When Tala's religious education teacher wished all kids in class a Merry Christmas, we knew there was something different here. Noah and Nissa had a full Christmas agenda at their public school , including Christmas parties, Christmas concerts, Christmas assemblies, and even Christmas discos. Christmas actually lasts a full month in the UK, so there was plenty of school time devoted to it. Nissa became quite fond of Christmas carols, often asking us to read over the lyrics while she sang so she could make sure she was singing them correctly.
Mindy did get asked to come into class to talk about the Jewish holiday of Passover (!), not Channukah. When asked why Channukah, the teacher explained that the national curriculum called for finishing up the Old Testament in December so that they could teach the New Testament in the winter (which would allow it to coincide with Easter). It's hard to think of asking someone to give a presentation about Easter in December, but so it goes. When the kids told their friends they didn't celebrate Christmas because they were Jewish, their friends were incredulous.
So, after a couple of days of being perplexed and a bit angry, we came to appreciate the separation of church and state we've grown up with. We like that Christmas isn't an American holiday (like it is a British holiday here), although it sometimes feels like that, and that being Jewish isn't so completely an oddity back home.
We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. We celebrated ours in the Lake District (next blog post) where our rented cottage had our very first ever Christmas tree (picture above).
No comments:
Post a Comment