An Oregon school district has banned Christmas trees to be more inclusive during the yuletide season.
My good friend Lars Larson, the nationally-syndicated talk radio host, first reported that the Hillsboro School District had banished Christmas trees.
When staffers in the district’s transportation department got word of the ban they staged a protest — by setting up their own Christmas tree in the bus barn.
Larson said the district’s “transportation czar” ordered the school bus drivers to “tear down the Christmas tree.”
He obtained a memorandum that was sent to staffers telling them to “decorate, but nothing directly Christmas specific.”
“Let’s start with no tree,” Carol Hatfield wrote to staffers. “Is this really about a Christmas tree, or is it about unconscious bias and privilege?”
Larson said she then ordered them to decorate with more focus on “other cultural celebrations like Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Posadas Navideñas, and Bodhi Day.”
“Parents, ask yourselves: if this is the kind of indoctrination the bus drivers get, what do you suppose they’ll do to your children,” Larson said.
It’s a fair question worth considering. I happen to be a Christian American who celebrates the reason for the season, but that just my unconscious bias and privilege talking.
The school district fails to understand that Christmas is not only a Christian holiday, but it’s also a federal holiday. And the Christmas tree is a secular symbol of the holiday. So, my encouragement to the school bus drivers in Hillsboro would be to deck their halls with boughs of holly — no matter if that means it jingles somebody’s bells.
