Saturday, December 10, 2005

When are our schools going to stop denying our children access to their heritage?

Each Christmas more and more stories are brought to our attention about school children being denied the pleasure of celebrating Christmas, the second most important time in the Christian calendar. It is surpassed in importance only by Easter.

When I was a school child, I, like almost all others, used to so look forward to all the school festivities: the carol services; the Nativity plays; the lessons about Christmas; and, of course, talking incessantly about the upcoming holidays.

Now, it seems that many children here in the West are denied these pleasures. Not only this, but as a result, they are denied access to knowledge about their own heritage and culture. This is a disgrace that should be stopped forthwith!

Any society which denies its own heritage, and any culture which feels it has to apologize for itself, will find that it will not last much longer. Such a culture will soon end up in the dustbin of history!

It is quite ridiculous to teach our children about Eid when they know so little about Christmas.

In celebrating Christmas, we are celebrating the birth of Jesus, the Saviour of Christians. Can anything save Easter be more important for the education of our young?

Read this story from today's Telegraph. It's enough to make anyone feel sick in the stomach! The article is entitled, There is no room for Christmas at multi-faith school. The head teacher of this school should be sacked without further ado!

©Mark Alexander

5 comments:

Always On Watch said...

Mark,
In case you have time, there's a discussion about how to observe Christmas in America's public schools @ "Christmas" @
www.socialsense.blogspot.com

I do hope you'll have time to look over the aforementioned discussion because I'd be interested in your thoughts.

Denying access to one's heritage is suicide for any culture. I'm disgusted with the fact that I heard "Blessed Ramadan" for a full month all over the television channels, yet some stations here refuse to use "Merry Christmas," let alone an acknowledgement of the weeks long Advent Season. More that disgusted, actually--worried. Why can every culture except the Christian one be "up front"?

This season, I'm being quite aggressive about saying "Merry Christmas" in all appropriate circumstances. So let me take this chance to wish everyone here Merry Christmas!

Mark said...

AOW:

I have posted my comment on SocialSense.Blogspot.com

I feel sure you will approve.

Always On Watch said...

Mark,
I'm glad to see that you visited Social Sense. Good comment! I've also now left a new comment there.

My friend Mustang, who is the blog master at Social Sense, posts articles of interest about various social issues here in America. Last June, he and I cowrote a piece entitled "Our Own Gullibility." You can read it @

http://alwaysonwatch.blogspot.com/
2005/06/our-own-gullibility.html

I was just getting started back then.

Always On Watch said...

Mark,
Try this:

http://alwaysonwatch.blogspot.com/
2005/06/our-own-gullibility.html

Eleanor © said...

Mark - for some reason I could not leave a comment on the blog socialsense. Here is my comment:

Human celebrations have always been public in a urge for the commality and solidarity of any cultural group. To consign Christmas to the privacy of the home would leave a void in our culture. As "nature abhors a void," so does culture. Any thinking person today understands that placing Christmas in the backroom will create an opportunity for Islam to further insinuate into our culture. Only an idiot would make this choice.