Try speaking in English to someone who doesn’t know the language.
After a failed attempt or two, invariably, you’ll start waving your hands and shouting, trying to get your point across, all while feeling more and more frustrated. The frustration makes you shout louder, as if that could bridge the gap, and hopelessness sets in as you are unable to communicate exactly what you want to say to the person you want to understand your point.
It happens all the time. In fact, it’s happening right now in a very public fashion in neighboring Bordentown. There, some people have been shouting and waving their hands for more than a month regarding a 10-song concert to be performed Dec. 3 by fourth graders at MacFarland Intermediate School.
The hubbub surrounds three pieces that are Christian worship songs. The prospect of children singing religious songs at a public school event made two sets of parents squeamish, and the unsettled folks brought their concerns to the school administration, who brought them to the school district’s legal team, who recommended striking the three offending songs, to be safe. Others saw this removal as an attack on tradition and the unfair marginalization of one religion.
People piled on one side or the other, began fighting online and spreading rumors. Some said the parents planned on suing the school district—this is not true. Others said the district banned the Pledge of Allegiance, presumably because it includes the word “God”—also untrue. But false or inaccurate information has fueled this fire, and there have been plenty of parties willing to spread it. Personalities from Fox News Channel and New Jersey 101.5 radio station have discussed the Bordentown situation on the air, and people from around the country have chimed in on social media sites. Often, these discussions have turned vitriolic.
When you look at the issue in its simplest form, it’s pretty silly that adults have spent several weeks arguing about the manner a handful of 9-year-olds will sing some songs. But, in this case, a bunch of pot-stirrers (many with no interest in resolving the conflict) churned the religious tension until it created a full-on battle. The “War on Christmas,” the standard bearers at Fox News call it.
But the whole situation is pointless mostly because the people involved are taking faith—an inherently personal matter—and debating about it in a political way in a public forum. There never will be a resolution satisfying to everyone because there isn’t an agreed-upon “right answer.” In the matter of faith, everyone thinks his/her opinion is the truth. Your faith is yours—and that’s the point.
Lost upon the bickerers is, your truth may not be your neighbor’s. This is just the reality of living in this country—no matter how hard you may try to convince or convert others. Opposing sides approach the subject from two different points of understanding, on two different planes. There’s very little that can be done to connect the two.
This is what’s happening with Bordentown, and it’s why the whole situation has become a muddled, confusing, bitter mess. No two people are speaking the exact same language.
This has created a tangle of points and counterpoints, a logic problem where it’s easy to lose your bearings. In the Hamilton Post office, we held three separate, hour-long conversations on the issue, and got nowhere. No one disagreed with another. The conversation remained civil. It merely was a hamster wheel—around and around with no end, achieving nothing.
In Bordentown, they have seen the same results, albeit in a less cordial atmosphere. The parents who raised the issue initially have had to endure insults and intimidation. The families have received hate mail, threats on social media and even a gathering of religious statues on their front steps. One would be hard-pressed to find teachings that would support how people have behaved.
Presumably, the people perpetrating these acts are mad about the tentative removal of religious Christmas songs from the school concert. Perhaps they’ve forgotten the very purpose of the Christmas holy day is to promote peace on Earth and goodwill toward man?
Social media has been the primary delivery method for ill words, with pundits in journalists’ clothing upping the ante from afar. Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly dubbed Bordentown Regional School District superintendent Constance Bauer a “pinhead,” as if this would add anything productive to public discourse. (By the way, O’Reilly regularly deems people “pinheads.” It’s his thing.)
Fox News columnist Todd Starnes also covered the controversy, and took credit for restoring Christmas songs to the concert with a Nov. 7 tweet that read, “Bordentown, NJ reverses ban on religious Christmas carols after my Fox report.” Only, the district hadn’t reversed the ban. It simply pushed responsibility for the concert’s content off on the music teacher.
Starnes has taken a keen interest in the “War on Christmas” and in the battles between religious and secular culture in the United States. He calls the latter the “Culture War.” Starnes’ latest book tells stories of “regular folks” from “Bitter America” and, on its cover, depicts a pair of overalls with a Bible in one pocket and a revolver in the other.
One user by the name Mary Lisa responded to Starnes’ Bordentown tweet by saying, “[O’Reilly] is taking credit for this cuz he threatened to go down there! I think it was all shining light on their darkness (sic),” as if Bordentown was a modern-day Sodom. There were a handful of responses like this.
“My husband and I are were inspired by your news story. Check out our rap video,” tweeted Melissa Strzala, an Ohio resident with no apparent connection to Bordentown.
Strzala dedicated the rap video—called “Christmas in This Country”—to Constance Bauer, and, it seems, intended for it to be humorous. The video features an image of a tweet that calls the superintendent a “scrooge,” among other things. Strzala has sent a link to the video to TV personalities Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Ellen DeGeneres and Glenn Beck. Does she seem concerned about the best interests of the children in Bordentown? Or maybe she has other objectives in mind?
The Bordentown situation has proven more than anything that “culture wars” aren’t won in the political or public arena. These are personal discussions, conversations where parents can teach their children the values that are important to them.
This way, children have the sense to know what really matters to them and their family, even if religious songs aren’t being sung in school. As any teacher will tell you, what goes on at the home has as much power—if not more—as what happens in school.
In the end, the whole scenario has a lot of people wanting to pull a Charlie Brown, and shout “Isn’t there anyone who knows what Christmas is all about?”
But those who celebrate Christmas should know it’s about something slightly different to each one of us. And that’s what makes it special.
