Despite PC crowd, Merry Christmas!

If you want to view a school Christmas program this year, you may have to go to the Inchelium School District on the Colville Indian Reservation. That’s 90 miles north of Spokane. You won’t find such a program in Clark County’s public schools, at least not by that title.

Santa and Christmas are banned in the schools because they are politically incorrect. The legal beagles declare they are constitutionally incorrect, a violation of church and state separation, even though the American Center for Law and Justice pointed out in 2004: “It is important to note that nothing in the U.S. Constitution prohibits students in public schools from exercising their constitutional rights to express their religious beliefs, especially during the Christmas season.” That goes for the public square, too, they maintain.

Christmas programs were featured at Sara elementary school and elsewhere in my time, near the mid-20th century. Parents, teachers and students decorated the classrooms, and nobody seemed psychologically injured in the process. In fact, they enjoyed it, and expressed good will toward one another. It was called “the Christmas spirit.”

You can’t even find a Christmas vacation schedule in the county’s public schools. They are now called “winter break,” or ”winter vacation,” or some variation of those terms.

Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ. Santa is the symbol of good will and high moral values. “He knows if you have been naughty or nice.” A “Merry Christmas” greeting doesn’t automatically label the originator a Christian. It is universally delivered and accepted as a cheerful salute to the recipient in the spirit of the season.

National recognition

Examining this topic a couple years ago, I found a poll that showed 96 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas, and 80 percent consider themselves Christians. Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and in some years Ramadan and Diwali, share the same season.

Christmas is also a legal holiday, giving it official, and national, recognition. Yet there seems to be a continued attempt to muffle, or stifle the word “Christmas.” Advertisements want you to “light up the holidays” or offer “door busters,” promising “holiday savings” and asking, “What’s on your holiday list today?” There are Christmas references in some, such as “Cool Christmas toys for good girls and boys,” “Christmas Super Saturday” and “Christmas full of savings.”

Striving for the PC Christmas, a lot of self-proclaimed do-gooders have done silly things. Last week, an elementary school principal in Ashland, Ore., removed an artificial Christmas “giving tree,” which held tags requesting gifts for needy children, after a family complained it was a religious symbol. Dozens of parents were upset, noting the tree was not a religious symbol but a way to celebrate the season and help those in need. Last year, the director of Seattle Schools Department of Equity and Race, Caprice D. Hollins, distributed a letter suggesting Thanksgiving is a difficult time for “many of our Native students.” She referred staff to a Web site that declared the holiday “is a bitter reminder of 500 years of betrayal returned for friendship.” Oh, those rotten Pilgrims!

Perhaps all is not lost this Christmas season: The Christmas ships are still a nighttime seasonal joy on the Columbia and Willamette rivers for the 55th year; Vancouver, La Center, Camas and Washougal and other towns had Christmas tree lightings, carolers and Santa visits earlier this month to launch the season. “It’s a great time to bring our community together to celebrate,” Krista Bashaw, special events coordinator for Camas parks and recreation, told the Camas-Washougal Post-Record.

To its credit, seasonal stamps sold by the U.S. Postal Service include religious depictions, such as Madonna and child, and winter holiday sketches: a reindeer, snowman and other figures. Bill O’Reilly, the feisty Fox News commentator, deserves mention for offering a free bumper sticker — “We Say Merry Christmas” — as a bonus for buying his book. Now, if we can discard the dull, dreary and politically correct “Happy Holidays” greeting, and substitute “Merry Christmas,” the season might be salvaged after all.