All-Faiths Display to Continue

A week after a residents’ committee banned religious displays from a busy intersection, the Mission Viejo City Council agreed Monday to continue the three-decade holiday tradition after all.

But the seasonal exhibition--celebrating holidays from Christmas to Ramadan--will be moved to a neighborhood park rather than the intersection of La Paz Road and Chrisanta Drive, which was the traditional spot.

The display will go up in the middle of Florence Joyner Olympiad Park, about two miles from the previous site. A secular exhibit featuring Santa Claus, a winter scene and U.S. flags will go up at the intersection instead.

The Mission Viejo Activities Committee, a nonprofit group that has been coordinating the street-corner display, decided last week to rule out the religious themes there, saying they were no longer able to accommodate all the interested faiths.

Muslim leaders, who for the first time put up a Ramadan message at the intersection last year, said the timing of the cancellation was unfortunate. In the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist atrocities at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the displays are a fitting show of diversity, said Hussam Ayloush, executive director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Anaheim.

Mission Viejo Mayor William S. Craycraft came up with the alternate plan after receiving e-mails and phone calls from religious groups that wanted the custom to continue. The plan was unanimously approved by the City Council on Monday night.

Officials said the park site means room for more faiths to represent themselves, and there was a safety concern with people on foot being too close to traffic while inspecting displays at the busy intersection.

“We are taking a not-so-wonderful situation and trying to accommodate everybody,” Craycraft said after a two-hour public hearing on the issue.

The mayor’s plan sparked mixed reactions from religious leaders.

“That is excellent news,” said Ayloush, who had feared that paranoia motivated the intersection ban. “It’s a good way to start Ramadan off.”

But Rabbi Martin Cohen of Congregation Eilat in Mission Viejo, had a different view.

“As an American citizen, I feel it’s inappropriate to have religious symbols displayed at any public site,” Cohen said. “But if there is going to be some of kind of display, I guess this is less exclusionary.”

Cohen also questioned whether the Santa and holiday tree display at the intersection is really secular.

“It’s not exactly what you would expect from a community that’s looking to draw people together to create a unified sense of common purpose,” Cohen said. “We’re basically being told that Santa Claus is at the real site and everyone else can go to the park and enjoy their own symbols.”

Last year, a Ramadan greeting was squeezed next to a nativity scene on one of the corners. A menorah, a dreidel, a towering Christmas tree and a scene showing Santa’s workshop were on another corner.

The activities committee began overseeing the holiday displays before the city was incorporated.