Christmas carol ban on school choir

A school choir has been banned from singing Christmas carols at a
festive celebration because organisers wanted to "remove any religious
content", it was claimed.

About 60 pupils from Arthur Bugler Junior
School, in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, had been due to perform at the
Corringham Winter Festival, in Corringham, Essex.

But after the youngsters had finished
rehearsals, organisers told them their role would not "dovetail" with
the event, local Conservative councillor Danny Nicklen said.

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Not sure what to make of this. You can Google the details and get every viewpoint from the Sun to the Telegraph, Channel 4 to BBC.

But leaving aside the obvious
observation that Christmas has just a modicum of religious content, and
ignoring the obviously awkward semantic evidence (Christ – mas, for goodness
sake) – what is going on here?

 This isn’t a move to avoid religious discrimination, but a
decision which discriminates against religion. In a pluralist society are all
those who have religious affiliations, who live by religious traditions, or who
wish to celebrate the contribution of religion to our cultural history and
contemporary reality to be denied that opportunity on locally sponsored events?
Is this then, the organisers' way of educating young people into attitudes of
respect for the other, tolerance of the different, acknowledgement of the
richness that comes from cultural diversity?

 As a Baptist my interest here is not so much on behalf of offended
Christianity. My reluctance to laugh at this level of PC stupidity is directly
related to my convictions about religious liberty and tolerance and the defence of
religious freedoms. Quite apart from the nonsense of a celebration at this time
of the year that wishes to exclude religious
content, (winter festivals have long pagan roots and are by definition religious ritual), my resistance is to the underlying
agenda and assumed powers of those who wish to re-invent religious festivals by redefining them to
secular ends, as if local prejudice could be the arbiter of what is culturally, humanly and
socially important.

 Presumably the good Councillors had a problem with the idea
of a “Wonderful Counsellor”; or do organisers have no great solidarity with sentiments such as “peace
on earth and mercy mild”; or couldn't they cope with the imaginative excesses of “light and life to all he brings, risen
with healing in his wings”. But counsel, peace, mercy and healing are important
human aspirations, essential to the health of the world community, and they are not the exclusive spiritual property of any
faith tradition. But when such faith traditions wish to celebrate the great
themes and festivals, I expect those who represent local people to embody those
attitudes of citizenship, mutual respect and indeed tolerance that they wish to
inculcate in others, including and especially our young people.

 Oh – and the time and energy and enjoyment of all those young people's
practising and rehearsing deserved better than this display of pp – political
petulance / politicial philistinism. The pc (politically correct) thing to do would be to affirm, encourage,
understand and reward what is good in a community – including religious celebration. And if there was a breakdown of communication, and the carols didn't 'dovetail' with the winter festival theme, at what stage does the 'theme' become more important than affirming the young people from the community the Festival is supposed to be for?