The Freedom From Religion Foundation’s annual Winter Solstice display has returned to Oregon’s premier college town.
For the third year in a row, a large Solstice banner stretches across 8th Avenue, west of Willamette Street in downtown Eugene. The display reads:
Celebrate the Solstice. TIS THE SEASON OF REASON.
The Winter Solstice, occurring this year on Monday, Dec. 21, is the shortest, darkest day of the year, signaling the rebirth of the sun and the natural new year. It’s been celebrated for millennia with festivals of light, feasts, gift exchanges and the display of evergreens, which symbolize enduring life, and, FFRF maintains, is the true “reason for the season.”
A similarly large banner has been hung up in the area in previous years that features “Christmas” and “Jesus” in large letters. Beneath were two statements: “Attend a Church of Your Choice” and “Celebrate His Birth.”
FFRF has placed its secular message in Eugene to make known the presence of the large proportion of Oregonians who are nonbelievers. In fact, Oregon has among the highest percentage of “Nones” in the country.
“We ‘Nones,’ Americans with no religion, have an important message and are an ever-expanding portion of the population and deserve equal representation in public spaces,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor.
FFRF thanks local FFRF member Charles Jones for his activism in getting the Solstice banner up.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 33,000 members and several chapters across the country, including more than 1,000 members in Oregon and a chapter in Portland. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
