Another soldier in the War on Christmas misses the point.
Anybody still believing that Father Christmas is a pseudonym for Santa has not yet experienced a close holiday encounter with Mr. Butler and his nonsecular montage here on East Main Street. In Patchogue and, yes, throughout the Town of Brookhaven, whose Town Council authorized a $500 donation to Mr. Butler’s Christmas ’n’ Patchogue committee, he has made a name (and a few enemies) as a senior citizen/activist bent on recreating a very specific sort of Christmas.
Mr. Butler has made his presence felt by persuading the local Chamber of Commerce to rechristen its year-end boat parade the Christmas Boat Parade; planting the word “Christmas” in the name of the garden club’s holiday house tour; spurning the village’s ecumenical tree-and-menorah display at the North Fork Bank Plaza and transforming a vacant lot into a Christmas tribute this year.
“There had to be a Nativity scene,” he said, so he located a hand-carved, life-size, 13-piece Nativity scene for $5,000 and paid for it from his own pocket. There is no Santa: that would send too commercial a message. “The tree may be pushing the envelope, but since it was already there, decorating it felt right,” he said. Decorating the 40-foot tree took two tries, and required assistance from the fire department’s cherry picker.
As for Father Christmas’s helpers, those would be the Knights of Columbus: they pitched in $3,000 for the 800 lights illuminating the fir on Walter Roe’s property that was the village’s official tree until the plaza site took precedence. (Mr. Roe, an insurance broker, supports all holiday displays.) A sound system was installed for weekend caroling. Five hundred people showed up for the opening ceremony on Nov. 24, complete with fireworks — an inauthentic touch, but being a Grucci in-law has its temptations.
Mr. Butler has a word for those townspeople — his roster includes the president of the Chamber of Commerce — who failed to support his take on what constitutes a genuinely merry Christmas: Grinches one and all.
Isn’t it funny how those who fight the phony War on Christmas and are so quick to label those who aren’t slavishly following them “Grinches” seem to miss the bit about how the Whos managed to have Christmas despite the theft of their presents and decorations, because for them, it wasn’t about the trappings.
Just a thought, people: if you need to have the 15-foot-high Nativity scene on municipal property to feel your faith is validated because THEN EVERYONE CAN SEE HOW GODLY YOU ARE, and if you feel that an inclusive “Happy Holidays!” is an affront, then maybe you need to page through the ending of How The Grinch Stole Christmas now and again.