No Candy Cane For You!

America has become a peculiar place, especially for people of faith in general, and Christianity in particular.

Last week, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments involving a religious discrimination case out of Plano, Texas. Students of several elementary schools in that district have been strictly prohibited from referencing Christmas and even vague Christian references and symbols.

This means that red and green Christmas colors are banned from the classroom in December, and students who write cards to soldiers or shut-ins at retirement homes are not permitted to write “Merry Christmas” on any of the correspondence. At “winter party” celebrations, gift bags are examined. If any of the “goodies” reference the spiritual side of the season, the items are confiscated.

In one school, a student was prohibited from giving friends candy-cane-shaped pens that included a card detailing a Christian legend that’s attached to the holiday sweet.

The Plano school district has spent over a million dollars in legal fees defending their policies that scrub even the most remote reference to the word “Christmas” from their schools.

All in the name of tolerance.

That school districts have become hypersensitive about the expression of “religion” isn’t all that new or news, but cases like this are startling, if only because of the degree to which common sense and reason has gone missing.

Reverse religious discrimination is growing – at the same time common sense appears to be less common than ever before.

In many cases, American school administrators are struggling and worried – but perhaps, as evidenced in Plano, Texas, they are worried and concerned about the wrong things.