Florida Mall: No nativity scenes allowed
Pastor Dale Morgan
Florida Mall: No nativity scenes allowed*
By Jose de Wit
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
December 18, 2007
The Pembroke Lakes Mall appears to have the standard holiday decorations.
There's a photo booth with a Rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer theme by the
food court; presents are wedged between palm trees; poinsettias rise
from flower pots and combine into the shape of a Christmas tree. And
next to a pair of benches in front of Dillard's, on a white-and-blue
pedestal, stands a 5-foot-tall menorah.
But for Len Torres, 79, of Plantation, who campaigns every holiday
season to get Broward malls to include nativity scenes, that Jewish
religious symbol makes Pembroke Lakes' refusal to set up a creche feel
like "a slap in the face."
"Christmas to me is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ our
savior. They want to deny me that," Torres said. "It's a trend in the
United States to secularize and commercialize Christmas."
General Growth Properties, the mall's Chicago-based owner, has a policy
against endorsing religious or political messages on its properties.
"We do have a menorah, but we also have a Christmas tree. The [U.S.]
Supreme Court told us those are not religious symbols, they're cultural
symbols. That's our way of recognizing both holidays," company spokesman
David Keating said.
Torres and his organization, the Committee to Bring Jesus Back to
Christmas, started in 2004 with an initially unsuccessful protest
directed at the Broward and Fashion malls. The next year, the Broward
Mall allowed Torres to set up his own nativity scene there. Last year,
Torres persuaded four more local malls — Sawgrass Mills in Sunrise, The
Galleria mall in Fort Lauderdale, Coral Square in Coral Springs and Town
Center at Boca Raton — to let his group install nativity scenes there.
But Pembroke Lakes, which according to Torres is the only major mall in
Broward County still creche-less, refuses to budge.
"Where I learned the meaning of Christmas is at home and in my church,"
Keating said. "The true meaning of Christmas is probably not something
you're going to learn at the mall."
Torres and his group are asking Christian shoppers to boycott Pembroke
Lakes Mall and instead make their holiday purchases at malls that
acknowledge the religious origin of Christmas. Pembroke Lakes' position
on creches, Torres said, is part of "an agenda to de-Christianize
Christmas" perpetuated by the Anti-Defamation League and the American
Civil Liberties Union.
Both groups said they are concerned with keeping religion out of
government and public places, not private malls.
"We have no dog in this fight. I've explained that to Mr. Torres
before," said Barry Butin, co-legal chair of the Broward County ACLU
chapter. "He can get the mall to put up 50 creches and we'd still have
nothing to say about it."
Andrew Rosenkranz, Florida regional director of the ADL, agreed.
"Private entities can do what they want to do," he said. "It is
unfortunate, though, that this has become a competition of symbols,
where if one goes up, the other has to go up also, which is what it
seems Mr. Torres is making this into."