in the culture. Nobody ruined Christmas like the Christians. Such an egregious farce. More evidence of a monolithic totalitarian culture. In time, the boy might grow up actually knowing the society he lives in. Could turn to gold...hard lesson, but a good one. Sounds like his parents are the ones that are going to be the real guidance, doing a great job. No teacher like alienation to find out who you are...and who others are.

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Christ's sake!

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I know children are innocent and never make mistakes... but I'd like to know the story from the teacher's point of view.

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This is an interesting twist on standard Christian operating procedure. Most of the time, they try to force Christmas on non-believers and their children. In the schools they have Christmas parties and Christmas trees and sing Christmas carols, They send religious holiday cards with Nativity scenes to Jews, coax their kids to sit on Santa's lap and write him letters, and coerce Jewish adults to participate in office Christmas celebrations from parties to "Secret Santa" exchanges. As a Jew I am usually the one telling Christians that Christmas is a religious holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus, and therefore they should not expect me to take part any moe than I expect THEM to fast on Yom Kippur. Ihave worked in offices where I was told that my refusal to deck my cubicle or office door with Christmas decorations was ruining the holiday for everyone else. I've had to endure constant elbows in my ribs as people pleaded, "Where's your Christmas spirit?" or angrily denounced me for not being a good sport. The pressures on kids are far, far worse. Well, I don't go around every spring whining that I can't enjoy Passover because not everyone else in my office is celebrating it. I don't try to shove Simchat Torah or Sukkot down the throats of my gentile co-workers. But Christians DEMAND that non-Christians take part in Christmas and bring all children up to believe that the holiday is merely a secular American tradition. I am sorry for the little boy whose feelings were undoubtedly hurt terribly by this silly exclusion--since his parents did not object, there would have been no harm in allowing him to participate. But it certainly does go against the Christian missionary tradition of constantly evangelizing, proselytizing, and coercing those who do not share their religious views.

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What the hell is this? Doesn't the writer know how to write a story? HELLO!! Who, what, where, when why? A bit of information with a whole lot of information left out.
Interesting teaser-but not a complete story. Cut it out Alternet.

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I think the expression is "a BURR under" one's saddle instead of "a BUG IN" it. My only other comment is that this whole thing doesn't seem very Christian to me.

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It's a public school that's described in the original article (in england, "council run" means the equivalent of local public school), and... neither the party nor the exclusion would happen here in the US.

Which ought to give some pause to those who say that Christianity is taking over here, while in Europe they've gotten all secularized. In fact there is a mixed picture in both places, but in general the wall between church and state is much healthier here than over there.

But you wouldn't know that from Alternet, which has an absolute obsession with the miserable failure that is the Christian right in the US, taking every opportunity to make a big deal of some stupid thing a fundie somewhere said this week.

It's tactically dumb, and culturally tone-deaf, and stems at least in part from a severe lack of first-hand knowledge of what actually happens in churches, in school districts, in the military, and other institutions, when it comes to religious belief.

I don't like the fundies any more than the next leftist, but the relentless focus on them gives them much more power than they actually posess. Huckabee's candidacy is going to make a lot of things much clearer, I think, for one the fact that the GOP never had any intention of pursuing theocracy, and that thus it is never going to happen.

Much better to pay attention to the needs of poor people, and to the actual positive things that local groups are doing outside the bubble to create alternative institutions that can do mercy and justice work in our communities.

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I say we all crash the next x-mas party with horns on our heads and pitchforks in our hands!!! Lol, lets give all these religious idiots a taste of their own medicine.

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We Brits have been celebrating Midwinter since long before Christianity arrived on our shores and hijacked the idea. Christmas was abandoned by the Puritans after the English civil war (1649), and what we misguidedly think of as a "traditional" Christmas is anything but. "Traditional" as in "Like 1807"? In 1807 25th December wasn't even a public holiday (But New Year's Day was) and when it became a national holiday, (in the 1820s) in Lancashire there were riots against having two unpaid days so close together. The "tradition" of Xmas parties is anything BUT Christian! It' interesting that the Alternet report incorrectly reports the asertion that the Child (and school) in question are English, when they were in fact SCOTTISH. The Scots' religious traditions are VERY different to the English - far more Puritan and for far longer.

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but Santa, the tree, holly, gift exchanges originate from highly un-christian pagan solstice observances. There was a time when true Christians eschewed such pagan practices and observed the "birthday" of Jesus in a much more seemly manner. (Let's not forget that Jesus wasn't born in the month of December.) As in so many other things, the Christians ripped off this holiday and claimed they thought of it. Typical.

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Circles within circles within circles. This article exemplifies the theologically driven process of 'shunning' and more secular analogues such as exile. Any Club, Group, Association, etc will be at least vaguely familiar with processes such as these; at the outer boundaries, there will be those to be EXCLUDED.

When theo-logy and meta-physics want to rule, one must beware of the Circum-spect Ones. Both physically and morally, if given a bit of power they will become Circum-scribing Ones. If given a lot, or even absolute power, they will become Circum-scising Ones. They always want to actually and literally 'cut' themselves a Circle. Many times, they want to rule ALL.

There are more human and more reasonable ways to organize social relations. A much better world is possible.

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I am a firm believer that every school should be teaching religions of the world. What does the average American know about Islam, Judiasim, Hinduism or Christianity for that matter? As we now live in a multi-cultural society the understanding of religious views of others is extremely important, socially. In the above case, the school policy was based on an emotional response of a rather dubious understaning of Christianity. Adhearing to a church dogma is not what Christianity is about although some may wish to believe that. The article also does not mention what kind of religious education the school was offering, i.e. from a secular point of view or from a dogmatic church view. So, what was the point of this article, other than showing what bad religion is about, and that has been going on since man's creation of God.

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Growing up in the 60's in the redneck South, we had prayers every day before classes. The few Jewish kids we had just stood and stared ahead and were never questioned. (There were so few of them, anyway.) And I don't believe they were sent home from Christmas celebrations.

What are we coming to with this garbage?

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In my second grade class in upstate NY, I had my head slammed into my desk by the teacher who had taken exception to my sitting quietly, head unbowed, while my schoolmates prayed. (Prayer in public school was legal then.) My family was not religious & I had an identifiably Jewish surname. My teacher was vicious and kept up her torture for the year that I was in her class.

The occasional bigot can hide among teachers and make a child's life miserable. The parents of these boys quite naturally bled for their excluded children and understandably came out swinging. Children require protection from adults who behave like thugs in the name of Jesus.

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England is not the US. After the local council (which would be the education authority for this school) intervened, the school relented in the case of the younger child. The local council probably realised that they were being left wide open to a legal challenge as our schools are supposed to be non-discriminatory when it comes to religion. Unfortunately, we do have a sizable minority of state aided church schools, but even they are supposed to follow the non-discriminatory path.

Personally, I think Christians have an almighty nerve to get so possessive about the winter solstice festival that they themselves hijacked. They might choose to call it Christmas and, indeed, constructed a whole mythology about it that would have been surprising to the early Christians. However, I am happy to allow them their myths and ask only that they allow the rest of us ours. But the celebration of the Winter Solstice was there first and perhaps still has a more profound meaning, centred as it is on the promise of the world's rebirth. (Note: the whole world gets reborn not just the bit belonging to the chosen few).

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