On The Front Lines
John W. Whitehead, Rutherford Institute President, to Appear on Fox News O'Reilly Factor About Christmas Under Siege in the Schools
'Twelve Rules of Christmas' Guidelines Available at www.rutherford.orgCHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute, will appear as a guest on Fox News Channel's O'Reilly Factor, which airs tonight (December 9, 2004) at 8 p.m., EST, and 11 p.m., EST. Whitehead will talk about the growing tendency among public schools and government officials to ban references to Christmas or Christianity during the holiday season and what students, parents and teachers can do to fight back. The Rutherford Institute has published "The Twelve Rules of Christmas," a simple, step-by-step guide to understanding what can and cannot be done to celebrate the holidays in public. "The Twelve Rules of Christmas" is available on The Rutherford Institute's website at www.rutherford.org.
"Whether through ignorance or fear, Americans are painfully misguided about the recognition of religious holidays," said John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute. "Every year we hear many complaints from parents about school officials banning any reference to the word 'Christmas.' There is an irrational bias against anything remotely religious unless it's sanitized and secularized, and unfortunately far too many parents, students and teachers erroneously believe they cannot do anything to celebrate Christmas in the public schools."
Already this year, reports have surfaced about misguided attempts by government and school officials to censor expressions of Christmas. For example, in Washington, a school principal cancelled a school trip to see a staging of Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," in part because it raised the issue of religion in the public schools; in New Jersey, a school banned religious carols; in Denver, people were barred from singing hymns in a parade. Some schools and libraries have even taken to banning Christmas trees. Institute attorneys recently intervened in a situation in which a Florida elementary school omitted songs about Christmas from its holiday concert program while including songs celebrating Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and the "winter season." Institute legal staff addressed the school's fear of violating the so-called "separation of church and state" by pointing out that not only does the First Amendment's Establishment Clause not mandate that all Christian religious references be banished from the classroom, but that the school's conspicuous exclusion of Christmas from the program was in itself a violation of the Establishment Clause.
The Rutherford Institute is an international, nonprofit civil liberties organization committed to defending constitutional and human rights.
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