Free Republic

A Southern California church flipped the lights on its outdoor manger scene Saturday evening to reveal Jesus, Mary and Joseph as border detainees, each figure isolated in its own chain-link cage with a barbed-wire top

WARREN, Ark. (KATV) — Bradley County residents are up-in-arms after they received a letter last week saying the county will no longer display a nativity scene on the courthouse lawn, a tradition that has been around for at least 50 years. more here: bradley-county-courthouse-removes-nativity-scene-citing-letters-from-aclu

In the human heart, the Baby in the Crèche who is the forever wondrous King of Kings, remains eternal True life is not only often stranger than fiction, it’s once in awhile, also more beautiful than anything turned out in fiction. The following is a true story about how a friend in Decatur, Illinois, without even being aware of it, brought back to me the life and times of the late great Daniel T. Zanoza, originator of the now 11-year-old Springfield Nativity Scene—once the only such display to ever stand in any state capitol building in any state across the...

If we can just get a hold of Jesus (and not another list of man-made rules and regulations), He will personally make sure everything else is just as it needs to be. All we need is Jesus This holiday season I was especially looking forward to Christmas, much due to the yearly reminder of the unconditional love and blessings that I need so badly and that I’ve been given in Jesus - coupled with the reunion of my beloved family members. It had been an extremely rough year for me. And I was looking to hide from some of my...

SOUTH BEND — The student and parents suing Concord schools over the annual Christmas Spectacular are still seeking a court order barring the school from reverting to older versions of the show that contain live Nativity scenes. In a filing last week in U.S. District Court in South Bend, the anonymous Concord Community Schools student and three parents suing the school district say school officials' promises to use mannequins instead of live actors to depict the Nativity aren't enough. A court filing in the case by the school district in early October says Concord Community Schools Superintendent John Trout and...

Parishioners at several New Jersey churches are distraught about a string of creche crimes: the theft of baby Jesus statues.Statues of the infant have been taken from five churches since Christmas Eve, according to the Archdiocese of Newark. Parishioners at St. Clare Church in Clifton reacted with dismay Sunday after a baby Jesus statue was apparently stolen from the church's outdoors nativity scene overnight. The statue disappeared between 7 p.m. Saturday and 7 a.m. Sunday, according to Father Peter Galbik. The small figure had just been purchased this holiday seaso "We are deeply disturbed that some group or person stole...

 Lansing, MI – This Christmas Season, the Michigan Nativity Scene Committee will display a nativity scene in the Michigan Capitol building in honor of the birth of Christ. On Friday, December 19 at 12:00pm, the Michigan Nativity Scene Committee will host a celebration to unveil the Christmas display depicting the newborn Christ Child, lying in the manger.  The nativity scene will be displayed on the lawn outside the Michigan State Capitol building.WHAT: Michigan Nativity Scene Committee to display nativity scene at Michigan State CapitolWHEN: Friday, December 19 at 12:00pm ESTWHERE: Michigan State Capitol – East Lawn Southside, Capitol Avenue at...

LINCOLN — Christmas carols and prayers — and no protests or obvious objections — marked possibly the first-ever Nativity scene at the State Capitol on Thursday.  The small display, a cedar manger about 6 feet across and 4 feet high, was made possible by a Catholic-associated attorneys association that is seeking to place Nativity scenes in state capitols and other public places across the country. "We want to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas," said Omaha attorney Christine Delgado, who heads the Omaha branch of the Thomas More Society.  While Nebraska’s display hasn't been controversial so far, efforts to...

A new display proposed for the Florida Capitol rotunda may leave you asking if the devil made them do it. After the state agreed to allow a private Christian group to put up a nativity scene and a private group to put up a Festivus pole made up of empty beer cans; more groups are applying to put their own displays in the rotunda. The latest filings for a Capitol display are from the Satanic Temple and from the Tallahassee Atheists, according to the News Service of Florida. The Satanic Temple hasn’t said what it would put on display in...

<p>SHAW AIR FORCE BASE, S.C. — Officials at Shaw Air Force Base are trying to determine what to do about a holiday display after a Nativity scene was taken down last week.</p> <p>Air Force spokeswoman Lt. Keavy (kev-EE) Rake said Tuesday a Nativity display was set up Friday by a group of volunteers from the base chapel at a small lake on the installation. The site was near where a tree lighting ceremony was scheduled Friday evening.</p>

The Bible's account of the night Jesus was born is noted for some well-known characters at the Bethlehem manger, including the baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph and some shepherds following the instructions of an angel. The famous wise men were not present, as they showed up later when Jesus was a young child in a house. And as far as the New Testament indicates, there weren't any lesbians there either. Now a Christian church in America's heartland is helping redefine the story, as its most-recent living Nativity scene in December featured two women instead of a man and a women starring...

(CANONSBURG, Pa.) New information has been discovered about the background of Megan Hartley, identified as the resident whose complaint about a Nativity scene in a borough building led to its removal. As reported on ThePittsburghChannel.com, the 57 year tradition of the local Knights of Columbus chapter of setting up the nativity scene in the borough building has come to an end due to a written complaint from Ms. Hartley. Since no other information was given about Ms. Hartley a search began. There is only 1 "Megan Hartley" listed in CANONSBURG, Pa in this people search thru VEROMI and that is...

Ontario, CA has not succumbed to the pressure felt in other cities across the country. The city of approximately 180,000 has large grass-covered median in the center of town with three lanes on each side. Many years ago, long before I was a member of Ontario Parkway Kiwanis, the group acquired very heavy statues of the Nativity scene and other scenes in the life of Christ. After four years, OPK donated them to the Chamber of Commerce. Every year, we get them out of storage and put up the scenes that can be seen on both sides of Euclid Avenue....

A familiar nativity scene and menorah were removed from the Luzerne County Courthouse lawn Wednesday night because the American Civil Liberties Union threatened to get a restraining order. County Solicitor Vito DeLuca said a Pittsburgh lawyer from the ACLU contacted him Wednesday to give the county an opportunity to remove the items before it filed court action that was already in the works. The ACLU argues the displays violate the separation of church and state clause of the U.S. Constitution, DeLuca said. DeLuca said county officials opted not to spend time and money on a lawsuit – at least not...

The state's Christmas tree controversy has shifted from the airport to the Capitol, where the governor lit a menorah this week, but officials rejected a Nativity scene. It all started earlier this month with the plastic holiday trees at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. A rabbi wanted to add a large menorah to the display, but airport officials, worried about lawsuits and requests from other religions, ordered the trees removed instead. They put the trees back up a few days later _ without a menorah _ after Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky of Chabad Lubavitch in Seattle said he wouldn't sue. Bogomilsky had made...

BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y., December 20, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Village of Briarcliff Manor officials have decided to remove their entire holiday display, including a 9-foot-tall menorah, from a public park rather than allow a resident to add a crèche after Alliance Defense Fund attorneys and allied attorneys won a temporary restraining order Friday from a federal judge. The lawsuit and TRO motion were filed Dec. 11 after the Briarcliff Manor Village's Board of Trustees refused to permit the display. "The village's constitutional violations regarding religious expression in public make them look like the grinches who stole Christmas and Chanukah from the...

The Origin of Nativity Scenes “... Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the place where travelers lodged.” According to St Luke the Evangelist (2,7) Jesus was born in a stable or at least in a place where animals were kept. In fact the word presepio (Nativity Scene) comes from the Latin verb praesepire (to enclose, to hedge, to fence) and today it means manger or crib. The term is thought to have been used for the first time with...

Library agrees to allow display of full nativity scene after ADF letter to library officials prompts mayor to make request BARTLETT, Tenn. - Officials with the Memphis Public Library System have agreed to allow figures representing the baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the wise men back into a nativity scene on the Bartlett Public Library's community shelves. News of a letter to the library by an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund apparently prompted the mayor of the city of Bartlett to ask the library to reverse their decision to exclude the figures. "I'm sure just about everyone would rather...

Away in a Manger January 5th, 2009 by Fr. William Saunders As we learn each week from the saints, one must wonder, “How did the saints celebrate Christmas?” One of the best examples whose celebration lives on in our own is St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226). Thomas of Celano, one of the first biographers of St. Francis, wrote, “More than any other feast, he celebrated Christmas with an indescribable joy. He said that this was the feast of feasts, for on this day God became a little child and sucked milk like all human children. Francis embraced with great tenderness...

(CNSNews.com) - The town of Bay Harbor Islands, Fla., is being sued by a Christian resident who has been prevented from displaying Nativity scenes during the Christmas season by city officials who allow the main street to be decorated with Jewish religious symbols for Hanukkah. On behalf of Sandra Snowden, who has offered twice to pay for the Christmas decorations with her own money, a federal lawsuit was filed on Thursday against the town and its officials by the Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich. According to a statement from Richard...