Your stupid's showing.

WOAI had this one yesterday.

The War on Christmas has started early around here.

There State Board of Education is proposing a slight change in the World Cultures curriculum. (There was no such thing when I was in sixth grade; if I recall correctly it was one of our two Texas History years.) Apparently, there's a portion where cultures are studied through the lens of religious holidays.

The change being proposed will have this look at said holidays study one from each of the world's six major religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, & Jainism). Currently, two from Judaism and Christianity are studied, and apparently none from Hinduism, as the insertion of Diwali is what's being debated.

It is being proposed that Rosh Hashanah be scrapped, and I guess that's OK 'cause those people don't even cross themselves right. Or something.

But we can't drop Christmas! According to Jonathan Saenz of the Texas Free Market Foundation (which, as a "libertarian" group, really shouldn't be in favor of teaching any religious holidays in school, methinks), "it's hard for anyone to argue that any other holiday has the same significance that Christmas does, especially in American societies."

He is right, of course. Christmas's importance in American society stretches far beyond religious observances. Virtually everyone here celebrates the holiday in some form. Even neoPagans do this, some of whom erect a "solstice tree" and proclaim the evergreen's ties to a whole bunch of religions they don't practice. (It's okay to co-opt a symbol that's been Christian at least since the Reformation, so long as you proclaim it to have in turn been co-opted from pagans by the Catholic church. But I digress.) Certainly, it's a Federal holiday, and there is always a Christmas tree in the White House and typically at each State capitol, and of course at every friggin' mall in existence, not to mention Wal-Mart...It's all over in the US.

And it is precisely because he is right about Christmas's significance that he is wrong that it should not be dropped from the curriculum.

Apparently, sixth graders aren't the only ones who need to be taught what Christianity's holiest day actually is.