{"id":79397,"date":"2025-12-23T18:56:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T18:56:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/79397\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T18:56:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T18:56:07","slug":"new-york-village-threatens-church-for-christmas-tree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/79397\/","title":{"rendered":"New York village threatens church for Christmas tree\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

A New York town told a Catholic church that its annual Christmas tree fundraiser violated its zoning laws. St. Patrick\u2019s Catholic Church in the Village of The Branch in Long Island, New York, urged village officials in a letter<\/a> Thursday to allow the ministry to freely sell the fir trees, a tradition of the church for more than 25 years. The church has continued to sell trees, wreaths, and other holiday plants despite the threat of\u00a0\u00a0hundreds of\u00a0 dollars in\u00a0fines for\u00a0each week they violate the ordinance, St. Patrick\u2019s, Ryan Gardner, an attorney for First Liberty, told WORLD Tuesday. First Liberty wrote to the village\u00a0on behalf of the church. <\/p>\n

The village mayor is using what Gardner described as petty governmental tools to halt the church\u2019s fundraiser. The village said its code<\/a> prohibits the church can\u2019t hold a fundraiser within 90<\/a> days of a previous one. The church previously held a fall festival fundraiser in October. WORLD reached out to the mayor\u2019s office for comment, but did not immediately hear back. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are dealing with, frankly, a wild holiday situation with a mayor whose holiday spirit rivals that of the Grinch,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cThey\u2019ve been ticketed for the great crime of selling Christmas trees during Christmastime.\u201d<\/p>\n

What rights does the church have to sell trees? In November, village officials said the church needed a special use permit to hold its tree fundraiser. The town never required the church to have this additional permission for any of its past tree sales, Gardner said. <\/p>\n

Village officials then denied St. Patrick\u2019s the permit, but the church went ahead with its fundraiser, leading to its recent citation. Gardner said the village\u2019s actions religiously discriminate and interfere with church autonomy, which protects the rights of churches to manage their own internal affairs. He added that under the village\u2019s current view of its laws, even passing around the offering plate could be considered a fundraising event that is subject to strict governance. <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time the town has clashed with St. Patrick\u2019s. It tried to halt the church\u2019s fall festival this year, again citing zoning ordinances. Gardner said the church was only able to hold the festival after it filed a lawsuit<\/a> against the town. <\/p>\n

How does the fundraiser support the church? The fundraiser supports St. Patrick\u2019s various ministries<\/a>, from its Sunday service to its school and its grief support groups. The money they raise from the Vermont-grown<\/a> Baslam firs goes to blessing the community around them, Gardner said. St. Patrick\u2019s has operated in the Village of The Branch since 1966.<\/p>\n

If the letter doesn\u2019t resolve this, First Liberty is prepared to do whatever is necessary to secure the church its rights, Gardner said, but he hopes this can be resolved through dialogue. <\/p>\n

Dig deeper: Read my report<\/a> on a home-based New Hampshire church\u2019s legal battle with city zoning laws. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A New York town told a Catholic church that its annual Christmas tree fundraiser violated its zoning laws.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":79398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6300,12565,21977,5741,14282,9,11,10,10827,2539,1068],"class_list":{"0":"post-79397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-catholic","9":"tag-christmas","10":"tag-church","11":"tag-faith","12":"tag-liberty","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-news","16":"tag-religious","17":"tag-shopping","18":"tag-york"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}