ABSTRACT
A high school dean in West Orange, New Jersey, reprimanded a student for singing "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" on school property. The student probably could have avoided criticism more easily by singing a song about overthrowing the government. The nervous principal of Loudoun High School in Virginia told student editors to keep the newspaper as secular as possible and "to be careful that they don't associate the upcoming holiday with any particular religion." Instead of acknowledging all this (along with the religious significance of Hannukah and Ramadan), our schools and other public institutions make their grim annual effort to pretend that Christmas isn't occurring. The public schools don't exist to promote religion, but they don't exist to marginalize it either, or to promote secularism as a dominant religion. Schools do more damage than good when they address only the secular elements of religious holidays.
