Would removing Santa Claus from a school hallway be a good thing?

[Bonobo]

I am Jewish. I grew up feeling excluded especially around Christmas time.

As a kid, I probably wished that Santa Claus could have been expunged from the school.

As an adult, I have learned a little more about tolerance.

Now I think that the world would be better with more tolerance and less "me, me me."

[ZombieHorde]

1. In my opinion, yes, removing Santa from the hallway would be a good thing.

Why does it need to be rubbed in children's faces at school?

[Warren DeMontague]

2. Kind of depends on Santa

Still, this "teh mean intolerant atheists and secularists are stealing all the fun from public school students, who have nowhere besides public schools, apparently, where they can encounter Santa, be led in prayers, hear "equal time" for Young Earth Creationist arguments, or get exhortations about Jesus and football!!!!" meme is getting REAL fucking old.

The vast majority of this country are Christians, and they're not suffering unduly from intolerance or being picked on or any of that shit. As I've said elsewhere, there are millions of acres of TAX EXEMPT church property in this country. Funny how the only available spaces for manger displays or 10 commandment monuments, etc. are on public grounds, like courthouse lawns or in front of city hall.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

3. lol, ya depends on Santa

Personally, I say to hell with Santa and his consumerist drivel. (And yes, I think Hobo with a shotgun was the best film of 2011.)

[Bonobo]

4. I hear you. But is anything gained?

Speaking then as the grade-school jewish kid I was...

OK, so Santa gets taken off the walls. It creates what? More inclusion? less discrimination against me as a Jewish kid?

Are those pricks going to throw less pennies at me now?

No. They won't.

But I will have helped reinforce, maybe, the idea that there is a war, a conflict going on.

Perhaps I will have created more resistance rather than accomplishing what I wanted which was to allow me to fit in better.

The world doesn't always behave as simply as we think it might be.

In Buddhism, you learn that most people grab for what they want and push away what they don't like.

Neither actions lead to the desired goal of reducing suffering.

[Warren DeMontague]

5. I'll be honest, I'm carrying attitude from a different -yet related- thread, and am not familiar

with the particulars of this story.

(I wandered in here straight out of the story regarding the Atheist kid who is getting death threats after successfully suing to have a prayer removed from the school cafeteria walls)

I think there's a difference between that situation and this one, again, not knowing the particulars of the story. I don't think Santa is a particularly religious figure, and I know that in school districts with lots of diversity, even, it is possible to acknowledge the holiday traditions of a range of students without seeming to endorse a particular one. I don't think Santa, per se, is such a big deal.

[Bonobo]

6. It is a deeply felt issue on all sides, that is clear.

I am trying to discuss the issue without being too concrete and from a philosophical point of view.

I am saying that by resisting things less directly, you also give the other side less force.

By adding your own force to the equation, you give more power to the conflict.

A resolution is needed, but is force vs. force the best way?

[Warren DeMontague]

8. I don't know if a 'resoultion is needed' on something like Santa.

On something like an explicit prayer or religious observation in a public school, OTOH, I have trouble getting all Lao Tzu/Sun Tzu. It's cut and dried, to me, and to the Supreme Court for the past 50 years as well.

[ThomThom]

20. santa was created by Coke as an advertising thing

like the polar bears....he is not religious

[JI7]

7. i'm not Christian and wasn't raised Christian but never really considered Santa to be

religious. so Santa , Christmas trees etc never bothered me. i always participated in the Christmas stuff which had more to do with Candy, gifts, decorations and nothing about god, Jesus.

[newfie11]

9. I also never thought of Santa as religious

Just some old fat funny dressed guy with presents. Nothing religious.

[Luminous Animal]

10. He just happens to show up in Jesus's birthday.

[joshcryer]

15. Naw, Jesus' birthday was made to be correlated with those dirty Pagan's...

...who enjoyed nice smelling pine trees. Santa was an early 1930s corporate invention to sell stuff on said holiday (note: the lore behind Santa goes back further than that, I realize, but it didn't become popularized in consumer culture until the 1930s).

Meanwhile the OP's opposition to Santa Claus is no different than the "War On Christmas" approach, neither of course being actually for religious freedom, as they both make exceptions for corporate religious figures, inanimate or not. If you're going to have schools cleansed of any sort of outside religious interference you should ban all things that even remotely coerce children into being consumers of said things.

[joshcryer]

11. Only if you ban Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Sony, etc.

As Santa is merely just another corporate religious figure.

[Bonobo]

14. Oh I hate moral purity tests!

They make me so aaaangry!!!

On the other hand, at least Santa never used US taxpayer money to overturn a regime they had supported for decades as soon as they discovered there were more items in the "Plus" column -and then cynically pretended it was for humanitarian reasons.

[joshcryer]

16. So you're OK with Santa now?

Let us be clear, Santa is not a religious figure as such, he has been a corporate entity since the 1930s.

[joshcryer]

18. FYI, I'm a major consumer advocate.

My hope is that one day people defend "open hardware" and "open data" as voraciously as they defend their favorite capitalist-derived consumer gadget or toy, and that they'll reject the capitalist consumer derivation that so consume them without empathy or caring to this day.

[TexasProgresive]

12. Yes Santa sold his soul when he became a whore for Macy's n/t

[joshcryer]

17. Santa wouldn't even be relevant if it weren't for the 1930s push to make him into something.

He'd be a niche figure in very small circles and there would be very little "new lore" about him. No "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." No Red Nosed Reindeer, etc, etc.

[justiceischeap]

13. Santa isn't real... I mean it, he's not real.

I like to think of the fact that Santa Claus and many other christian traditions were actually stolen from Pagan's--making it much easier to convert them. There is much speculation on SC; one being that he was invented but based on the Norse god, Odin. The other is that there was never a St. Nicholas, the church just made him up; you know, making it much easier to convert Pagans. Yet another belief is that there was a St. Nick but those who worshipped him, actually place his bones on the alter of a female gift-giving deity and basically, they stole her identity (even in 325 CE the man was keeping women down). Anyway, the St. Nick cult spread north until it was adopted by... wait for it... Pagans.

Doesn't answer your question but fun little facts to know. It's also fun to know how much of christianity is based on Paganism (probably why so many fundies want to do away with science and history--they can't deal with the fact that they're basically Pagans without the whole being nice and respectful thing).

[COLGATE4]

19. I don't think that a child feeling excluded from essentially

all of his/her classmates at Xmas time constitutes a case of "me, me, me". There is no good reason any child in school, for any reason should be made to feel an outsider, not 'one of the rest'.

[hughee99]

21. Will removing Santa bring the people of different religions together

or reinforce which ones are not xtians. Perhaps in the short term it will be worse, not better, for an outsider. Take Santa down when holiday decorations come down this year, and don't put him back up next year might work better. New kids won't notice.

Instead of having children feeling excluded over Santa, perhaps it would be better to let them spend more time thinking about the 100 other ways that kids can feel excluded.

[Union Scribe]

22. Probably, since it's almost February.

The old boy's gotta go recharge for next time.