It has been nearly a decade since circumstances forced the removal of a Nativity scene set in front of the Ellwood City Municipal Building washing out 50 years of tradition in Ellwood City.
In 2011, the Freedom from Religion Foundation threatened to sue Ellwood City if officials didn’t remove a Nativity scene that the borough had erected on the property. Ultimately, borough officials agreed to move the Nativity to a different location.
The last year the nativity was standing on Borough property was in 2011, with council members voted 4-2 in favor of removing the scene from municipal property beginning in 2012. Councilmen George Celli and Ralph Chiappetta cast the dissenting votes out of the opinion that the borough should keep the Nativity at its present site not just the coming year, but in the future.
The following year, Ellwood resident Mike Parisim, displayed the Nativity on a truck parked in front of the municipal building. But nonetheless, the nativity scene that used to be in front of the Ellwood City Municipal Building was moved down the street after a potential legal battle with an out-of-town atheist group.
The group, Freedom From Religion Foundation, promotes nontheism and defends the constitutional separation between religion and government, their website states. The dispute was extremely controversial with hundreds of local Ellwood City residents rallied against the foundation, stating that the nativity has been part of the Ellwood City community for decades.
In 2015, a mini-nativity scene mysteriously appeared on the Ellwood City Borough Municipal Building property causing some speculation, and since that time Ellwood City has not witnessed much more from the Nativity scene.
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