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Should nativity displays sit on city land? Gig Harbor holds hearing after freethought group letter

Baby Jesus didn't lay in a manger next to Gig Harbor’s holiday tree last year.

Officials blocked residents from putting up a display in a park after getting a letter from the Wisconsin-based Freedom From Religion Foundation, which claims to be the largest “free-thought association in North America."

That prompted a small protest in the city of 7,000 people last year from residents who wanted a Nativity scene, according to the Associated Press.

For about eight years, resident John Skansi placed a nativity beneath a city Christmas tree in a park.

"He had been putting this display up on his own without any sort of permission or permit, he was just doing it and nobody did anything about it," city administrator Ron Williams said.

>> Related: Gig Harbor won't have nativity display after letter from freethought group

On Wednesday, the city's parks commission held its first public meeting to figure out if and how religious displays should be allowed on city property.

In 2008, a similar controversy erupted at the state capitol in Olympia, when a holiday tree shared indoor space with a nativity scene and an atheist sign.

There was even talk of adding a Festivus pole.

The following year,  the state made a new rule, moving all religious displays at the capitol outdoors.

An attorney with The Freedom from Religion Foundation said the group wants Gig Harbor to prevent all religious displays, or make them open to all groups equally.

Skansi is represented by the First Liberty Institute, where an attorney said because the city's holiday display also includes secular components, a nativity is well within the bounds of the law.

The parks commission will make a recommendation to the city council about how to handle religious displays.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation also has its own version of a Nativity scene with Thomas Jefferson, Lady Liberty, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin standing around a manger holding the Bill of Rights. There's no indication that one may be placed in Gig Harbor.

Outside of the Northwest and across the country, annual disputes over displays celebrating the birth of Jesus on public land have pitted local residents against advocacy groups pushing separation of church and state.

In Franklin, Pennsylvania, a city of 6,500, councilors in November 2016 voted to keep a decades-old Nativity scene in a city park after receiving an email from the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Franklin's city councilors consulted lawyers and resolved the issue by agreeing to allow other secular Christmas decorations in the park.

Supporters and opponents of the Nativity scenes agree that municipalities are fighting harder to protect the displays.

"We are seeing more municipalities digging in after learning about their rights," said Mat Staver, who heads the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, which offers the municipalities advice to protect them and volunteered free legal help for Franklin, Pennsylvania.

Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said more cities and towns simply ignore complaints that placing Christian art on public property violates the U.S. Constitution.

In recent years, conservative Christians have vocally complained about the secularization of Christmas, said Andrew Chesnut, the Bishop Walter F. Sullivan Chair in Catholic Studies at Virginia Commonwealth University.

"We also are seeing a rural and city divide where rural areas are facing less resistance (to Nativity scenes) while there is more conflict in cities, which are more diverse," Chesnut said.

Gaylor said some cities and towns are getting around the conflict by setting up public spaces where volunteers can erect Nativity scenes along with secular Christmas displays.

"But we don't think putting a couple of reindeer up near a Nativity scene solves the problem," Gaylor said.

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