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Celebrate your own tradition, don't force it down the throats of others. PUBLIC school - if you want something else, choose a private school that matches your beliefs.
A PUBLIC school is one in which any religion has no business shoving its beliefs down the throats of anyone. People shouldn't be forced to send their kids to private school just to avoid this kind of thing. PUBLIC schools should not have traditions tied to any religion. No one should have to send their kids to an expensive private school to avoid this. In fact, it should be the other way around.
BTW, I told the story earlier of one school my sisters and I attended in which we were forced to participate in Christian observances of their holiday of Christmas. At a second school in which we were the minority along with several other Jewish families, we Jewish kids were sent home with notes asking our parents if we wanted representation for Hanukkah.
All families replied absolutely not. We did not believe our religion belonged in the PUBLIC schools any more than any other. No decorations, stories, songs, etc. Two wrongs do not make a right. But some people just don't get it.
Separation of church and state. It's what our country is supposed to be about.
Thank you for being reasonable! My husbands family is of two faiths, Jewish and Christian. We celebrate Hanukkah with his cousins and they help us decorate our tree! We respect each others faith and we don't try to impose doctrine or religious beliefs.
When I taught preschool one week the students made the star of Bethlehem and the next week they made a menorah. Schools in small communities hold on to their traditions. Since when did we become communist where there is no religion or customs allowed? Let's reach out to each other and keep the good things children love. I don't blame parents for homeschooling their children because teachers aren't even allowed to give a hug to a crying child anymore! One person ruins it for all!
Christmas also had pagan origins, but it's very Christian today.
Jesus lived and died a Jew, doesn't stop him for being the symbol of Christianity.
Devil, the way he's been presented in Christianity, was derived from Apollo. Just the way to make the populace of Roman Empire stop celebrating one of the biggest pagan gods. Are you OK now with schools having a Satanic celebration day ? After all, it's just Apollo.
Regardless of what it meant 2,000 years ago, today Christmas is a Christian holiday, St Nicholas is a Christian Saint, and Satanic cults praise Satan even though they still use many elements of the cult of Apollo. Over the course of the past two millennia, these things took on a very well defined new meaning.
I can't wait til next spring and folks try to convince us that the Easter bunny is a religious symbol as well.
Most of our holidays originate in religious rituals, be they Christian or Pagan or both.
Constantine combined all the holidays and rituals into single dates, including moving the Christian sabbath day to Sunday, a pagan sabbath to the Sun god.
A PUBLIC school is one in which any religion has no business shoving its beliefs down the throats of anyone. People shouldn't be forced to send their kids to private school just to avoid this kind of thing. PUBLIC schools should not have traditions tied to any religion. No one should have to send their kids to an expensive private school to avoid this. In fact, it should be the other way around.
BTW, I told the story earlier of one school my sisters and I attended in which we were forced to participate in Christian observances of their holiday of Christmas. At a second school in which we were the minority along with several other Jewish families, we Jewish kids were sent home with notes asking our parents if we wanted representation for Hanukkah.
All families replied absolutely not. We did not believe our religion belonged in the PUBLIC schools any more than any other. No decorations, stories, songs, etc. Two wrongs do not make a right. But some people just don't get it.
Separation of church and state. It's what our country is supposed to be about.
I know what you mean....along with his bag of presents, Santa is carrying a cross and a bible in that Sleigh of his....i can't believe I keep missing his picture in church every Sunday, the pastor must be hiding him
I know what you mean....along with his bag of presents, Santa is carrying a cross and a bible in that Sleigh of his....i can't believe I keep missing his picture in church every Sunday, the pastor must be hiding him
St Nicholas is a religious figure representing Christmas, a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Christ. Neither St Nick not Christmas are present in any other religion outside Christianity. Of course for someone going to church every Sunday this is a hard concept to grasp.
Unlike Protestants, Roman Catholics and the various branches that together make up Eastern Orthodoxy both venerate saints (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veneration). In fact, Catholics have a specific day set aside just to venerate all of the Church's saints, a day on which attendance at Mass is obligatory: All Saints' Day (which conveniently falls on Halloween, another one of those bits of syncreatism the early church excelled at). A basic Catholic education generally includes instruction about many of the most famous saints in addition to basic theology, and some especially devout Catholics will also attend mass on the feast days of individual saints whose lives have a special meaning to them.
So any Catholic who's had a decent religious education indeed knows about Saint Nicholas, and (by virtue of his sainthood) regards him as an important religious figure, even in his modern guise as Santa Claus. The lines about about Good King Wenceslas going out on the Feast of Stephen aren't just lines in a Christmas carol to educated Catholics, either, as both Wenceslas and Stephen are also famous saints (and actual people, not mythic figures).
I can't wait til next spring and folks try to convince us that the Easter bunny is a religious symbol as well.
Most of our holidays originate in religious rituals, be they Christian or Pagan or both.
Constantine combined all the holidays and rituals into single dates, including moving the Christian sabbath day to Sunday, a pagan sabbath to the Sun god.
Constantine lived almost 2,000 years ago. Whatever these holidays meant then, they mean a very specific thing now.
The hammer and sicle didn't mean much in the times of Constantine either, would you be OK with your public school having your kids spend a few days drawing them ?
Of course I'm lucky, I don't have to travel all the way to the Czech Republic to see him (although I can attest that window is well worth seeing): St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church | Omaha, NE
October 31 is Reformation Day in the Lutheran Church.
You're right, of course. I always think of it as Halloween because the evening mass on October 31 counts as a celebration of it (the liturgical day in Catholicism, like Judaism, runs from nightfall to nightfall, not sunrise to sunrise).
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Thank you for being reasonable!
