The Byam Elementary School in Chelmsford, Massachusetts asked parents to donate holiday gifts to the school’s holiday gift shop; the shopping days were December 1-4. Shopping guidelines informed that “Seasonal items such as snowmen, mittens, snowflakes are a big hit.”
But the school also had a list of “Items NOT Permitted.” The school was very specific about which items it considered taboo: “No Christmas, Chanukah, or religious items,” and “No Santa, candy canes or stockings.” How snowmen made the cut but stockings did not was not explained.
The school, of course, observed Christmas by closing, yet it would not allow Christmas gifts to be sold in its holiday gift shop, thus making it inexplicable why gifts celebrating the holiday being celebrated were banned.
Some may have seen this as absurd. We saw it as pernicious: in the name of diversity and inclusion, the multicultural tyrants got to do what they have always wanted to do—censor Christmas. Parents upset by this authoritarian decision met to overturn the ban—it failed. We asked our members to contact the school’s principal, and they didn’t disappoint.
