... the kids go for their non-religious gifts under their nonoffensive snowman at Christmas

Mail Tribune

The holiday giving tree... Green... surreal and offensive.

Offensive?!?

Students returning from Thanksgiving break were surprised to find that there Christmas holiday gift tree had been replaced by a couple of snowmen where the tree had stood.

Bellview Elementary School Principal Michelle Zundel at Ashland, acting on a family's complaint and complaints from a few students, that the school's Christmas holiday gift tree was a religious symbol and therefore immediately ordered the offending tree removed.

After which, Zundel created new guidelines for school school sponsored holiday displays which effectively bans all decorations that are "legally categorized as secular" which includes Christmas holiday trees, Santa Claus figures, and dreidels.

"these children felt somehow less welcome at their own school, having that symbol so prominently displayed." Said Zundel .

Zundel acknowledges that the US Supreme Court has ruled that Christmas holiday trees are not a religious symbol and that they may be legally displayed in schools, however, for the sake of religious neutrality she felt that they should be taken down.

"Because we have compulsory attendance in our schools, we need to be more sensitive than the law requires," Zundel said. "The displays promoted by a public school should be religiously neutral."

Alison Hamik, a Bellevue parent who help organize the giving tree program said, "we didn't put religious symbols on it." Hamik said that she had spoken with more than 100 Bellevue parents who were upset from the Christmas holiday trees removal.
Under the new guidelines, wreaths, candles, candy canes, snowflakes and snowmen are acceptable for holiday displays and considered religiously neutral and boring .

and it starts again... one or two people who are "offended" ruins it for everybody else. These people need to get out and get a life and get real.

And for all those people who are offended about Christmas, I hope that you plan to go to work on Christmas day and not take advantage of the holiday, in addition, don't expect time and a half.