Don’t conflate the two issues. I don’t think anyone should be forced to celebrate it either, (and I personally find most of it extremely annoying). I’m not even addressing that issue. I’m addressing only one particular point. All I’m saying is that people who hold the pretense that they are somehow being religious by taking their kid to Santa at the mall while singing “Silent Night” are lying to themselves. That’s all.
Just because a lot of Christians don’t “practice Christianity” or behave religiously with the trappings of Christmas does not in any way mean it’s not a Christian holiday. It is in fact a holiday based on the birth of Jesus Christ and if one does not in some way believe Jesus Christ existed and is to be worshipped, then one cannot celebrate this holiday. Everyone who is not a Christian is being subjected to a really big lot of crap around this holiday from which it is very difficult to escape. Schools should definitely not participate.
What I am seeing here is a lot of people who say that because they particularly celebrate Christmas as a secular holiday that therefore it should be considered to be entirely secular. Unfortunately, just because you don’t attach any religious importance to the holiday doesn’t mean that there isn’t a religious component. That’s why it’s called Christmas. I don’t know what to call this except perhaps “Christian privilege”? Those people who celebrate Christmas secularly don’t realize how offensive it is to be told we should be forced to celebrate a holiday that by it’s very name glorifies the birth of a messiah some don’t accept. I will wish people Merry Christmas because I know that this makes them happy, but don’t tell me that I should want people to wish me a Merry Christmas too. It’s so presumptious to say that just because the holiday has lost most of it’s religious meaning for many people that everybody should be forced to observe its traditions. As so many point out here, you don’t realize just how tone deaf it is to say something like “you would gladly take a day off with pay for Christmas” when most people who don’t celebrate Christmas don’t even have the choice.
The only jews who celebrated the birth of Jesus were his parents.
I understand that’s what you want, but I’m afraid it already has become that, and I suppose I’d be even more annoyed with Christmas than I already am if I were in your position. I just don’t think it’s any religious practice per se that makes it alienating, but rather cultural hegemony.
That’s getting a little personal. Let’s avoid insulting posters family members. It can lead to pretty ugly fights and possible words directed toward others that shouldn’t take place outside of the Pit.
…and a menorah is just a candleholder, right? :dubious: :rolleyes:
Oh, I am stealing that.
The fiction of believing in Santa Claus is stupid, and if you make your kids the only ones in school to not believe that, it’s perfectly understandable. On the other hand, you’ll excuse me for imagining you as someone who spends 30 minutes arguing over a lame bullshit technicality in the vein of George Costanza that serves nothing except to be contrarian (I don’t mean Festivus).
Also, considering the OP’s content, I am surprised that this link isn’t posted (not my sentiments!).
There has not been a single person in this thread who has said you must celebrate Christmas. This thread is about pretty much the exact opposite situation: a woman who forced the school to stop celebrating.
Rather than make the school more inclusive, and thus make more kids happy, she fought to take away what they already had. Instead of any kids being happier, now everyone is equally unhappy. That’s just a jerk things to do.
And it happened largely because she appointed herself to speak for a lot of other people, too. Kids whose parents hadn’t complained about Santa. People who are fully capable of understanding the secular holiday of Christmas, and not confusing it with the religious one. She didn’t even know if the Muslim children wanted a Ramadan celebration in school.
She got so caught up in her cause that she forgot the reason for these types of causes. The whole point is to make the world a happier place. Not to lower everyone else down to your level of unhappiness.
And it’s not Christian privilege, as most of the people you are talking to right now are atheists, who have rightfully observed that Christmas is largely a secular holiday. How you feel about it has nothing to do with that. I know people who feel that yoga is praying to Buddha, but they’re wrong.
Santa and presents and Christmas trees are all secular. If you choose not to enjoy them, fine. But don’t try to turn it into some sort of persecution because the vast majority of people do celebrate it.
I’m celebrating Christmas this year with my new sweetie, and I’m an open atheist.
It’s a fun holiday, and I feel it can also be a romantic holiday for couples, an excuse to exchange gifts with one another and celebrate. Different interpretations for different people.
That all being said, I don’t want kids to be encouraged to participate in treating Santa as being a real person, or being encouraged to sit on his lap. That should be voluntary and extracurricular, not a school function.
I think it’s mostly harmless, but school is about education, not misinformation.
Kids also don’t need extra reasons to feel dis-included.
Actually making a big deal out of religious celebrations for the children of parents who are religious, but a different religion, is every excuse for that child to feel like an outsider, but much more likely to be isolated and bullied for being different, just because of his parent’s different origins (most likely reason for choosing a particular religion: Your parents, and your nation of origin).
Here’s an idea: Why not let kids decide what religion they are when they’re adults, and not have it endorsed by the state?
Parents can teach what they want to teach, but having the state endorse religion and teach people to celebrate it, is not part of education.
You want to have religion as part of the academic process, it should be treated as an academic subject, where its history, origins, and beliefs are discussed as a cultural and historical phenomenon. Then you’re educating people.
Simply focusing on traditions and beliefs, and endorsing it, is not education, it’s not neutral, and it’s not secular. The state should be.
I also happen to think that identifying children as being “religious” is a stretch.
Children believe what their parents tell them, because if they don’t, they are often punished for it, or corrected. It’s not voluntary, and they’re not typically allowed to disagree with their parents openly while they’re children, particularly about religion.
Identifying children as voluntary and practicing members of a religion is ridiculous. It’s like saying babies are Catholic or Protestant. They don’t have a clue what those things are.
It’s why the Pledge is inappropriate. Kids don’t understand these kinds of oaths, and they certainly don’t believe a word of them. Forcing them to take loyalty oaths to the state and to a god, when they don’t understand the meaning of the words, and don’t seriously believe in them, is silly. They’re doing it to fit in and be “good” students and children. It’s good to obey and be traditional and conform and agree with the majority, the adults, and the state.
That’s not a lesson that needs to be taught. The lesson that should be taught is that people need to make up their own minds, and that the majority, the state, and the adults are not always right. Then you’re turning children into adults instead of trying to keep them children all their lives.
We didn’t celebrate Christmas growing up. How does imposing a holiday that we identified as “other” make me happy? I knew it wasn’t something my family did, and we were fine with that. We didn’t need to celebrate Christmas. Having a class activity be writing a letter to Santa would not make me happy; objecting to it wouldn’t make me a jerk.
This is full of irony. You think that celebrating Christmas in some fashion would make me happy. As a child, it would have just emphasized that fact that we were being marginalized and our religious beliefs weren’t as important as the mainstream religion.
I’m not asking you to change your view of whether Christmas is secular. But I would ask you to consider that others don’t share that view. There’s nothing you can say that will convince me that Santa and presents and Christmas trees are secular. I go thought this every year on this message board. There are some folks who simply can’t grok that their own world view is not universal.
Yes.
How about everybody just enjoy the parts they fancy and ignore the parts they don’t? And let your neighbour do the same.
There is no actual need for it to be in schools, your nostalgia notwithstanding. Times change, get over it.
And just for good measure, how about we don’t judge each other for which bits we embrace and which we don’t?
(One too far, right? All that non judgemental crap borders on actual Christian teaching, I know, but it can’t be helped.)
It’s a radical approach, I know, but I think it could work!
What do you propose, then?
There are holidays that are American, and if you’re in American kindergarten you can be expected to do stupid little art projects using symbols from those holidays. If you grew up in Iran and didn’t celebrate Thanksgiving, you’re going to feel left out. Is that a problem? Should we expunge Thanksgiving themed crafts in the name of inclusion?
We also have holidays that are strictly religious, and we don’t include those in public kindergarten art programs, right? Nobody does Ash Wednesday crafts. But what if there was a cohort of Catholics in a majority Catholic area who wanted to force Ash Wednesday into public schools. What if they declared that late January/early February was simply another “holiday time,” and started teaching kids about (googles furiously) Tu BiShvat? Happy Holidays! they’d say to everyone, implying the combined Lent/Ash Wednesday/Tu BiShvat time of year, but everyone would really know what they were up to.
This is what we’ve done with Christmas, and it’s a farce. It’s insulting to anyone who celebrates Hanukah or Kwanzaa or any of the other holidays that have been elevated in importance in order to maintain that there’s some kind of universal holiday season that makes it OK to have depictions of baby Jesus everywhere. But it’s not OK.
In my mind this Happy Holidays BS needs to stop, and there are really only 2 solutions. One, if Christmas is a Christian holiday, then it needs to disappear from the public. No holly wreaths in school, no Santas on municipal fire trucks, no Christmas trees outside city hall. Or Two, finish the rebranding of Christmas as a secular, Western holiday once and for all.
It’s second only to Easter, and hardly “liturgically relatively unimportant”. It’s marked by the whole season of Advent leading up to it, and the Christmas season extends at least through Epiphany, and for Catholics, through the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord (the Sunday after Epiphany).
The mom in question recently posted her side of the story on Kveller.
Far from advocating for a sterile, culture-less curriculum, this is what she says she and the school board proposed replace the Santa-only version:
Sounds both more inclusive and more educational than the original plan by a long shot, and every bit as enjoyable for the students. I’m sad to see her vilified as she has been when all she appears to have been after was a school environment where her child wasn’t excluded.
Let’s see here.
Wow, right? Good thing there weren’t any German kids who wanted to talk about their cultural heritage during the Winter Party…
As I said above, any foreign kid will feel left out of assignments that deal with American or Western traditions. Why are we making turkeys with our hands, mama?
But she keeps insisting that this is all about religion, even though it’s a reindeer party, and even though the principal “had the audacity to look us straight in the eye and say, ‘Santa isn’t Christmas. He’s folklore.’”
Well, clearly Santa is Christmas, he’s just not Christian, which she at least acknowledges:
So what’s the issue? The issue is slavery.
Where’s the eye roll smiley?
:rolleyes:
Ahh.