BOCA RATON | Two neighbors here have spent most of the year launching a nationwide “Keep Christ in Christmas” campaign to spread the word with car magnets.

The plan began in October 2006, when Ron Hollander happened to chat with neighbor Kay Mansolill, who was out in her driveway picking up the morning newspaper.

“We began to talk about all the non-Christian aspects of the approaching Christmas season, things we both had seen on TV or read in the papers — teachers not allowed to wear earrings that relate to Christmas, no Christmas trees and such in public schools, school bus drivers not allowed to play their portable radios because maybe a Christmas hymn might come on and the kids would hear it,” Hollander said.

“Why don’t we do something about it?” Mansolill said to Hollander that morning at 6.

“First we thought that we should do something right here in Boca Raton and the rest of Florida. Then we decided let’s do something nationwide involving all Christian churches,” she recalled.

Hollander, 65, a retired food manager and member of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish, and Mansolill, a retiree in her 70s who belongs to St. Jude Parish, went to work. In February, they formed a committee and Hollander got busy with research.

“I learned that we could order car magnets from China, but we would have to buy a minimum of 10,000 and pay up front. ... We (did) not have the kind of money it would take to do this.”

Hollander stumbled upon a firm in Pompano, Creative Advertising, that could have the magnets made in the Midwest and let purchasers pay directly to Creative Advertising, with no money going to Hollander and his committee.

Creative Advertising sells the magnets in bulk to parishes and other organizations for $1,300 per batch of 1,000, not at an individual or retail level.

Dennis Throm, a sales representative there, said the sales level has been in the hundreds and thousands per order, paid for at parish and diocesan level.

“We don’t make much money on this,” he said, “so we give the bulk purchasers a break on the price.

“We very much believe in the concept and the importance of Christmas being Christ-centered.”

The committee’s role is to promote the sale of the magnets — which are oval-shaped and bear the words “Keep Christ in Christmas” and a silhouette of the Christ Child in the manger — through mailings to churches. Hollander said the committee has sent out more than 2,000 packets promoting the idea with a brochure including a photo of the car magnet and instructions on how to order.

He and his committee first targeted Catholic, Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopal, Baptist and churches of other denominations in the Southeast. They have since blanketed Catholic dioceses in the entire country, plus all Lutheran districts and all Episcopal dioceses.

“We are trying to unite all the Christian churches in a common cause,” Hollander told the Florida Catholic. “Not only do we need to keep Christ in Christmas, we need to bring him back to public places where he has been expelled in the name of holiday commercialism. It occurred to me that we should not be fighting back, we should be forging ahead.”

Naturally, he and Mansolill sent letters and packets to all the parishes in the Diocese of Palm Beach.

“We have already sold 12,000 magnets by way of responses to our mailings or by direct contact from Catholic and non-Catholic churches,” Hollander said.

Here are some examples of the sales:

• 5,000 were bought by the Archdiocese of Miami, with distribution handled by Joan Crown, of the archdiocesan Respect Life Committee.

• 2,000 were acquired by St. Rita Parish in Wellington.

• 1,000 went to the First United Methodist Church in Coral Springs, the first of all the recipients to order them.

• 600 were ordered by the Lutheran Ministries in Christ in Coral Springs.

“We bought 1,000 of them,” said Brian Rivera about the purchase made by the Knights of Columbus Council 11241 of Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Boca Raton.

“Our council is fortunate because this man is taking this upon himself just simply to promote Christ in Christmas,” he said about Hollander, a fellow Knight in the council. The national Knights of Columbus has its own “Keep Christ in Christmas” magnets that various councils around the country are selling as fundraisers for charities they support.

The Rev. Dennis Glick, pastor of St. Paul Lutheran Church in Boca Raton, also came on board with an order of a few thousand magnets. He is distributing them through his school, which has 500 students.

“To me the whole thing about the commercializing of Christmas is a farce,” Rev. Glick said. “How can you not have Christ in Christmas? Christmas is Christ.”

To learn more about the Keep Christ in Christmas magnets, write to linandron@comcast.net