually drive through it. Increadabally build up in the middle of the suburbs. But in these single faith towns, it may be possible to get a local law through, and as long as no one challenges it outside the jurisdiction of the town it stands, but will fall when taking to the state level. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/25 "2019-12-06T15:08:10Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Would that “25%” happen to be this one direct to video movie put out by the religious studio Peace Arch Trinity back in 2008-“The Town That Banned Christmas”? It’s basically “Footloose” in December. ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/26 "2019-12-06T15:16:25Z")
@kanicbird – are you equivocating “nobody chooses to celebrate Christmas as they aren’t Christian” with a “ban on Christmas”? Because that’s the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/27 "2019-12-06T15:26:12Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > It’s basically “Footloose” in December. With Santa (or Jesus, I can’t decide would be better) doing a not weird at all dance routine alone in a barn or whatever. ---
**Author:** ![thorny\_locust](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thorny_locust/32/431_2.png) [@thorny\_locust](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thorny_locust)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/28 "2019-12-06T19:14:20Z")
Other issues aside: you can’t, legally, ban specifically Christmas lights and/or Christmas decorations on private property. That’s content-related and would violate freedom of speech. It would, possibly, be potentially legal to ban all outside lights and/or decorations; or, at any rate, it wouldn’t violate freedom of speech. I flat out can’t see that happening. The Town That Banned Front Porch Lights?! Let alone The Town That Banned Putting Anything At All On Your Porch or Lawn. It would be somewhat more plausible to ban, say, all outdoor blinking lights and/or all lights presenting an unreasonable amount of glare on the grounds that they’re traffic distractions, and therefore presented a public hazard. But that would be certain types of lights, and based on a public hazard; not certain types of content. It would be difficult, to put it mildly, to claim that a non-blinking Nativity scene, for instance, on a private front lawn, not in the right of way, and not blocking drivers’ lines of sight, was a public hazard. I think some private housing associations control what people can and can’t put on the outsides of their homes and on any lawns involved. But I don’t see how a town can do it. The town/city/whatever could, of course, decide that it was tired of paying for decorations and/or of their causing distractions from work, whether or not those distractions were related to arguments about religion, and could stop putting up decorations on its own property and in its own buildings. The municipality – or any individual private workplace, for that matter – could even prevent employees from putting up their own in the workplace. But a) they’d have to ban all similar decorations, of any religion or none and b) that would hardly be “banning Christmas”, as everybody who wanted could perfectly well celebrate it at home. In practice, every place around here that I’m aware of does spend public money and public space on Christmas decorations, and many of them also on Christmas town parties. I’ve decided this is not a hill I’m going to die on. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/29 "2019-12-06T19:52:59Z")
An American town (to be exact, a smallish city) recently _did_ ban Christmas. Well, actually it banned the Christmas parade. Mmm…to be exact, the mayor announced that the city’s annual Christmas parade would be renamed the Winter Parade, in order to demonstrate how “inclusive” they were. [It did not go well.](https://www.10tv.com/article/west-virginia-mayor-backtracks-changing-name-christmas-parade-winter-parade-2019-oct) ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/30 "2019-12-06T20:16:14Z")
> [@thorny\_locust](#): > > Other issues aside: you can’t, legally, ban specifically Christmas lights and/or Christmas decorations on private property. That’s content-related and would violate freedom of speech. There are town historic districts around here that restrict what you can do with your house, from paint colors to holiday lights. One that I know of (Merrimack NH) restricts holiday lighting to a single white candle (typically electric) in each window, nothing else. I don’t think anyone is required to put them up, but if you want to put lights up that’s what you need to use. I assume they are kosher with respect to freedom of speech, but I’ve never looked into it. ---
**Author:** ![DorkVader](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/73ab20/32.png) [@DorkVader](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DorkVader)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/31 "2019-12-06T21:05:34Z")
ok, I’m back, but apparrently I was conflating the lawsuit over a cross with [this lawsuit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk_Grove_Unified_School_District_v._Newdow) which happened at pretty close to the same time, sorta. ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/32 "2019-12-06T21:08:24Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Would that “25%” happen to be this one direct to video movie put out by the religious studio Peace Arch Trinity back in 2008-“The Town That Banned Christmas”? I know it’s the MO on the SDMB to question the ulterior motive of any and all questions asked but I’ve seen a lot of bad Christmas films where this is the case. The movie that inspired the question was the 2000 animated movie “An Angel For Christmas” about a town where the Mayor was basically Scrooge and officially banned Christmas from being celebrated and enforced this by having anyone who celebrated it fired (since he owned the local factory and 99% of the townsfolk worked for him in some ways even the police) ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/33 "2019-12-06T21:13:01Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > An American town (to be exact, a smallish city) recently _did_ ban Christmas. > > Well, actually it banned the Christmas parade. > > Mmm…to be exact, the mayor announced that the city’s annual Christmas parade would be renamed the Winter Parade, in order to demonstrate how “inclusive” they were. > > [It did not go well.](https://www.10tv.com/article/west-virginia-mayor-backtracks-changing-name-christmas-parade-winter-parade-2019-oct) So – absolutely nothing was banned, they tried to comply with the establishment clause, and the townspeople threw a hissy fit? ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/34 "2019-12-06T21:27:46Z")
[Moderating] This question is inevitably and unavoidably going to veer into politics. That being the case, rather than try to steer it back into GQ, I’m going to just move it to IMHO. ---
**Author:** ![RioRico](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f04885/32.png) [@RioRico](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RioRico)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/35 "2019-12-06T21:32:01Z")
Do US towns exist whose residents are overwhelmingly of a faith that doesn’t celebrate Xmas? No ban would be needed, then. Yes, colonial Puritans banned the heathen Papist celebration. How do their counterparts behave now? ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/36 "2019-12-06T21:36:35Z")
> [@Babale](#): > > So – absolutely nothing was banned, they tried to comply with the establishment clause, and the townspeople threw a hissy fit? [Yep](https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/11/29/christians-flipped-out-after-a-wv-mayor-changed-the-name-of-a-christmas-parade/). ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/37 "2019-12-06T21:39:56Z")
I know schools in our area kids cannot sing Christmas songs at the annual Christmas… woops… HOLIDAY show. Nice, generic songs about… well I dont remember if they can even mention Santa Claus or snow. The only song I remember is “Happy Holidays”. No songs with any depth or meaning. Now at the HS level they do a Christmas show thats a bit of everything. Christian songs, generic Christmas song, some winter songs, some Hanukkah. ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/38 "2019-12-06T22:45:12Z")
The above is likely not based in fact. ---
**Author:** ![That\_Don\_Guy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/that_don_guy/32/538_2.png) [@That\_Don\_Guy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/That_Don_Guy)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/39 "2019-12-06T23:11:01Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Ban Christmas, but make the Second Amendmenteers happy: Declare open season, no bag limit, maybe even a per-head bounty, on flying reindeer. > Okay, here’s a story that really did happen, must be about 25 years ago, in Pismo Beach, CA or one of the smaller surrounding towns, as best I remember it: > > City put up a Christmas tree on top of a city-owned hilltop overlooking the main freeway through town, or maybe it was a big cross that was there all year round. Diehard militant atheists screamed. (Don’t remember if a court order got involved at this point.) > > Christian citizen offers to buy the hilltop from the city, whereupon he will then put up the tree (or cross), the hilltop then being his own private property. City agrees to sell. Christian citizen buys. Christian citizen installs tree (or cross) as expected. > > Diehard militant atheists still screamed, claiming the city sold that land deliberately so the private citizen could put that tree (or cross) there, knowing that he was planning to do that, so it was just as bad as if the city still owned the hilltop. Diehard militant atheists take city and/or new hilltop owner to court. > > Comes now the part that boggles the mind, as I remember it: The court agreed with Diehard militant atheists. :smack: So private Christian citizen hilltop owner was not permitted to put up his Christian display on his own hilltop. This reminds me of two similar incidents, although I am having trouble finding the second one. First, on the highest point of land in San Francisco is the “Mount Davidson Cross,” which was first put up in the 1920s, but it was on city-owned land, and in 1991, a group of organizations demanded that the fact that it was on government land violated the “separation of Church and State” - and the courts agreed. In 1997, the land, and the cross, were sold to an Armenian group that pretty much repurposed it as a memorial to the Armenian Genocide that started in 1914, and the cross is still there (and is lit every year on the night before Easter - there is a sunrise religious service there on Easter Sudnay - as well as on Armenian Holocaust Memorial Day.) Second, I’m pretty sure that a similar attempt to sell government land with some religious icon on it was overturned by the Supreme Court relatively recently as it did not allow groups that wanted to remove the icon to be involved in the auction. (I remember Emailing Senator Feinstein about it, as the Mount Davidson Cross land was also sold at auction, and I vaguely remember a story about how at least one group that would have had the cross taken down was not allowed to bid.) I thought the land was in Arizona, but I can’t find any reference to the case. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [December 6, 2019, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459/40 "2019-12-06T23:34:31Z")
> [@Jackmannii](#): > > An American town (to be exact, a smallish city) recently _did_ ban Christmas. > > Well, actually it banned the Christmas parade. > > Mmm…to be exact, the mayor announced that the city’s annual Christmas parade would be renamed the Winter Parade, in order to demonstrate how “inclusive” they were. > > [It did not go well.](https://www.10tv.com/article/west-virginia-mayor-backtracks-changing-name-christmas-parade-winter-parade-2019-oct) > [@Babale](#): > > So – absolutely nothing was banned, they tried to comply with the establishment clause, and the townspeople threw a hissy fit? > [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > [Yep](https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/11/29/christians-flipped-out-after-a-wv-mayor-changed-the-name-of-a-christmas-parade/). Because it’s absolutely intolerable to some Christians to admit that not all Americans believe their myths. Being an atheist in this country sometimes puts me in mind of the joke about the rabbi who always read a virulently anti-Semitic website, to the consternation of his friends: “Why do you go to that hateful site?” “Because, when I read the regular newspapers, I read about pogroms and discrimination and hate crimes. But when I read Stormfront, I discover that we control the banks, and the arts, and are on the verge of taking over the world! It makes me feel so much better!” Apparently, the mere fact that non-Christians exist in this country is enough to send some Christians into a panic. I feel so powerful. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-an-american-town-ban-christmas/844459.md?page=3)