In the news:
SAGINAW, Mich. -- Tightening budgets have forced Mt. Pleasant to take Christ out of their Christmas.
The traditional Dickens Christmas Festival has been re-named the Dickens Holiday Festival so the city can advertise in local schools.
In order to get more bang for their buck out of a thinning advertisement budget, the organization wants to put fliers in schools. For that to happen, the word “Christmas” had to be removed...
“We changed the name this year for the schools because we wanted to advertise in the school brochures and the schools have a list of words you can’t use like Santa, Christmas and Nativity. So did a brochure for the schools and we took those words out.”
Two things:
1. Why in the world did the school put words like Santa and Christmas on a list of words they can't use? Why in the hell do they even HAVE a list of words they can't use (allowing for not having obscenities)??
2. Why in the world does anyone care what the city calls its Holiday celebration?
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On a more cheerful note, feel free to visit my church's blog - Jeff Street - to read about our Reclaiming Christmas Project this year.
14 comments:
One can only speculate as to why a school district would have such a list of words. But most likely it's just plain ol' ignorance & fear. Ignorance about what is and is not allowed under the law, and fear about getting sued.
What an elegant answer, Alan, and I agree wholeheartedly. Far too many people are ignorant concerning what is and is not allowed by law. And the lawyers make every ignorant school district/local government pay through the arse for it.
Khmer Rouge: "First thing we do is kill all the Teachers!"
William Shakespeare: "First thing we do is kill all the Lawyers!"
Hmmm. I'm thinking reeducation camps for both lawyers AND teachers.
You heard it here first, folks. Eric agrees with Alan! Wholeheartedly.
It IS the season of miracles.
Well it makes perfect sense if you think about it. The School is supported by local government who is supported by the state who in turn is a member state of the United States who is governed by the constitution. So therefore it your local school uses words that seem to endorse or draw attention to those who endorses a religion it in fact a example the United States Congress establishing a state religion, and is therefore unconstitutional.
Dan why is your kid’s grade-school acting as congress and establishing a state religion? You have some explaining to do.
I'm not exactly sure what you're suggesting Edwin (and welcome to Payne Hollow, by the way).
Are you suggesting we remove all mention of Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, church, temple, mosque, Salvation Army, Bible, Koran, Scripture, etc, etc, etc, from any school documents? Christmas is a real observance in our world. So are Hanukkah and Ramadan.
Can we not acknowledge that these exist without endorsing those particular religions? Where would we draw the line on mentioning them?
I'm of the opinion that schools can refer to, for instance, the reality of Christmas, Ramadan or a Pagan Solstice without endorsing any of the religions attached to those events. You think differently?
Here, here's an example:
"So, everyone, this weekend, there will be a Ramadan Parade leading to the mosque at 9am and a Pagan thanksgiving dinner at 10 on Sunday. Now you know."
That is an announcement, not an endorsement.
Now, I can fully understand that the schools don't want to be in the business of making announcements for each and every church, mosque and temple event in the neighborhood, and no one would blame them for saying that that the schools just doesn't do those sorts of announcements.
But if they want to announce the City's Dickens Christmas celebration and Ramadan Parade (if there were such a thing), they are just announcing a city event, not endorsing a religion.
Seems to me.
And, if they don't want to be in the business of making city announcements, that's fine with me, too. But I just don't get the screening of words.
Dan and Alan are right. This kind of thing happens at schools that decide to be overly cautious because they don't really understand the Supreme Court decisions about religion in the public schools. The Court never said all mention of religion was banned. In both the school prayer and Bible reading cases, the Court held that schools could have comparative religion classes, that history texts can (must!) give the religious motivations for the Pilgrims coming to America or the Mormons' trek to Utah or the Abolitionist opposition to slavery, etc. Release time for religion classes at churches and synagogues, etc. is allowed IF the school allows that time for all.
Bill Clinton--about whom I am currently saying bad things on my blog--did a good thing in sending to all school districts in the U.S. a guideline on what church-state experts said was and was not allowed--so that such fear of lawsuits would not lead to such ridiculous lack of common sense. Apparently, they didn't keep them with the new admin.
Good to see you out and about, Michael. What article/printed work have you been working on (or is it secret?)
I'm writing a dictionary article on the history of Christian social ethics. It's hard to condense 2000 years into such a tiny space and trying to do so is killing me.
How about:
"When we were behaving, we displayed 'em...but not so much, most of the time."
?
Yeah, they want more than that. The problem with encyclopedia type articles is that they want you to explain the universe FULLY and give 3 or more examples--and be concise. :-)
I see an easy way to discern if religious acts are constitutional. We must ask is this congress establishing a state religion? If it is not then it is constitutional. Remember the words separation of church and state does not appear anywhere in the constitution.
So, then, you'd have no problem with the school having an advertisement for a civic Holiday celebration that happens to have the word "Christmas" (or Ramadan or Pagan, etc) in it, since it is not in the least establishing a state religion?
Th banning of words in government schools is an act of brainlessness. It is an outgrowth of the no-brain policies in place in many government schools systems that go under the guise of no-tolerance.
How can people endure to have their children stewed and marinated in such stupidity. How will these people ever be able to think after such a culture and indoctrination?
If we can go about being bent out of shape because a municipality uses the word "Christmas", we've got WAY too much time on our hands and not enough real problems to occupy us ... or at least we are fatally unaware of the real problems.
Some of this no-brain policy is a backlash from decades of forced reverence to one aspect of the culture and the historical mythology surrounding it (Christian Nation and all that). But one bit of ignorance and indiscretion need not beget and entire shutting down of sensibilities.
If anyone is offended by the words Christ or Christian, or get their towel in a wad over a teddy bear named Mohamed, or any other such brain dead foolishness, they badly, badly need the dose of reality that is soon to come in the post oil world.
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