And the Ebenezer Award goes to . . .Dec 22, 2009 The envelope please! And the 2009 Ebenezer award goes to…Kokomo, Indiana County Courthouse, whose holiday display consisted of a Loch Ness Monster, a woodpecker and a fire truck, and showed no symbol of any known holiday being celebrated anywhere in the world this December.
Every year, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C. bestows the Ebenezer award on the silliest affront to the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays. Past awardees have included a federal lawsuit against a harmless holiday display, a cancelled performance of the Charles Dickens classic A Christmas Carol, a city banning nativity displays, and after objections from two families who said Santa’s presence would make them feel “uncomfortable,” the exclusion of Santa from their annual town celebrations.
In awarding this year’s prize to Kokomo County Courthouse, the Becket Fund took special note of the deliberate thematic incoherence of the display. “If we put the religious or Christmas decorations up, we’d be offending a whole other group of citizens and taxpayers,” explained Commissioner Tyler Moore.
Becket Fund Chairman and President, Kevin “Seamus” Hasson, has given out many Ebenezer awards over the years to a wide variety of hapless bureaucrats, but Commissioner Tyler Moore won this year’s prize for his absolute incoherence.
“If we didn’t know better, we might suspect he had been hitting the eggnog early. But no doubt eggnog is banned too,” added Hasson.
The Becket Fund is a non-partisan, non-profit, public interest law firm protecting the religious freedom of people of all faiths. Our clients have included Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, and Zoroastrians.
Visit http://weareaustin.com/content/fulltext/?cid=42172 to view the holiday displays and the commissioner’s declaration.
Previous Ebenezer Award “winners” -
2005 - Mitchell Pashkin, Huntington, NY attorney
2004 - Lake Washington High School in Kirkland, Washington
2003 - New York City Public Schools
2002 - Virginia Beach, Virginia
2001 - Kensington, Maryland
2000 - Salem, Oregon, City Manager Jim Johnson
1999 – Sparkle
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