Cleansing Christmas?

When television personality Bill O’Reilly claimed that there was a “War on Christmas” going on in America, the liberal media scoffed. It was, they said, an exaggeration. No such thing was taking place.

But if there’s a War on Christmas, then the “Mother of All Battles” – to borrow a phrase from a dead dictator – is now raging right here in the State of Texas. And despite an effort on Thursday to tamp down the flames, it appears the fight is far from over.

Despite the most recent controversy, it is liberals who claim that Conservatives on the Texas State Board of Education are the aggressors in what is evolving into a cultural food fight.

At issue here is a far-left curriculum review committee which recently voted to strip all references to Christmas from sixth-grade social studies textbooks. Worse still, it would have replaced the most important holiday in America with that well-known Hindu religious festival, Diwali.

“It's outrageous that the war on Christmas continues in our state and in our nation,” said Jonathan Saenz, legislative director for Free Market Foundation. “This effort to mislead students about current society is shameful and must be stopped.”

The proposal, which was being considered by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) on Thursday, is defended by liberal groups, which lambaste conservatives for defending Christmas.

“This is just a cynical attempt to use religion as a weapon to mislead the public and divide Texans over something as important as our children's education,” said Kathy Miller, president of the watchdog group Texas Freedom Network, which opposes initiatives pushed by Christian conservatives. “If I were their teacher I would send the Free Market Foundation to detention.”

What were they thinking?

The logic behind the proposed rules was that religions – according to the groups authoring the proposal – should be given equal treatment in classrooms, regardless of any traditional, historical, or even representative role that they play in society. Christians, they say, only get one bite at the apple, and that is already represented by the holiday of Easter. And not only is Christianity banned, but also the Jewish celebration of Rosh Hashanah.

David Barton, a conservative serving on a team of experts that advises the SBOE, said that while there is nothing wrong with Hinduism, putting it on an even plane with Christianity is a distortion of history.

“America is not equally divided among these five religions,” Barton wrote. Mentioning Christmas and Rosh Hashanah, he added, “does not promote either Christianity or Judaism; rather, it simply acknowledges with accuracy the religious culture of America as it actually exists that these holidays have been awarded their place in the culture by the people themselves.”

This week, the Texas Pastor Council, an inter-racial, inter-denominational organization representing local pastor councils in Houston, Austin, Beaumont, El Paso and other pastors throughout the state, called the action “multiculturalism gone wild.”

The group noted that the idea was to promote inclusion of major religions, and then pointed out that according to the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey of the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, Hindus represent only 0.7 percent of the population as opposed to 78.4 percent who profess Christianity in some form.

“The point is not to demean Hindus as much as to expose the continued assault on logic, reason and academic standards in general and certainly the Christian faith in particular by anti-religious elitists and ultra-liberal special interest groups like Texas Freedom Network,” the pastors wrote.
 
“Removing religion from the discussion altogether, there is simply no rational defense of equating Christmas and Diwali in historic, cultural, social and economic significance within this state and in the nation,” the statement continued. “Education of our children would not be served by this change. While it would certainly not remove Christmas from the hearts, minds, lives and practices of the super-majority of the people who celebrate it each year, it would be another indication of the hostility among some educational elite toward the aforementioned academic excellence and Christianity.”

On Thursday, SBOE members assured the public that Christianity would not be removed. Nonetheless, the battle comes only a few months after a similar curriculum group had demanded that “dead white men” be removed from the textbooks. Conservatives, for their part, had sought to de-emphasize Cesar Chavez, arguing that he was covered sufficiently in curriculum and should not be elevated any further. They appeared to drop that objection in Thursday’s meeting as well.

Following the decision, Saenz praised members of both parties for rejecting the extreme measure.

“This issue cuts across party lines,” he said. “I think you’ll find that SBOE members that are both Republican and Democrat support keeping Christmas in the social studies curriculum.  Anyone who disagrees with this is out of touch with American and world society.