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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (188878)	12/17/2006 10:43:59 AM
From: Rambi	Respond to of 793990

I just finished reading the Mark Steyn column and thought it was excellent. It also reminded me that I had never gotten back to your post due to a wild concert week. Most of the schools refer to their Christmas concerts as Holiday Concerts in public, but you can hear the quote marks around it. We all know darn well these are Christmas concerts here in Texas, at least in the suburbs. I do remember the one year we used public schools in Dallas (kindergarten- 1985), the concert had nothing but secular music. I thought it was dreadful. PRobably in such a large city, there is a great deal of PC pressure. The directors choose the repertoire, staying within the legal guidelines of how much "religious" music you can do. I am guessing we far exceeded it at the festival, if you added in the carollers marching around. Every choir director I have worked for has had a second job as a church director or is very active in his or her church, and I do think they can forget about the restrictions without meaning to be nonPC. The church is a huge part of life around here. There have been occasional complaints. We have an excellent and supportive Director of Fine Arts in the district (a very dear friend of mine, so I get the inside scoop on this stuff) who is terrific at disarming these people, though. I don't believe anything has gone beyond the whining or questioning level. I have thought about it a lot this year. I am not religious, so my belief that we have gone way too far in wiping Christian references and traditions from our common culture is not based on any desire to convert people or force anyone to participate. However, I believe that one of the dangers we face as a country is an increasing weakness in the commonalities that bind us together. The wonderful community customs so many of us have shared and still want to share with our neighbors and children often have Christian roots, and to eradicate all this in an attempt to avoid offending anyone at all, has, in my very humble opinion, serious repercussions for us as a nation. There is no reason those from other cultures, other religions, can't enjoy the traditional American celebration as exactly that- not a proselytizing but a representation of our cultural past. I am a strong supporter of separation of church and state, but for me this is about a great deal more than religion. I do understand the objections and the dangers and the legal issues; I just think it has gone too far. So Mark Steyn, with whom I am often not in agreement though I love his writing, nailed it for me in his column in his comments about common culture. An ability to prioritize is an indispensable quality of adulthood, and a sense of proportion is a crucial ingredient of a mature society.