Katherine: Conservative in Training

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Silent Night, Holy Night

Silent Night, the most recorded song in history, has now become Cold in the Night to an elementary school in Dodgeville, Wisconsin. The school changed the words to Silent Night for their �winter program�, making the lyrics as follows:

Cold in the night,
No one in sight,
Winter winds
Whirl and bite,
How I wish I were happy and warm,
Safe with my family out of the storm.

Liberty Council, a religious-liberty law firm, says this year�s winter program has children decorating classrooms with various figures from many religious celebrations this time of year, including Santa Claus, menorahs, and Labafana, a mythical witch that Italian children use as part of their Christmas celebrations. Liberty Council sent a letter to the school demanding a change in the winter program. They will file suit if their demands are not met immediately.

Personally, I agree with the Liberty Council on this matter. Schools were first used to teach students how to read the Bible on their own. Of course, nobody really thinks about that now, but that is what schools were meant to do. If that doesn�t prove that schools are against Christianity, then maybe these facts will.

Books by Plato, Homer, and other classic authors from the Greco-Roman era would have been lost after the fall of Rome if not for the movement that Saint Patrick started. Missionaries following in Patrick�s footsteps founded monasteries that preserved these wondrous books for over a thousand years. In later years, these manuscripts were publicly available via the printing press.

In other words, the classic works of ancient civilization that sit in university libraries would have not endured the thousands of years that they did if it weren�t for the Christian, Saint Patrick. This is one thing that I never learned in my Social Studies class, but from a book entitled How the Irish Saved Civilization (by Thomas Cahill), which explains this matter in detail. I guess that means that the school board picks and chooses what they want us students to know from history, leaving out a large percentage of history having to deal with Christian figures, all for the sake of a Constitutional prohibition that doesn�t exist: religious neutrality.

This interpretation of law prohibits discussing only one religion in the classrooms. That�s just one example of prejudice against Christianity.

This also reminded me about an occurrence that happened at school about a month ago in my Social Science class. A girl abruptly says �Christ was born on Christmas Eve, but the Wise Men gave him gifts on Christmas Day.�
My teacher tells her �Christ is a religious figure and you are preaching a religion in class, which is against the law�.
A boy pipes up, �But he�s a historical figure as well!�
�She still can�t talk about him at school,� my teacher retorted, and went on to explain that even though Christians might believe that Christ was a real person, other people don�t and that�s why their was a law against preaching religion in school.

I felt sorry for the girl who started this in the first place because she was accused that day of preaching a religion when she was just stating a historical fact. What many people don�t understand is that Christ is a historical figure as well as a religious figure and the only thing arguable about that is weather or not Christ is a higher being.

Schools state that some things in history are too religious to be taught in a Social Science class. Enough is enough! I want a full history education, not just somebody�s opinion on what I should know and what I shouldn�t know. The fact is that schools just don�t want us to know what a major role Christianity has played throughout history.

If society truly wants to remove any record of the contributions of Christianity, then they should just let Michael Newdow win his lawsuit. By its actions, the Wisconsin school board is agreeing with the beliefs of Michael Newdow and allowing radicals like him to shape the future of our country.

Students are not as educated as they need to be in order to understand that what they have now could be lost forever.  They need to stand back, appreciate, and think about what they can do to preserve the many books and the complete history of our era for future generations to enjoy, as others did for us.