Christmas in the Schools

Great Debates
261

Jodi said:

The main problem with this statement, Jodi, is that Melin was not being civil. She had not been civil in the thread that immediately preceded this one, as I have explained several times over now. It’s not the “motivations,” but the way she acted, both in this thread, the previous thread, and fairly recent history. There are some people who can disagree without lapsing into attacks. Then there’s Melin and others like her. I saw no reason to continue because I had a good idea of what the outcome would be. And we saw that I was right, because I did answer her questions, just not in messages to her but to others who were genuinely interested. Did that stop her? No. She continued to go after me because she didn’t like the fact that I had said I was ignoring her. Too bad for her. I won’t be drawn into her little flamewar.

As for why I ignored you, well, if I recall, you and I have been down a similar path before. It ended, again as I recall, with me getting exasperated because you were, in my opinion, ignoring virtually everything I said (I’m not going to get into another battle with you about whether you were or were not, because we’ve been over that ground before as well – thus I used “IMO”). I doubted we’d get any further this time, and fairly recent history of arguments with you added to that feeling. So I felt it better all around to just not respond. But I see an explanatory message was in order, so here it is.

The problem you (and others here) seem to be having, though, is in claiming that I am ignoring people because I disagree with them. That, as I have explained before, is simply untrue. There are many people around this message board with whom I disagree on many issues, yet we have perfectly good discussions. Recently, a number of us had a good long discussion with Libertarian and others in the “Atheist Religion” thread even though Lib disagrees with many of us, and we with him, on some fairly fundamental religious issues. But he went in trying to understand us, and we him. We all went into it to talk, not argue. And it turned out to be perhaps one of the best religion threads this message board has yet seen. Sure, there were a few misunderstandings, skinned knees, etc., but all of it was straightened out fairly easily because nobody was looking to swoop in for the kill.

Similarly, I’ve had perfectly good discussions with StrTrkr, Polycarp, and others in the realm of religion and politics and the like. Again, the difference is in style, not belief.

All in all, your claim that I ignore people based on their beliefs is simply false. I ignore people, exactly as I have explained, based on their behavior.

262

If we could get back to the topic at hand…Is Christmas such a secular hoilday that no-one would mind if, once in a while, the schools skipped it’s celebration and studied Chanukah, Winter Solstace, Saturnalia, Yule, or any of the other seasonal holidays? OR is there still enough of a religious element in the holiday that it would disturb you if the schools didn’t do the “Christmas Thing”? While I do realize that Christmas as it is now celebrated in most(but not all) public schools is pretty much a secular event, that does not answer the above questions.

263

David B

Melin was being civil. After your continued avoidence of her reasonable questions, until others answered it for you, more or less telling YOU what to say, you began to see her frustration.

David, the problem many of us are having is your mantra: "don’t believe your eyes, believe what I TELL you your eyes see."

David wrote:
"To anybody who says that Christmas is just a secular holiday, to anybody who says it’s no big deal, to the stupid judge mentioned above who thinks Santa is a great lark and everybody is better for having Christmas, I would have wanted them to see my child’s face when he told my wife that he wanted to go home from a place he normally loves to be at. And I would have had two words for them at that point (though out of earshot of my son) – "Fuck you"

Not exactly Holiday cheer, David.

When you state your case in such angry, emotional terms you can see that YOU have not given YOURSELF any room for compromise. YOU set the tone with that post. But you leave out the part where you did zero research into the fee based, pre school you put your wonderful son in. Why? You should have known this might be a problem in the area you admit you live in. Is any of this YOUR fault, David? Didn’t the teacher handle it correctly? How would you like to have her job trying to appease every prima dona?

When you had to produce his birth certificate for admission, along with the fee, why did you not raise those issues then? No, David, you are not answering because you see that we were not attending your pity party, showed you that YOU were being unreasonable and that YOU had some responsibility in this.

Y2K, BFD

264

Well, I’m hoping I won’t regret responding to you here, Sue, but I’ll give it a try because you ask a legitimate question:

You raise a fairly good point. The hypocrisy came not just from being an agnostic but also from still feeling that no such holidays should be discussed in a public school. While I have realized that this position will not win out (at least in today’s climate), and I realize that a compromise is teaching about a variety of them, I’m still not terribly happy about it and would prefer not to participate in that compromise. I’m trying to think of something to compare it to for a better explanation. The best I can do is compare it to something at work. In my job, we have to deal with attorneys and other engineers. Sometimes, different sections have different opinions. Sometimes, the attorneys will say that although our section thinks it should be one way, they think it should be another and that’s the path we will go down. In some cases, we fight against that and end up winning. In some cases, we realize that we will not and, while we think we are right, we broker a compromise that isn’t as good, but nor is it as bad as the other possibilities. Sometimes, in doing the compromise, we make it clear that while we will agree to it and sign off on it, we will not participate in the situation any further because we still do not think it is right. That is somewhat related to how I feel here. I hope that sort of explained it.

Now, with that said, I could talk about the historical significance of a small group fighting for their freedom, etc. I’m sure I could get interesting stuff to discuss from various Jewish Humanist locations, for example. But how much do 3-year-olds understand about that? The amount that could be presented reasonably to 3-year-olds could just as well be done by the teacher as by me. I mean, as I think I’ve said, I’m really just talking about cutting and pasting a dreidel and a Kwanzaa candle holder (again, I don’t know what they’re called) and something related to Ramadan instead of yet another Christmas-related art project. I’m talking about singing “I had a little dreidel” instead of another Christmas-related song. They don’t need me there to do that.

Again, Sue, I did not handle the situation in a way to “point fingers & create bad feelings after the fact.” I already fully explained how I handled the situation, which was to talk to the principal about how we can make it better next time.

Actually, I did in my first message on the subject, though I admit I could have been clearer. I said: “Heck, she even brought in her pal Sue for backup to have somebody else chanting, ‘David answer the question.’” In other words, the way it looked to me was not that you came in here just as a coincidence and coincidentally wanted to know the answers to the same questions as Melin. It appeared to me that your friend called you in as backup. There have been at least two occasions in the past where one of you came, for lack of a better term, rushing to the rescue of the other one, chiming in against whoever was on the opposite side of the table. It looked to me like this was another such occasion, and I wanted none of it. This view was reinforced when the very first sentence of your first message here was:

Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was just an incredible coincidence and my view was colored by the previous instances. I will say, for the record, that I don’t think it was a coincidence. But I also will not ask you to tell me either way because if it is not a coincidence, I don’t want to put you in the position of choosing to rat out Melin or lie for her. And if it is really a coincidence, the way to convince me wouldn’t be to simply say, “Oh, yes, it’s a coincidence.” Plus, you may not feel that you need to convince me of anything. So I will not bring up the subject again here. If you want to continue this discussion on reasonable terms, that’s fine with me and I will pretend the earlier part of this thread never happened. If you choose to go a different route, which I hope will not happen, then I will stop replying.

265

David writes:

Yeah, but you aint one of them David. You were perfectly happy to repeatedly attack my posts as “unintelligent” in a recent thread concerning the legality of psychics.
http://www.straightdope.com/ubb/Forum7/HTML/000706.html

I don’t buy your rationalizations about why you refused to respond to Melin and others. You have proven to have zero tolerance for opposing viewpoints and are downright obnoxious when others point out flaws in your logic.

Other than that you seem like a great guy.

Merry Christmas.

266

Slythe asks:

HUH???

Where on earth do you get the idea that the reason some people want to “do the Christmas thing” in schools every year has anything to do with its being a religious occasion. Or that it would be OK to skip it if it’s “such a secular holiday?”

President’s Day has no religious association, yet schools do log cabin & cherry tree projects year after year. They don’t take a year off to do Supreme Court Justices projects or Congress projects.

Going back to a previous post, you say:

Actually, better definitions would be:

Christmas (as celebrated in the US):
A mixture of European pagan Solstice/Yule traditions which were adapted and added to the Christian Nativity story. Over the last 100-150 years, increasing emphasis has placed on a fancified version of a (possibly) apocryphal children’s saint, and on exchanging gifts. Christians attend church services thanking their God for the ultimate gift - His son. It is a medium-level holy day in the Catholic church.

Halloween (as celebrated in the US): A mixture of European pagan harvest traditions & remembrance of the dead (Samhain), and a Christian occasion in which the dead who have not gone to heaven roam the earth on the night before Christians honor the dead who have gone to heaven. Currently observed in the US by dressing in costumes, extorting candy from neighbors, and going through specially prepared buildings to be frightened. Wiccans/pagans may light bonfires, or express their belief that on this night the veil between this world & the next is at its thinnest by setting out plates for the spirits, or use various techniques to divine the future. It is one of their highest holy days, and marks the end of the year on their calendar. Satanists (not the same as Wiccans or pagans) may hold ceremonies honoring their Father. Some Christians attend church services on the following day.

The reason I keep pointing the similarites here, Slythe, is that some posters seem to feel that their feelings about a certain holiday are the only ones that are correct.

I believe that David’s objections to the way Christmas was handled at his son’s pre-school because he feels that the holiday is inherently Christian in nature are very similar to fundamentalist Christian objections to observing Halloween because they feel that that holiday is inherently Pagan in naure. And yet fundamentalists are repeatedly held up to ridicule on this board (condoned, if not directly expressed, by David), while David seems to expect all to express outrage at the hurt & indignation he felt on behalf of his son.

Conversely, David puts down any attempt to link Halloween to any religion,

but would say “Fuck You” to anyone who thinks Santa is a harmless lark. Ironic? I think so. I said hypocritical before, and have to say that may have been too harsh. I that he was so emotionally involved that he couldn’t see the irony in the situation. I’d like to see him acknowledge it now, but won’t hold my breath.

I have pointed this out as best I can. Further repetition will serve no purpose, so I won’t restate this argument. I’ll be happy to respond to anything new you post, though.

Sue from El Paso

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

267

In the interest of civility & reasonableness, I will modify the last paragraph to simply say that I don’t think anything can be gained by further re-hashing of the Christmas-Halloween parallel/dichotomy, and will refrain from doing so.

(I got called away suddenly & didn’t want the rest of the post to be lost & hit send before it had been filtered…)

Sue from El Paso

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

268

David -

So what I hear you saying is that if the preschool had substituted coloring a dreidel for coloring a wreath, or cutting out a construction-paper dreidel for cutting out a construction-paper Santa hat, and added/substituted “I Have a Little Dreidel” into the Santa songs, you would have been been OK (not happy, but OK) with it. Is that right? Can you see the teacher’s dilemma when for 6 or so straight years, when the kids are all clamoring to do seasonal art projects, year after year they have to include the same dreidel projects? I suppose they could, one year, substitute gold-foil wrapped pieces of chocolate (geld) for the dreidel, but after that, would be stumped to come up with something new. Why? Because the Jewish observance of Chanukah is nowhere near as secularized as the Christian Christmas holiday. In many ways, that makes it easier for families to focus on the spiritual aspects of the holiday, but since that is inappropriate to deal with at schools (except in a comparative religions class for MUCH older kids), when you take the spiritual/religious aspects away, Chanukah always seemed rather hollow. (I don’t mean to disparage Chanukah, but I don’t know how else to express the sense I have that the holiday cannot stand on its own without the spiritual aspects.)

For Christmas, however, I believe that the essence of giving & sharing gives it a meaning that, even if originally derived from God’s gift to His people, can be fulfilling without a belief in God (a la secular humanism). I do see, however, that this is opinion, and that someone not sharing that view is not automatically wrong.

My main point is that for teachers faced with an abundance of potential secular Christmas projects & a relative paucity of secular Chanukah projects, evil intent & prejudice are not the only possible explanations for omitting the latter. Since there was a Muslim boy in the class, and Ramadan coincides with the other holidays, it certainly would have been appropriate to include something relevant to Ramadan with the other projects. But what about years when Ramadan falls in August? What about Hindus & Buddhists & Rastafarians, who might not have a convenient holiday to throw in the mix? Just because Kwanzaa (which, by the way, came about in the mid-late 60’s) falls in late December, if no one in the class observes it, should the preschool automatically discuss it? (Most African Americans do observe Christmas; some observe both Christmas & Kwanzaa; many do not observe Kwanzaa at all). Is the point to make this an exercise in diversity for diversity’s sake, or to reflect that in the outside world, everything is red & green, and to focus the natural exuberance kids have for this season into art instead of allowing it to distract from math? Both are reasonable ideals; the second is certainly much easier to achieve. Maybe giving kids a choice of different art projects, some holiday related & some not would allow everyone to feel good about it.

When I said:

I suppose that I may have assumed that your dealings with the pre-school were in the same tone (hopefully minus the obscenities) of your first 2 posts here. If this was not the case & you were simply venting what you would like to say, but held back at the school, your interactions may have been as positive & constructive as you describe in your later post(s).

Sue from El Paso

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

269

(Separate thoughts; separate post)

I am perplexed as to why you would think the only possible explanation for my joining into this thread would be coincidence or Melin calling for back up.

Melin & I are friends. Our friendship is on the basis of similar backgrounds & similar outlooks on life. We also share the common factor of being professional women with the attendant time constraints that entails. We IM frequently & call to each other’s attention items (SDMB threads, eBay auctions, e-mailed jokes/sites/etc.) that we think the other would be interested in. So, sheesh, I have no problem whatsoever in saying that, no, it was not coincidence that I joined into this thread. Nor should it be surprising that Melin & I have similar views on this (and many other) issues. But I do strongly resent the implication that I am parroting someone else’s views here, much as I’m sure Slythe would resent it if I commented on how convenient it must have been for you to have him carry the torch for you over the weekend you were off doing IRL things. Speaking of Slythe, you may not have noticed that we exchanged a good many posts over the weekend. Melin joined in exactly once. I do rather hope that resolves any suggestions that the two of us were ganging up on the evil “non-Christian” posters.

Sue from El Paso

Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.

270

Very accurate post, Majormd. No one accused the people that posted in David defense, while he lurked, of conspiring or ganging up. I found it very odd though that people were teling us what David meant and why he said certian things as if they has first hand knowledge. How would they have known that? If David told them, but did not tell us, then that would be doing the very thing they accuse others of doing.

Y2K, BFD

271

Maybe. On the other hand, although my household proclaims itself Christian, there is also a strong pagan streak running through it, and my son has been the object of direct anti-pagan words from one of his teachers after taking one of his pagan books to school for Sustained Silent Reading. I posted that once last summer, but to try to find the reference using this search engine is a chore that many braver souls than I have shied away from.

My points are pretty obvious from my previous posts, I think.

I agreed with David that the public schools shouldn’t be pushing religion.

We disagreed over whether the specific things that he identified were religious.

We had some discussion over who gets to say what is part of their own religion – or ethnicity.

I confess that I do believe, based on past experience, that David is anti-Christian, and that his opposition to Christmas symbols was based more on this than on his feelings about keeping religion out of the schools. Thus I inquired as to other holidays, and specifically Halloween. Halloween is a very religious holiday, but not really a Christian one. It is widely celebrated as such in this country. If you think otherwise you need to educate yourself. And there are Christian fundamentalists who feel at least as strongly about their children being exposed to Halloween trappings as David feels about his son being exposed to Christmas trappings. But does David even consider this? No, his response is:

Well, yes. Secularized Halloween is indeed a “a bunch of kids dressing up in costume to get candy.” Religious Halloween isn’t. Now we could have the same argument about the secularization of the holiday versus its religious significance, and which symbols are what, and why. I think that you would find that the customs and symbols which we associate with Halloween are more directly related to the pagan holiday than the customs and symbols we associate with Christmas are related to Nativity (that would include the pumpkins, by the way – at least when they become jack o’lanterns).

So despite what you may think about my intentions (and you’re wrong, BTW), in fact my question, and my perseverence, has served the ultimate goal of TSD – to stamp out ignorance. We’ve educated a few folk on this winter holiday that the Christians celebrate as Nativity and non-Christian folk celebrate as Yule or under other names, and also on the autumnal holiday that pagans celebrate as New Year’s and the non-pagan folk celebrate as Halloween.

And maybe we’ve made David think about the fact that a lot of people feel the same way about his concerns about the non-religious symbols of Christmas as he feels about their concerns regarding the symbols of Halloween. A little sensitivity enhancement never hurt anybody.

-Melin

272

Happy Newton’s Birthday, everybody!

273

David:

Wondered what you thought about this. Yesterday, I saw Christmas references all day long on TV, even when the shows were not religion oriented (like Equal Time on MSNBC, where the had Santa as a guest) and even when the hosts are stars were Jewish (like Seinfeld, where they even exchanged gifts).

Now, I don’t know, but if I were a kid in school, and saw all this comotion going on all around me and all over TV, I would find it just a little bit weird if either they didn’t mention it all or else gave it equal billing with other stuff that had hardly made a peep. It seems no different than some of the other attempts at cultural and historical rewrites.

“It is lucky for rulers that men do not think.” — Adolf Hitler

274

Melin

Then David B. makes a post like this on Christmas Day.

David B.

Is this up your butt, in your face disrespect for Christmas? David, you are helping to prove Melin’s words true, that you are anti Christian.

There are a number of things you could have said today but you chose to say this.

Y2K, BFD

275

Lighten up, JJ. You’re being far more disrespectful of your holiday’s meaning and intent than David could ever have been when you make posts like that. Whatever happned to peace on earth, good will towards men? A very merry Christmas to you, too. For that matter, I’ve been pretty loud with the Mithrasmas posts for the past two weeks or so, so if David’s anti-Christian, I’m the freakin’ Anti-Christ.

In all honesty, JJ, you do not help the causes you argue for when you choose to argue like this. Please reconsider your method of discourse.

Happy Mithrasmas! :wink:

“…Jesus the Sun-God
Made Mithras go away
But he waved goodbye
Saying ‘Don’t you cry,
I’ll be back again some day!’…” Happy Mithrasmas, all!

276

Some of David B’s comments and replies seem a little disjointed and out of kilter, like maybe he was making up some of this stuff to make a point. Is it possible he was perpetrating a Pious Fraud on us?

277

Wow, I can’t believe I read the WHOLE thing!

(burp) excuse me…

Interesting. I guess women attorneys are pretty darn smart and made the bad boys run away. :wink:

jodih and Melin: Regardless of what you think of me, I hold the two of you in the highest regard. You could argue for me anytime. I hope you are paid what you are worth. If either of you is half here what you are in court, the opposition should tremble. Wow, what argumentation!

I see David’s original point and I see his concern. However, the laws of our land have made their own case and until such time as the laws are revised or the current ones re-interpreted they stand. Any intelligent being should know how to act in the face of such laws.

End of story!

Phaedrus

For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes.

278

“I’m the freakin’ Anti-Christ.”

You mean you’re not? :wink:

279

Wow – I’m actually going to step in this. Mom was right; I sometimes show an extreme lack of common sense.

point 1) Public schools should not be involved in any activities that support the views of a particular religion.

point 2) Christmas is a Christian holiday. (Is it really necessary to state this?)

point 3) Using symbols which are not specifically Christian but are strongly associated with Christmas supports the idea that the mythical date of Christ’s birth is an occassion of great significance.

point 4) The same holds true for Valentines Day (which is perhaps the cruelest day ever perpetrated on an unpopular 8 year old), St Patrick’s Day, Halloween, Yom Kippur, Duwali, etc.

point 5) Schools should teach science, literature, social studies, etc. Time spent rehearsing winter pageants, distributing valentines, playing dress-up, etc. detracts from the core mission. If a school wishes to sponsor these activities, they should provide voluntary after or pre school events.

point 6) Newton devoted much of his life to religious studies. Why does it anger you to have his birthday celebrated? Wait – could it be that all celebrations on December 25th must make reference to Christ or be considered ant-Christian? Please see point 3. Thank you for providing such a clear demonstration.

The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*

280

Lib said:

The funny thing is that my wife just commented to me last night on how she hadn’t seen really anything Christmas-related this year on TV and wondered what was up. I pointed out to her that she hadn’t had much chance to watch TV, and when she did, she certainly wasn’t watching Christmas stuff, but if she checked the TV Guide, she’d have seen the usual amount.

I tell this story not to make any particular point, but rather to note that even if it seems to be all over the TV, that doesn’t mean everybody is watching it. My son is limited in his TV watching, and usually uses the time he has to watch a selection from his vast video library. In other words, he is not being inundated the way you are.

Maybe if you were older, but not at his age. And even then, there are things that cover the TV that never get mentioned in school – though most of them are news stories (do you think the JFK Jr. crash got mentioned in school? Yet it covered the airwaves for several days when it happened). And, like I said, not everbody gets inundated the same way.

How is it a “rewrite” to not teach a religious holiday in school? We’re not talking about avoiding mention of the Puritans’ religious beliefs. We’re not talking about avoiding discussion of the Jesuits in Europe. There are no real political or historical consequences, just religious ones. (Yes, there are obviously great political and historical consequences to Christianity itself, but not to their particular celebration of an erroneous birthday on Dec. 25.)

Mipsman said:

No. Unlike some folks, such as the one who posted below you, I don’t tell lies here. If anything was out of kilter, then I apologize, but I certainly didn’t do it on purpose. (For at least part of this thread, I was working a fair number of late nights, so I can’t rule out simple tiredness if I posted anything “out of kilter.”)

Spiritus: A good summary. Thank you. (Though I suspect others here may differ. :wink: )