By MARSHA
MERCER
A Maryland
school board could hardly have angered residents more had it abolished
Christmas.
The Montgomery
County Board of Education outside Washington didn’t scrap Christmas but it did
vote Tuesday to eliminate any mention of Christmas and other religious holidays
from next year’s official school calendar.
Schools in
Maryland’s largest county will still be closed as usual around Christmas,
Easter and the Jewish holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but students
will be on Winter Break, Spring Break or the awkward “no school for students
and teachers.”
The reaction
on social media was swift and intense. Infuriating almost everybody was the
board’s insistence that it was not closing the schools to observe religious
holidays, which it said would be illegal, but as a practical, operational
matter because of the high absenteeism that would result if school were held on
those days.
The illegality
argument is debatable. The state requires schools to be closed at Christmas and
Easter, and the county has been closing school on Jewish holidays since the 1970s.
It’s disingenuous and ridiculous to pretend schools are not closed so families
can observe religious holidays. But which families and which holidays?
For years,
local Muslim leaders have asked Montgomery schools to close for at least one
Muslim holiday. To bolster their case, they’ve urged Muslim parents to keep
their students home on Eid al-Adha, also called the Feast of Sacrifice.
Montgomery
says absenteeism runs about 5 percent that day, a little higher than usual, but
not high enough to justify closing the schools. Absences are excused, but
Muslim families say fairness demands that Muslim holidays be recognized.
Asked again to
add a Muslim holiday, the school board opted out, deciding instead to scrub all
mention of religious holidays from the calendar.
“It makes no
sense,” Saqib Ali, a former Maryland state legislator and co-chair of the Eid
Coalition wrote on Facebook.
“By stripping
the names Christmas, Easter, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, they have alienated
other communities now, and we are no closer to equality,” he told The
Washington Post.
Board members
said they meant no disrespect to any religion.
“No matter how well-intentioned we are, it comes off as
insensitive” to Muslim families, said Michael A. Durso, the lone vote against
the calendar change, the Post reported.
“Political
correctness reaches a new level of absurdity,” one parent of former county
students commented on Facebook. “Next thing you know they’ll change the name of
Church Street in Rockville.”
This
hullabaloo didn’t have to happen. Many school districts have already quit
mentioning Christmas, Easter and the Jewish holidays on their official
calendars – and it hasn’t caused a fuss. Baltimore city schools have Winter Holiday
and Spring Break.
Montgomery County
board members cited the example of Winter Break instead of Christmas Vacation
in Fairfax County, Virginia’s largest school district. Fairfax’s Spring Break
is March 30 through April 3 next year, and April 6 is a Student Holiday, a.k.a.
elsewhere as Easter Monday.
The diverse Fairfax district also has an online combined
calendar of religious events that teachers can consult in planning lessons. For
example, Sikh Martyrdom Day is Nov. 24; Bodhi Day, a Buddhist celebration, and
the Feast of the Immaculate Conception in the Roman Catholic Church are Dec.
8.
A check of
websites finds other Virginia districts that call their time off Winter and
Spring Breaks include Richmond, Alexandria and Lynchburg. The school calendar
in Bristol, Va., highlights Christmas programs, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day
but doesn’t formally name the December vacation; Easter is mentioned as part of
Spring Break.
In Atlanta, the December holidays
are called Semester Break.
Most people
understand that schools cannot and should not favor one religion over another,
and calling holidays Winter Break and Spring Break may make religious
minorities feel more accepted, a worthy goal. It’s not as if anyone needs a
school calendar to remind that it’s Christmas.
At the same
time, not all districts are silent about Christmas. Dothan City Schools in
Alabama have Christmas Break and schools are closed for Good Friday. And some
districts are putting Christmas back into December.
In 2006,
Falcon School District northeast of Colorado Springs, Colo., returned to
Christmas Break after receiving a letter from a religious rights group. In
Woodbury, Tenn., the Cannon County Board of Education agreed in October 2013 to
again call the December days off Christmas Break.
When the
school committee in Marshfield, Mass., a coastal town near Boston, changed the
December calendar to Holiday Break, residents started a petition drive,
demanding that Christmas Vacation be restored. More than 2,000 names have been
collected.
Conservatives
often rage against a War on Christmas. That’s silly, given the country’s obsession
with the holiday. But we live in an age of silly political fights. A War on
Winter Break could be next.
©2014 Marsha
Mercer. All rights reserved.
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