ENCINITAS —— A yearly event intended to bring cheer to the community has instead brought rancor because the mayor decided to change its name. Mayor Dan Dalager, a lifelong resident of this thriving coastal city, has caused a tiff by renaming the city-sponsored Encinitas Holiday Parade as the Encinitas Christmas Parade.
Three groups have told the city they won't participate because of the change, but Dalager, a Christian, says he won't change it back and that the Encinitas Christmas Parade will proceed as scheduled on Dec. 3.
The event begins with a 5 p.m. tree-lighting ceremony at The Lumberyard shopping mall on South Coast Highway 101 at I Street. The parade itself runs south along the highway starting at D Street.
Exercising what he said is the mayor's prerogative, Dalager months ago instructed city staffers to rename the parade.
Because of the change, the local Girl Scouts Seacoast Service Unit, Leucadia Town Council and Bernese Mountain Dog Club of Southern California have told the city they will not participate, said Chris Hazeltine, director of parks and recreation.
The name change also has drawn sharp criticism from the rabbi at an Encinitas synagogue.
Hazeltine said 82 groups have applied to participate this year, down from 95 the year before.
The city pays $37,500 to cover security, set-up, waste collection and other costs associated with the parade, he said.
The City Council never took formal action to rename the parade.
It should have, critics say.
Beyond that, they say, the name "Encinitas Christmas Parade" is not neutral for a publicly sponsored event and individuals or groups that aren't Christian could feel out of place or unwelcome.
Dalager, 54, dismissed those claims.
"This is not a religious parade," Dalager said. "This is about shared societal values, about slowing down, about giving gifts, about shared family values, shared heritage and tradition."
"I changed it back"
Dalager said the event was known as the Christmas parade years ago.
Keepsake coffee mugs and yellowed clippings of the Encinitas Coast Dispatch from 1963 and 1967 —— which Dalager showed to a reporter last week —— prove his point.
One photo spread shows the event as being named "The Spirit of Christmas Parade."
"The first 50 years of my life I went to the Encinitas Christmas Parade," Dalager said. "Somewhere, somehow —— nobody seems to know who —— somebody changed it. I changed it back."
Dalager said the decision was his alone.
In a related move, and also without public debate, Dalager before last Easter changed the name of the city's Spring Egg Hunt to the Easter Egg Hunt. That change did not lead to public controversy.
Both changes, Dalager said, have caused very little negative reaction.
"I've been getting calls from all over the county and haven't gotten a single bad call," he said.
A tradition worth keeping?
At Temple Solel, by contrast, "I've certainly heard many, many concerns from congregants," Rabbi David Frank said.
The name change, Frank said, is "ill-conceived and inappropriate."
The temple serves some 800 families.
Students from the temple have organized a letter-writing campaign opposing the switch, he said.
Frank said he did not know if students, through their affiliations with clubs and auxiliaries, would or would not march.
He said the City Council should have debated the matter publicly.
"At that point, the public would have the opportunity to weigh in and we could see what the citizens of Encinitas want their holiday to reflect," Frank said. "This change doesn't reflect what I think our city is all about."
Dalager's feelings of nostalgia have no place in policy-making, he said.
"To say this is a return to tradition and the way things ought to be is reminiscent of other things that used to be, such as covenants in parts of San Diego that excluded certain minorities," Frank said. "I don't think it would be wise to return to those traditions."
The change also upset Jennifer Zaayer of Cardiff, vice president of the Bernese Mountain Dog Club of Southern California.
For the past number of years, club members and their dogs have marched the parade route.
Zaayer said it's ironic that the mountain dogs are natives of Switzerland, a country known for its neutrality.
"I think of Encinitas as a really open, progressive, tolerant community," said Zaayer, who said she is an atheist. "As an Encinitas citizen —— away from the (dog) club —— I feel very strongly about the separation of church and state. It's freedom of religion and freedom from religion."
The regional club of more than 100 members throws its own yearly party and calls it a "holiday" party so no one feels excluded, she said.
"Still, a Hindu member questioned if he was allowed to participate," Zaayer said, "and we assured him it was not a religious event."
Other residents could feel just as confused about the meaning of a get-together called the Encinitas Christmas Parade, she said.
"When you're part of the majority you don't realize how pervasive discrimination is," Zaayer said. "It is really easy to say, 'What's the big deal?'"
The pages of history
The controversy appears to be a product of a politically correct age.
Christmas parades on the Coast Highway began in the 1920s, decades before the city's incorporation in 1986.
The parade originally was a daytime event; merchants' concerns of losing parking prompted its rescheduling to the early evening.
Merchants and the chamber of commerce are said to have organized the original parades.
In the early 1990s, when the young city took over production of the event, the name "Christmas Parade" was dropped for the neutral-sounding "Holiday Parade."
This year's grand marshal is Wendy Haskett, a historian and one of Encinitas' most prolific chroniclers.
Her Sunday "Backward Glance" column is a mainstay of the North County Times.
Haskett unearthed a bounty of parade anecdotes in a Nov. 13 column.
She reported that TV personality Regis Philbin served as grand marshal one rainy year, and that on his talk show later he likened the experience to "Riding into the Valley of Doom."
On a bright parade day in 1946, a 12-year-old participant arrived soaking wet because her horse had trotted into the ocean, Haskett wrote.
Former Gov. Goodwin Knight led the parade in 1954 and actor Ewing Mitchell of Cardiff once delighted children with an appearance.
Haskett quoted Dalager saying jokingly that a 1964 parade photograph of Oak Crest Junior High School's band showed that he was the only one who marched in step.
Dalager said last week that when he was a boy, he marched once in an Encinitas Christmas parade with a Jewish boy.
He said he feels "really badly" that some Girl Scouts have pulled out of the parade.
"This parade is for the kids," he said.
The parade —— and Christmas —— also have other meanings, Dalager said, emphasizing his feelings for family unity and shared traditions.
"Holidays like Christmas are either about heritage and tradition and shared values or they're about sales at Macy's," he said. "I'll be darned if I tell our kids the only reason we have Christmas is to be consumers. There's more to it than that."
Encinitas Christmas Parade
Saturday, Dec. 3
Contact staff writer Adam Kaye at (760) 943-2312 or akaye@nctimes.com.
Posted in Local on Sunday, November 27, 2005 12:00 am
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