Two Small Christmas Miracles

Two Small Christmas Miracles

Every once in a great while, the public education community slips up and forgets its NEA-dictated politically correct liberalism.

It happened last year at a Long Island middle school awards ceremony when a soldier just back from Iraq was honored by allowing him to present a good citizenship citation to a student.

After being introduced and before he was able to make the presentation, the soldier was showered with appreciation by the 800-strong audience. They leapt to their collective feet to offer their own award for his service, a standing ovation that went on for minutes.

Teachers and school administrators in the district, which will not be identified to protect the innocent, were belatedly embarrassed into joining in.

Well, it happened again, this time at a concert–not a Christmas concert, of course, but rather a “winter concert”–at a high school in the same district where not only were America’s armed forces honored but Chistmas melodies, including religious-themed hymns, were performed and met with comparable approbation.

When the National Education Association gets wind of that combined patriotic/religious rebellion, heads will surely roll.

In the greater scheme of political correctness, neither the military tribute nor the celebration of Christmas were earth-shaking yet both represented a radical departure from the PC norm in the Long Island neck of the national woods. They furnished irrefutable proof that there is some hope for sanity in Democrat Lawn Guyland.

After the band director asked veterans and active duty members of the Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force to stand at the appropriate moment, the Symphonic Band offered selections from the fight songs of all four branches of America’s military.

Unprompted, the audience enthusiastically applauded both the servicemen and women and “Anchors Aweigh,” “The Caisons Go Rolling Along,” “The Marines Hymn,” and “The U.S. Air Force.”

Pacifists in the audience must have been cringing.

The Festival Chorus then sang a rendition of Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time Is Here,” a cheery song about sleigh bells and snow flakes which could pass muster even with atheistic grinches. The festival choristers went overboard when they followed that innocuous holiday ditty with the gospel song, “Every Time I Feel the Spirit.”

Whatever was the chorus director thinking when he allowed public school kids to sing, “Ev’ry time I feel the spirit moving in my heart, I will pray. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=10912.)