’Tis the season — to lose your religion.
As the holidays bear down on this city faster than Alec Baldwin on a buffet table, the war on faith — a tradition more devoutly observed than Christmas, Hanukkah and Festivus combined — has arrived early.
Better yet, don’t even think about being merry. Or happy. Or moderately buzzed.
The latest chapter in the religious wars takes place in TriBeCa. Community leaders there went positively postal over a request to the Parks Department by the Jewish group Chabad — to erect a sukkah in tiny Duane Park.
To the uninitiated, a sukkah is a flimsy hut in which Jews like to eat during the eight-day festival of Sukkot, which begins next Monday. You may see a gourd hanging in a sukkah. But gnarly vegetation is verboten in Duane Park, where — holy separation of church and state! — members of Community Board 1 fought like hyenas over whether the structure would result in something more sinister than revelers catching cold.
That gourd magnet would violate the Constitution!
“If I want to go to a park, I want to just hang out in a park,” board member Paul Cantor said last month. “I don’t want to look at a sukkah, or a nativity scene, or anything religious at all.”
Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer jumped into the pro-sukkah fray, writing to Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe, “It is entirely appropriate for the faith community to be given access to our parks.’’
Of course, there is a punch line. Community Board 1 is the same entity that voted last year to welcome the mosque and Islamic center near Ground Zero to the community. Apparently, members don’t see the irony of a government body kissing up to one religion while slamming the door on another.
A few months later, the board forbade the placement of a Christmas tree in Duane Park — though members made the excuse that the tree was rejected because a law firm wanted to put its name on it.
So Islam is good. And Judaism and Christianity are suspect. One board member, who asked not to be identified, grumbled that Community Board 1 was out of control with “political correctness.”
“I saw the pope in Central Park,” the board member said. “The Dalai Lama was in Central Park. Billy Graham had a rally. And people get up in arms about a sukkah!”
The board was headed for a rumble when chair Julie Menin found a privately owned lot nearby whose owner was willing to take in the sukkah. Menin contends that a public square is no place for religion.
“If you’re going to say, yes, we’re going to have a sukkah in the park, you must say yes to all religions,” she said. “You can’t discriminate.”
Rabbi Zalman Paris of Chabad of TriBeCa/SoHo shrugged off the sukkah hostility as “a little ridiculous” and said he was OK with moving the hut to private land. He added that he’d been bombarded with legal advice from “many’’ people urging him to fight.
With Christmas and Hanukkah approaching, expect more outrages. Such as NBC’s censoring of the words “under God” from a recitation by schoolkids of the Pledge of Allegiance during this year’s coverage of the US Open golf tournament.
And don’t expect to see sinister Santa Claus at the popular holiday luncheon of the 14th Street McBurney YMCA. Last year, the organization bizarrely booted Santa — replacing the bearded one with the neutered Frosty the Snowman.
YMCA officials didn’t deny the move was un-Christian. They said the jolly holiday symbol was replaced as part of “rebranding” the Young Men’s Christian Association to the nonreligious “Y.”
It doesn’t stop. At the ceremony commemorating the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Mayor Bloomberg, a proponent of Islam, banned all clergy members from participating — a move my source on Community Board 1 called “disgraceful.”
Soon, these words may be forbidden: Merry. Happy. Joyful. Peace.
So say them. As loud and as long as you can.
Let clerks say, ‘I don’t’
Upstate Ledyard’s town clerk, Rose Marie Belforti, a Christian, refuses to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples, who are sent to her deputy. Now, Belforti’s livelihood is at stake. So she’s fighting back.
Belforti is staging a legal battle to keep both her job and her principles, in a case that challenges the hypocrisy of the Marriage Equality Act.
She joins two clerks I interviewed in July. Rosemary Centi of Guilderland kept her job, but had to stop performing all marriages after refusing to wed gays. Fellow refusenik Laura Fotusky of Barker was forced to quit. She should have hung on.
The law allows clergy members to opt out of performing gay marriages, but does not protect the religious rights of those who toil as clerks.
This is wrong. This is discriminatory. It must end.
Kick him out on his Ashton
C’mon, Demi. Sometimes a gal has to kick a cad where it hurts.
On the eve of her sixth wedding anniversary to Ashton Kutcher on Sept. 23, Demi Moore — better known for her smoking 48-year-old bod than the contents of her cranium — grew dark.
Quoting a Greek philosopher, she tweeted, “When we are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself & study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.’’ Sounds as if she blames herself for the reported collapse of her Hollywood marriage, an institution with the life span of a fruit fly.
Whatevs . . . That day, Ashton, 33, swam in the shallow end of the philosophy pool. Star reported he told a pal at Fluxx nightclub in San Diego that none of the girls there was “hot tub-worthy,’’ before settling on “stunning blonde’’ Sara Leal, 23, with whom he allegedly played footsie during his anniversary Sept. 24.
I care — why?
Because I hate seeing a gal, even a pseudo-intellectual airhead, humiliated.
Hey, hey, Ho, Ho! time to go!
I like a good demonstration as much as any unwashed out-of-towner. But the Occupy Wall Street crowd isn’t making many friends among the city’s working stiffs.
As Mayor Bloomberg said Friday — dead right, for once — the victims here aren’t fat cats, but ordinary folks.
“The protesters are protesting against people who make $40,000 to $50,000 a year and are struggling to make ends meet — that’s the bottom line,’’ the mayor said.
After weeks, I still haven’t heard a coherent explanation as to what protesters are trying to accomplish. Just that Michael Moore, who’s raked in millions from movies that demonize corporations that hire his friends and family, approves.
That was fun. Now it’s time to say good night. And sleep in a bed.
Singing the Damned Yankees blues
The pain! Mets shortstop José Reyes on Wednesday dissed long-suffering fans by ditching the season’s last game at Citi Field after two minutes, having secured the National League batting title with a bunt. The fans-be-damned behavior was a harbinger of grief to come.
The Red Sox blew it. Bye-bye playoffs! Atlanta went down. Which leaves us with the prospect of having to cheer for the Yankees.
No way.