A post office manager stopped a group of carolers mid-song Saturday at the branch in the Aspen Hill Shopping Center.

That didn’t sit well with Silver Spring resident J.P. Duffy, who said he witnessed the incident while waiting in line with his wife and 2-year-old daughter.

Duffy, vice president of communications for right-wing Christian lobbying group Family Research Council, said the post office manager told the three carolers they were violating the post office’s policy against solicitation. That drew boos from many of the customers in the branch, Duffy said.

U.S. Postal Service spokeswoman Laura Dvorak said the carolers, dressed like characters from “A Christmas Carol,” were in violation of the Postal Service’s rules on public assembly and public address.

“Inside the post office, however, the expectation is that public assembly will be either conducted or sponsored by the Postal Service,” Dvorak wrote in an email.

Duffy said the larger issue is a government agency pulling people’s free speech rights, something he said has happened increasingly with Christmas traditions. Duffy said the carolers told the post office manager they had performed carols in past years in stores at the shopping center and had never been stopped.

“We need to take a stand and say, ‘You know what, we’re not going to lose our Christmas traditions and free speech rights,’” Duffy said. “We don’t have to cower in fear because of what a government official will tell us.”

Duffy wrote a blog post on the Family Research Council’s website that claimed the post office manager threw the carolers out into the cold, depriving his daughter of her first chance to experience a Christmas carol.

Dvorak said the carolers would have been permitted to sing on the public sidewalk, as long as they weren’t blocking the entrance to the branch.

Duffy said that compromise was unacceptable.

“The federal government officially recognizes Christmas as a holiday, and to say the post office can say, ‘You can take your Christmas holiday out in the cold,' to me is an outrage. It’s a slap in the face,” Duffy said. “Even for those who don’t celebrate Christmas, allow them to come in and sing a couple of carols that have to do with their holiday. It’s not an imposition.”

akraut@gazette.net