MFC takes on the school Scrooges!
Northstar Legal Center is ready to help schools defend Christmas.
December, 1995
Christmas is legal in public schools. that was the message at a State Capitol press conference held shortly before Thanksgiving by the Minnesota Family Council (MFC) and its new Northstar Legal Center for the Family and Constitutional Rights."Every year we hear numerous concerns raised by parents who have children in public schools where either the religious aspects of Christmas have been removed or the very holiday itself has been essentially banned from recognition by the school," explained MFC Legislative Director Darrell McKigney. "If Dickens' 'Scrooge' was a miserly old man, today's Scrooge might well be a politically correct school administrator or a liberal lawyer with a lawsuit in his pocket."
'Today's Scrooge might be a politically correct school administrator or a liberal lawyer with a lawsuit in his pocket.'
Complaints have ranged from controversies over Christmas carols, holiday celebration, and Christmas decorations, to the total exclusion of all religious aspects of the Christmas holiday.
"We believe much of this is the result of misunderstandings or lack of knowledge about the law surrounding the so-called 'separation of church and state,'" said Northstar Legal Center President Tom Prichard. "In other instances, schools are being intimidated by the fear of lawsuits, even when no grounds for a lawsuit exist.
To help school administrators stand up to that intimidation, Prichard announced that the Northstar Legal Center is ready to defend any public school that is sued for engaging in constitutionally permissible observances of Christmas.
In an effort to clear up misunderstandings about the place of Christmas in public schools, the Northstar Legal Center distributed a fact sheet showing that courts have upheld such seasonal practices as singing Christmas carols, exchanging Christmas cards, and decorating Christmas trees.
School administrators are not required to permit observances of Christmas, but they are not prevented from doing so either, explained Prichard, who added that administrators who choose to ban Christmas from public schools should not hide behind claims that they are required to do so.
Noting that some schools call their Christmas vacation "winter break," Prichard said that ignoring the surrounding culture diminishes a school's credibility. "You're diminishing their education by artificially separating what they're learning in an educational setting from what their culture is about," he said.
This year's most notorious Christmas-related school situation is in St. Cloud, where the school board banned Christmas trees as decorations. Superintendent Bruce Thomas said the policy is based on legal advice, but the decision has angered parents. One school board member said she was defeated for reelection partly because of her support for the policy.
McKigney said, "This should give us all an insight to why vouchers are such a popular idea. A lot of parents are saying, 'Why can we have condoms in our school and we can't have a Christmas tree?'"
There is a danger that school holiday celebrations will emphasize only Christmas and will ignore other cultural traditions, acknowledged McKigney. "Real diversity is to take those people who are being excluded and have them included," he said. "Put the menorah next to the creche. But the PC crowd is going the other way and saying that if other traditions are being ignored, let's also get rid of Christmas."
he added, "Any other time we teach about culture in our schools we expose people to the culture. We wring our hands constantly about the fact that people have lost the meaning of Christmas and that it's so commercialized.
"But the school definition of Christmas excludes the very meaning of it. What is the great danger here? That kids are going to start hearing about peace, joy and good will toward men? Is that the danger?"
Back to the PFN Front Page