LEBANON — “Silent Night” was not on the program at Pioneer School’s concert Tuesday, but it was sung anyway — by the audience after the kids were done. Shortly after the children started rehearsals this fall, Principal Mark Finch had scratched the number after a parent complained that the carol’s emphasis was “too single-religion.” Superintendent Rob Hess, in attendance Tuesday, said he didn’t see who started the carol but thought approximately 100 of the more than 700 people in the audience joined in. Sam Long, a Pioneer volunteer and the grandmother of a Pioneer student, said the only reaction following...
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I served on the Lebanon School Board, and was disappointed when the principal removed Silent Night from the program. Even though I am not on the board anymore, I received a lot of calls on this incident. The end result was even better.
Comment # 4 posted by
Tamatoa http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2413161/posts
This is FRICKIN’ AMERICA!!! OUR culture celebrates CHRISTMAS at this time of year!
Here in Harding Township, NJ, the local school’s annual Christmas concert (now called the Winter Concert, even though it was held a few days before winter actually began!), included two Kwanzaa songs (one extolling “collective labor”), and three Hanukkah songs. Now Hanukkah is a very minor Jewish holiday. How many ways can you sing about a dreydel? I am told that in Israel, the people view Hanukkaha as a strange, American aberration, blown out of proportion here, merely as a counterpart to Christmas. At any rate, there then were a goodly number of the usual secular seasonal songs involving chestnuts by the fire (which no one really does, do they?), and a one-horse open sleigh (which wouldn’t work on the streets around here, and has never been seen locally). There was only one truly religious Christmas song in the whole affair: Ave Verum, which is great, but as it is Latin, the grade-schoolers probably didn’t know what they were singing, and the audience was insulated from the possibility that they might be driven wild with religious fervor, and run out from the gym intent to establish a national church.
Thanks a heap, ACLU!
Well, at least they did not sing or play the Little Drummer Boy. I thank God for that.
“There were 18 songs on the program, of which one has a sacred theme to it and 17 don’t. Really, the complaint should go the other way: The program was too darned secular,” said Martin, who was in the audience. “To change that program for one person is almost a violation of everyone else’s rights.”