About 10 years ago, these school events were completely stripped of any religious symbolism and rebranded as “winter concerts,” most likely because “holiday” was just too close for comfort to the original “holy day.” Christmas trees and wreathes were phased out and replaced with generic candles and nondenominational poinsettias. Santa Claus and Saint Nicholas, with their troubling suggestion of canonization, were dropped from the program. Images of ice-skating, sleigh-riding and snowmen predominated.
The bright red and green and silver and gold of the Christmas season were replaced with 50 shades of wintry white and gray; the theological was replaced by the meteorological. Even though these renamed concerts are typically held during the week of the winter solstice, public-school administrators seem oblivious to the danger that they’re stepping over the religious line: The schools are flirting with endorsing Druidism.
One memorable grade-school performance my wife and I attended six years ago included songs about dancing penguins and prancing polar bears sung by fifth-graders dressed in white polo shirts and beige pants, interspersed with poetic student readings about snow and ice (prompting visions of isolation, hypothermia and snow blindness). Imagine a GapKids commercial directed by Ingmar Bergman.
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