The war on Christmas music has taken a strange turn, with the mainstream media finally up in arms at the overly PC handling of the holiday’s song lyrics. But it isn’t the constant barrage from uber-sensitive atheists trying to eliminate every reference to Christmas from our schools and public places that has them fired up.
No, it’s an elementary teacher in Michigan that has raised their ire.
The flurry of controversy arose when the teacher, weary of hearing her students giggling every time they had to sing the words ‘gay apparel’ during their rendition of Deck The Halls, decided to replace the word ‘gay’ with ‘bright’.
The reception from the media, as you may have heard, was rather chilly.
What you may not have heard covered in the MSM was an essay penned by one Colin Curran, a 16-year-old high school junior from New Jersey. Taking to the Huffington Post during this same time period, Colin told a story about a high school assignment which involved creating a music playlist for a young children’s holiday breakfast. There was one catch – none of the songs could contain a certain set of offending words, such as Christmas, Hanukah, Jesus, God, or Santa Clause. The reason, Colin explains, is that the “principal does not want to offend anyone with belief-specific music”.
Google Colin’s name under the news section and it reveals a single hit, having nothing to do with the student from New Jersey. Google ‘bright apparel’ and it’s a whole different ballgame.
Here is a sampling of some of the coverage:
“Parents thought the Cherry Knoll teacher had been naughty and not so nice when the elementary instructor replaced ‘gay’ with ‘bright’ after her students wouldn’t stop laughing when they sang the word.”
“Use it as a teaching moment or just tell the kids to pipe down and sing the song as written.”
“Someone had to straighten out that carol - can't have children donning gay apparel.”
“A Michigan music teacher's decision to censor the word ‘gay’ from a traditional Christmas carol is being met with a frosty response.”
“A traditional Christmas carol is at the center of controversy at a TCAPS elementary school.”
Of course, the school’s principal, Chris Parker, didn’t miss an opportunity to crank the PC up a notch by calling this a ‘teachable moment’ for student and teacher alike.
In a report for ABC 57 News, Parker doubles down on his overreaction saying, “We have an anti-bullying and discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation and so going forward, the teacher will be addressing ‘this is how we're supposed to be reacting. This is the way to be respectful about this.’”
The amount of attention being heaped upon the Deck the Halls non-troversy, and the lack of attention being paid to the omission of Christmas altogether from a music playlist in New Jersey are striking.
Why no outrage over the removal of basic, essential elements of many holiday songs? Christmas songs eliminated? References to God and Santa Clause? Now that’s okay. But gay? That’s just going too far.
Instead, we get snarky reminders from the offended parties that ‘gay’ does actually mean ‘happy’ by definition, a lesson we all learned growing up when we looked at our parents, giggling with immature minds, as the theme song to The Flintstones played on the television.
We get it, oh-overly-offended-ones.
But why such a hostile reception for a teacher simply trying to make life easier on herself with a group of children? Especially when all one has to do is look up Deck the Halls on Wikipedia to see an original version of the lyrics, featuring the line, “Don we now our bright apparel.”
I find it fascinating that the same people that are outraged that a teacher would remove the word 'gay' from a Christmas song, are the same people who would voice zero opposition if the word 'Christmas' were removed from a Christmas song.
Follow Rusty on Twitter @rustyweiss74, or e-mail him at weiss.rusty@gmail.com
