Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Sparks fly over pentagram and Trump ‘Festivus Pole’
A Donald Trump hat sits atop a “Festivus Pole” in Deerfield, next to a Nativity scene. A few miles away in Boca Raton, a pentagram was erected Tuesday next to a Nativity scene and a menorah.
The seasonal battle over religious symbols in public places has begun.
For years, a menorah and a life-sized scene of Jesus’ Nativity have stood in Boca’s Sanborn Park without remark. But this year, Preston Smith, a schoolteacher for Palm Beach County Schools, decided he’s had enough. He put up the 300-pound, 20-foot pentagram.
“This monument to Satan … serves as a sacred memorial for the countless freethinking heretics, heroic heathens and brave blasphemers brutally burned alive at the stake in city squares by righteous believ-
ers not long ago,” Smith said. “Love trumps hate.”
The symbol was provided by the Freedom from Religion Foundation, a 40-year-old organization based in Wisconsin. After giving Smith the permit to put the pentagram up, the city of Boca Raton declined to guard Smith’s display as requested. And local religious leaders applied for a banner to counter Smith’s counter display. The banner is going up before Wednesday’s planned Christmas parade in Boca Raton.
“The use of satanic symbols is offensive and harmful to our community’s well-being,” the banner will say, according to city records. “We find it a shameful and hypocritical way to advocate for freedom from religion.”
The Rev. Andrew Sherman, rector of St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church, and Rabbi David Steinhardt, senior rabbi at the B’nai Torah Congregation, put together the effort to counter the satanic symbol as co-convenors of the Boca Raton Interfaith Clergy Association.
Sherman said it’s the first time in his 11 years in Boca that he’s seen anything like this display to counter the Jewish and Christian symbols. He said he doesn’t think satanic symbols are something to take lightly.
“I want the community to hear that I consider that [satanic imagery] harmful and want to offer a warning and a statement to the community as such,” he said.
Smith said there’s nothing harmful about his message. “Atheistic satanists
“I want the community to hear that I consider that [satanic imagery] harmful.” The Rev. Andrew Sherman, rector of St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church
stand for everything that Satan loves: life, liberty and love.”
Meanwhile, Chaz Stevens’ fourth year erecting a Festivus Pole in Deerfield’s area for public seasonal displays has upset city officials, he said.
Festivus was a fake holiday popularized by the TV comedy “Seinfeld” as an alternative to the commercialism of Christmas.
Stevens said officials told him the city is taking the pole down — because they think it crosses a line into politics that isn’t appropriate next to a menorah and a creche. He put up the the same display in Delray Beach.
“This is egregious. This is preposterous and a clear violation of my constitutional rights,” said Stevens, whose first Festivus Pole went viral and received national exposure. “It shall not stand.”
Deerfield city officials did not provide official comment Tuesday other than to confirm that the pole will come down.
Stevens said someone cut the extension cord that lit his pole. His is the only symbol that is in the dark when night falls, he said.
He pointed out that last year’s pole, with a disco ball and a gay pride flag on the pole, elicited no problems like this year’s, even though it was a comment on the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of gay marriage. This year, he’s calling it a Distrestivus Pole, to symbolize what he considers a nation in distress after a majority of voters picked a president who did not win.
“How is this year’s pole about politics and not last year’s?” he asked. “They are enforcing a viewpoint.”
Sherman, the clergyman, Boca Raton, said he’d trade the pentagram for the Donald Trump display. “Something like that is maybe a little more comical and ludicrous,” he said. “I wouldn’t find that spiritually harmful to the community.”