{"id":1755,"date":"2006-11-07T10:10:53","date_gmt":"2006-11-07T18:10:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2006\/11\/shh_dont_let_bill_oreilly_hear_about_this.html"},"modified":"2006-11-07T10:10:53","modified_gmt":"2006-11-07T18:10:53","slug":"shh_dont_let_bi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2006\/11\/shh_dont_let_bi.html","title":{"rendered":"Shh . . . Don’t Let Bill O’Reilly Hear About This"},"content":{"rendered":"

The War on Christmas continues<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Santa Claus has been bumped.<\/p>\n

Instead of having pride of place in the center of the Staten Island Mall, the Jolly Old Elf has been relegated to the JCPenney wing — separating him from the holiday congestion near the Christmas tree and train ride.<\/p>\n

St. Nick also is being nudged out by two new kiosks installed in center court: Vonage, the online discount telephone company, and the Piercing Pagoda, which also has a kiosk in the Macy’s wing.<\/p>\n

It’s a question of space, Mall general manager James Easley insists.<\/p>\n

“Center court is always so crowded with . . . [long lines waiting] for Santa and the train. Moving Santa and his chair will allow us to accommodate a lot more people by spreading things out,” he said.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

“These three things — the Christmas tree, the train and Santa — should be together,” said Patricia Leahy of Greenridge, mother of 3-year-old Christopher. “There is plenty of room in center court for a tree, Santa and the trains. I can’t figure out how Mall management thinks there is more room by JCPenney.”<\/p>\n

At least Santa will be there, said Ms. Leahy, who e-mailed the Advance last week to check on what turned out to be a false report that Santa Claus would skip his appearance at the Mall in New Springville this year.<\/p>\n

But she was skeptical about his new spot: “I personally think it is a way of de-Christmasing Christmas.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The War on Christmas continues: Santa Claus has been bumped. Instead of having pride of place in the center of the Staten Island Mall, the Jolly Old Elf has been relegated to the JCPenney wing — separating him from the holiday congestion near the Christmas tree and train ride. St. Nick also is being nudged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,43,54,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1755","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culturalanthropological","category-fear_mongering","category-project_mersh","category-staten_island"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1755","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1755"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1755\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1755"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1755"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1755"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}