Mt. Sinai Christmas, er, holiday tree flap

“Happy Holidays.”

It’s a phrase designed to bestow a cheerful greeting on someone during the Hannukah, Christmas and Kwanzaa seasons. But this year, in Mount Sinai, an online petition is meeting the term “holiday” with scrutiny.

In 1996, the Mount Sinai Civic Association began an annual tree lighting to commemorate the Hanukkah and Christmas seasons. It was dubbed the “Holiday Tree Lighting” so that all community members would feel welcome at the event, according to Lori Baldassare, 52, vice president of the Mount Sinai Heritage Trust.

The group took over the ceremony in 2007 and never changed the name. On Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. at the Heritage Community Center, it will hear suggestions to change the tree lighting’s name to include “Christmas” starting next year following the complaints of an area resident.

Candace Gonzalez Donin said she was first bothered by the celebration’s name when she noticed it three years ago, but as a history teacher and a mother of two didn’t have time to do anything about it. Donin left teaching this year to spend more time with her children and started the petition to rename the lighting after she said she drummed up support for the change a Mount Sinai community Facebook page.

The 47-year-old Mount Sinai resident was born and raised Catholic but has a strong appreciation for religious diversity. Her husband, Marc, is Jewish. The couple are raising their children Catholic, but in their home they celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas.

“I feel like it’s just trying to homogenize each religion,” she said of the lighting’s name. “If it’s a holiday tree, why don’t we just do this in July when it’s warm and decorate it red and white and blue?”

Heritage Park, where the lighting will take place Dec. 4, also hosts the lighting of a menorah from Temple Beth Emeth on Mount Sinai Avenue. Baldassare said the menorah’s lighting ceremony is run by the temple and simply takes place in the park. Donin said if the Heritage Trust doesn’t change the name of the tree, she would like to see another group arrange an annual nativity scene to be placed on the lawn.

“It [the tree lighting] was not a religious ceremony. We tried to just be all-inclusive,” said Baldassare, who helped found the ceremony. “What we do is, we ask the residents to bring an ornament to place on the tree every year, and it’s supposed to be a symbol of whatever you celebrate.”

Jessica McNally, 37, of Mount Sinai signed the petition and helped circulate it. She said she’d also like to see clear representations of all religions during the holiday season in Heritage Park.

“This [Christmas] is part of our religion and the Christmas tree is a big part of it,” McNally said. “Why not call it what it is? If they canceled the menorah lighting, we’d fight that, too.”

Baldassare said the Heritage Trust hopes the meeting will help bring the community to a consensus about the ceremony’s future.

“We’re not opposed to a name change,” she said. “None of us [the board] has a strong opinion about what it should be called, but we need to make sure we do it right.”

Baldassare said she isn’t sure the online petition accurately represents the community’s opinion because many of the 320 signatures as of Friday morning were from outside of New York State, and a couple were from outside of the United States. The board is devising other ways to gauge the community’s opinion, one way being an independent online poll distributed by e-mail so that only Mount Sinai community members can vote.

For Donin, no matter what happens, she feels Christianity needs to be clearly represented in Heritage Park during the Christmas season.

“It’s called Christmas,” she said. “We can’t ignore the fact that ‘Christ’ is in ‘Christmas.’”