WOODBRIDGE – The town has added Kwanzaa decorations to its holiday display, a year after an atheist group said that its nativity scene display violated the First Amendment.

"We have multiple different religious observances out there," Mayor John McCormac said. "Our attorneys believe we're on solid ground."

In other words: the more, the merrier. And more legal, too, McCormac said.

In 2011, the Freedom From Religion Foundation wrote McCormac a letter asking that the nativity scene, on the grounds of the town offices, be taken down, according to Patch. The group said that the scene amounted to a governmental endorsement of a religious view, violating the U.S. Constitution.

Patrick Elliott, the attorney who wrote the letter in 2011, said that the addition of the Kwanzaa display this year was little more than window dressing, but he'd have to see the context to form an opinion about whether the decor was kosher in the eyes of the Bill of Rights.

"I think we still have a problem with it, and it’s basically a scheme to keep the nativity," Elliott said. "And it’s not the right approach, and it’s not the right thing to do."

The group got involved in a dispute in Pitman over a banner that instructed motorists to "keep Christ in Christmas." The banner was sponsored by the local Knights of Columbus.

Elliott said that a town is permitted to have a nativity scene as long as it's not just a nativity scene. Context, he said, matters.

The cardboard cutouts of figures from the Bible, camels and angels constitute the most elaborate of the holiday displays on a bustling Main Street in the town, but it's certainly not the only one. On Wednesday, five electric candles were lit on the large menorah by the entrance to town hall. Santa and his reindeer stood watch next to the nativity. Holiday lights blanketed several trees. And the newest sign wished passers-by a happy Kwanzaa, an African-American holiday created in 1966.

McCormac said that his administration wouldn't buckle under pressure from atheist groups, and also said that it had planned to put up the decorations on Monday. He said that suggestions from some in the town that the decorations were put up in a mad dash after a Patch report were incorrect.

"This was planned for weeks," McCormac said. "We just had more pressing things to do, like finishing the storm cleanup."

The display was built by town employees outside of town hall on Main Street.

Public opinion is decidedly behind the nativity display, McCormac said.

"This is something that people like," McCormac said. "We've done it every year. It's appropriate. We have a very diverse town. We've covered everything with what we've put out there."

Elliott, of the atheist group, anticipates the public-opinion defense of nativity scenes.

“Majorities aren’t able to infringe on the rights of minorities," Elliott said. "Public opinion doesn’t mean it’s constitutional.”