Festival drops 'Christmas' from title

MT. PLEASANT, Mich., Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Organizers of a Mt. Pleasant, Mich., festival have "Christmas" out of the celebration's name to allow them to advertise the event in schools.

The town's Dickens Christmas Festival has been renamed the Dickens Holiday Festival to allow the city to offset its small advertising budget by placing fliers in schools, WNEM-TV, Saginaw, Mich., reported Wednesday.

"We changed the name this year for the schools because we wanted to advertise in the school brochures and the schools have a list of words you can't use like Santa, Christmas and Nativity," Downtown Development Coordinator Michelle Sponseller said. "So (we) did a brochure for the schools and we took those words out. But we have a brochure we did for the public and the word Christmas is still in it."

Downtown Development board member Kriss Roethleisberger said the event itself, which begins Friday, has not changed from its traditional roots.

"The spirit of the event has not changed," Roethleisberger said. "We have the live Nativity, the lighted Christmas parade, the community Christmas sing. It was simply that on one piece of marketing material we had the use the word 'holiday.'"