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Santa is a myth! Ask anybody. The roots may be St. Nick but St. Nick didn't drink Coca-Cola. What ever happened to common sense???
Some people would argue Jesus Christ is a myth.
Santa = CHRISTmas = Christian. That's common sense and totally disingenuous for you and everyone in this thread suggesting that Santa is linked to anything besides CHRISTmas.
Religion is ONLY divisive for those people who choose to make it that way. There are MANY religious people who are all about inclusion, rights, equality and love for all. Stop stereotyping.
No one is stereotyping. Oceans of human blood have been spilled over religious differences both major and minor. A five minute perusal of any world history textbook is enough to show that. PLENTY of people in the past have chosen to use religious differences to justify violence, and plenty more are going to be willing to do that in the future.
We already have the answer to the question "Can't we all just get along?" The answer is NO. Which is why religion, even in seemingly innocuous forms, cannot be allowed to infiltrate institutions deliberately created to be secular. Like public schools.
This is not a Christian country. This is not a Protestant country either (as they liked to think some 60 years ago). This is a country with majority Christian population that made separation of church and state the cornerstone of it's Constitution - for a very good reason.
Have your kids been told by other kids yet they are going to hell because they don't accept Jesus ? Mine were. In a very liberal multicultural school district, of all places. The religious prejudice is strong enough without having the public school district reinforce it by showing preference to a single religion.
The lady that complained had a proper concern - school spending a whole week on a single religious (yes, religious) holiday and honoring a religious (yes, religious) Christian Saint, while largely ignoring the other religions and making these other kids feel like outsiders.
The school overreacted. Instead of canceling the trip this year, they should've still held the trip, and then spend some time on other religions - this year. Then next year, concentrate on teaching kids and leave any and all religious cr@p to the private after-school activity.
The idiot mom who declared this was a "War on Christmas" and staged a walkout had not only grossly overreacted, but she also certainly removed any notion of this not being a religious issue.
And about Christmas being a secular holiday and Santa not being a religious figure... my a$$.
Yep. No religious overtones at all. All inclusive.
HoHoHo. Next you'll be telling us that Cupid and 'the Easter Bunny' are religious figures.
The Supreme Court sometimes gets it right, as it did in ruling that even a crèche is ok If it's accompanied by enough secular stuff such as Santa, reindeer, a Christmas tree, and the like.
They are non-issues to YOU. They are BIG issues to many others who do not hold the same beliefs that you do.
Your personal feelings are not the arbiter of what's appropriate. The Constitution is - and the Constitution explicitly states that the government should not show favoritism to any one religion. A public school field trip to see Santa is favoring Christianity over non-Christian religions, and is therefore not OK.
So POTUS is essentially in direct violation of the Constitution?....I mean he displays a CHRISTmas tree in the White House....wouldn't that be showing favoritism?
HoHoHo. Next you'll be telling us that Cupid and 'the Easter Bunny' are religious figures.
Cupid is a Roman god. The Easter Bunny is a pagan fertility symbol which has been grafted onto an explicitly Christian holiday. Neither is appropriate to bring into public schools.
Quote:
The Supreme Court sometimes gets it right, as it did in ruling that even a crèche is ok If it's accompanied by enough secular stuff such as Santa, reindeer, a Christmas tree, and the like.
And the Supreme Court also sometimes gets it wrong. A creche on government property such as a courthouse lawn or in the lobby of a government building is never OK, as it can never be seen as a purely secular symbol no matter how hard someone may try to twist it into one. (And if you doubt this, put a nice statue of Ganesha on the courthouse lawn surrounded by lots of secular stuff, and see the response you get.)
We have plenty of private property in this country where religious symbols can be displayed. Why this seeming need to display it on government property?
Eventually this nonsense IS going to go away, because an increasing percentage of the country's citizenry is non-Christian, and they are going to force the matter. We might as well start getting used to seeing government spaces as neutral now.
So POTUS is essentially in direct violation of the Constitution?....I mean he displays a CHRISTmas tree in the White House....wouldn't that be showing favoritism?
Yes, the White House Christmas tree is a constitutional violation, for all that we are used to seeing it. (Now a tree in the Presidential family's living quarters is another matter; the President and his family live there, and should be able to display whatever personal religious symbols they wish in their living space, be it a Christmas tree or a Shinto shrine or a Wiccan pentacle. They just have to take it with them when the POTUS leaves office.)
So POTUS is essentially in direct violation of the Constitution?....I mean he displays a CHRISTmas tree in the White House....wouldn't that be showing favoritism?
The White House also has a Menora on Channukah, and hosts a Ramadan dinner every year.
Try reading the articles. The mother isn't the one who canceled the trip. When she heard about it, she wrote the school a letter explaining why she felt it was a problem. The school board and the superintendent met to discuss it and they were the ones who decided to cancel it.
The parents who were mad that the field trip was canceled were the ones looking for drama by pulling their kids out of class - and presumably calling the media to tell them about it.
If the school had spend 5 days on Channukah without spending at least the equal amount of time on Christmas, the parents who staged the walkout would be far more upset.
If the school had spend 5 days preparing for Ramadan, they would demand the district superintendent's head on a platter.
I bet that many if not most people who argue that Christmas and Santa who embodies it are not really Christian symbols don't really believe that; rather like the Catholic part of my extended family, they think there's no harm in exposing kids to Christianity even if there's a little white lie involved along the way to Salvation.
You remind me a bit of a teacher who once stood up in a faculty meeting and demanded in an angry voice that we have a Christmas caroling assembly "because we're in the majority". I found it rather lacking in the Christmas spirit to be angry and demanding and then basing it on being in the majority. But I guess it's onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war.
After reading this thread in its entirety I've come to the conclusion that many people don't want a melting pot. They want a segmented society, schools stripped of community identity, robot-like students and a total gag order on anything religious, fun, magical, etc.
Or people are posturing for the interwebz.
Sounds more like you want people to melt into your pot.
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