Christmas in Public Schools

I am always a bit miffed, and even somewhat surprised, at the animosity shown in some public schools towards Christmas.  No religious songs, some schools don't even want Rudolph or Santa ... it's so foreign to me.  When I was in high school, I sang in choir for two years and we did Christmas shows.  We did sing some Jewish songs (I remember singing a beautiful piece called "Adonai" one year), but mostly, it was Christmas.  A Christmas show.  With Christmas songs.  And a lot of them were (gasp!) religious.

I also know that there are some areas where this is still the case.  It's most likely in the more rural areas of the country, but it's not something Fox News will bring up with their "War on Christmas" specials.  Even Fox has no idea what life in fly-over country is like.  Out here in my town, we have a Christmas parade, a Christmas tree, and a day of Christmas celebration downtown with a craft fair.  One year, the mayor of town wished everyone a merry Christmas and finished up with, "And may God bless us all," as he lit the tree.

Anyway, here are a few of the songs I sang with my choir for the Christmas shows:

(I like this "Silent Night" in part because of the ASL.)






I'm pretty sure we also did this song, and the particular arrangement below is just heavenly!

We did some secular, wintery type songs, too, but these are just some of the flat-out hymns we sang. We had a particularly nice arrangement of "God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen" and "Good Christian Men, Rejoice" combined. I wish I could find THAT!