A small town committee in South Carolina kept a Nativity display in a market parking lot in defiance of the mayor’s order that it be taken down.
The controversy began in Mullins, South Carolina, around Thanksgiving when Kimberly Byrd, head of the Mullins Beautification Committee, said her committee would decorate the town’s new marketplace “like a Hallmark movie” for the Christmas season, believing it would draw in business. The group paid for the decorations out of their own pocket and included a Nativity scene, but Mayor Miko Pickett reportedly asked that it be removed, fearing it would offend residents of other faiths.
“I would like to clarify my reported comment about the nativity scene. I requested that the nativity scene be removed solely from the PUBLIC parking area. The reason for this is the separation of Church and State applies to muncipalities as well, regarding religous symbols on public property and parks [sic],” Pickett said in a public Facebook post.
“We are a community composed of various ethnicities and religious beliefs. Both my family and I are deeply rooted in our own beliefs,” she added. “I want to emphasize that I have never stated that nativity scenes should be prohibited in Mullins.”
Byrd told Fox News that she refused to back down and vowed to keep the Nativity display.
“Our small town, we have a church on every corner,” Byrd told Fox News. “It’s a faith-based community in the Bible Belt. I’ve been here 53 years of my life and never heard of anything like this happening here.”
“Christ is why we celebrate Christmas,” Byrd added. “I really thought she would probably change her mind or come back and say, ‘I’m sorry, I made a mistake. Let’s have a meeting about this,’ but nothing.”
Byrd said the community has been supportive of her decision not to back down.
“I never thought I’d have to do anything like this,” she said. “But at the end of the day, we have to stand for what we believe in and what is right.”
Fox News noted that the “1984 U.S. Supreme Court case, Lynch v. Donnelly, the court ruled in a 5-4 decision that a Nativity scene displayed by a Rhode Island city did not violate the establishment clause when it was part of a broader holiday display that included secular symbols.”
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