{"id":31,"date":"2010-12-02T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html"},"modified":"2010-12-02T07:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-02T07:00:00","slug":"should-schools-drop-religious-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html","title":{"rendered":"Should Schools Drop Religious Holidays?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"3897629912_d153099ff6.jpg\"<\/span>According to this week’s Boston Globe<\/a>, two public school districts are considering a move to drop all religious holidays from school calendars next year. This bold potential change causes us to question, “Should schools drop religious holidays?”<\/b><\/p>\n

While most Americans would agree public schools should not be promoting any particular religion, views on religious holidays can be considered from a different perspective. First, there is the culture of the area and\/or nation. A holiday such as Christmas or Easter could be taken off as part of a standard break (Winter Break or Spring Break) to include these times without a focus on a particular religious holiday. This is currently the approach taken by many schools as these are natural times when families travel and celebrate various traditions.<\/p>\n

Another important distinction, and one that can be seen as unique in the United States from recent moves by many Western European nations, is our country’s emphasis on allowing a plurality of religious expressions rather than limiting religious expression<\/b>. This is, in my opinion, a huge advantage of living in America, and one I pray will continue. In doing so, we allow local school districts options for a broad range of celebrating holidays, not to dismiss them due to a faulty view of separating religious traditions from society.<\/p>\n

\n
+++<\/p>\n

DILLON
\nBURROUGHS is an author, activist, and co-founder of Activist Faith.
\nDillon served in Haiti following the epic 2010 earthquake and has
\ninvestigated modern slavery in the US and internationally. His books
\ninclude “Undefending Christianity,” “Not in My Town” (with Charles J.
\nPowell), and “Thirst No More” (October 2011). Discover more at
\nDillonBurroughs.org<\/a>.  <\/span>
<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to this week’s Boston Globe, two public school districts are considering a move to drop all religious holidays from school calendars next year. This bold potential change causes us to question, “Should schools drop religious holidays?” While most Americans would agree public schools should not be promoting any particular religion, views on religious holidays…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":230,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-faith"],"yoast_head":"\nShould Schools Drop Religious Holidays? - Activist Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Should Schools Drop Religious Holidays? - Activist Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"According to this week’s Boston Globe, two public school districts are considering a move to drop all religious holidays from school calendars next year. This bold potential change causes us to question, “Should schools drop religious holidays?” While most Americans would agree public schools should not be promoting any particular religion, views on religious holidays…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Activist Faith\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-02T07:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/activistfaith\/files\/import\/3897629912_d153099ff6.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dillon Burroughs\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Should Schools Drop Religious Holidays? - Activist Faith","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Should Schools Drop Religious Holidays? - Activist Faith","og_description":"According to this week’s Boston Globe, two public school districts are considering a move to drop all religious holidays from school calendars next year. This bold potential change causes us to question, “Should schools drop religious holidays?” While most Americans would agree public schools should not be promoting any particular religion, views on religious holidays…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html","og_site_name":"Activist Faith","article_published_time":"2010-12-02T07:00:00+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/activistfaith\/files\/import\/3897629912_d153099ff6.jpg"}],"author":"Dillon Burroughs","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html","name":"Should Schools Drop Religious Holidays? - Activist Faith","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/activistfaith\/files\/import\/3897629912_d153099ff6.jpg","datePublished":"2010-12-02T07:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2010-12-02T07:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/#\/schema\/person\/d931a1eb5dc2e7bf29e30bb1ea7d0311"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/activistfaith\/files\/import\/3897629912_d153099ff6.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/activistfaith\/files\/import\/3897629912_d153099ff6.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/2010\/12\/should-schools-drop-religious-holidays.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Should Schools Drop Religious Holidays?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/","name":"Activist Faith","description":"Christian Inspiration, Christian Blogs, Christian News, Top Christian Blogs","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/#\/schema\/person\/d931a1eb5dc2e7bf29e30bb1ea7d0311","name":"Dillon Burroughs","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7e\/e7e0e064c658f0c59bfb3c9a1a05121bx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7e\/e7e0e064c658f0c59bfb3c9a1a05121bx96.jpg","caption":"Dillon Burroughs"},"description":"DILLON BURROUGHS is an author, activist, and cofounder of Activist Faith. Dillon served in Haiti following the epic 2010 earthquake and has investigated modern slavery in the US and internationally. His books include \"Undefending Christianity,\" \"Not in My Town\" (with Charles J. Powell), and \"Thirst No More\" (October 2011). Discover more at DillonBurroughs.org.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/author\/dburroughs"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/230"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/activistfaith\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}