Schools Walk Fine Religious Line in Staging Holiday Festivities

At Sherman Elementary School in Barrio Logan, Santa Claus will alight by helicopter next Monday on the playground where 1,600 students from both Sherman and the nearby Our Lady’s Catholic School--plus interested parents--will be eagerly gathered.

Over the following three days, each student will get a personal chat and present from Santa as he or she walks caroling to his “workshop” at the Chicano Federation offices a block away from the school, an annual tradition that the heavily Latino community looks forward to, Principal Cecelia Estrada said.

Sherman’s heavy emphasis on Santa Claus contrasts sharply with the holiday focus at Bird Rock Elementary in La Jolla. There, Santa Claus will make his fourth annual visit Dec. 16, a low-key one--no helicopters, no parents, no student gifts except pencils for kindergartners. Instead, Santa will receive presents of poems or songs from each classroom, despite concerns expressed publicly by at least one parent that his appearance has religious connotations.

Different Emphasis

Principal Sandra Harding is confident that the Bird Rock celebration, which emphasizes giving to others, follows San Diego Unified School District policies on Christmas observances. But she will talk with the Parent-Teacher Assn. today and hold a forum with interested parents Thursday to allay any fears in the multireligious community about Santa’s visit being religious in nature.

As San Diego County’s school population becomes increasingly multiethnic and multicultural, administrators, principals and teachers are finding they must have a heightened sensitivity about handling the Christmas season in public schools.

“You might call this the ‘winter dilemma,’ ” said Jennifer Jeffries, a Fallbrook Elementary School District official who heads a countywide committee on religion in schools. “Christmas celebrations are in a real gray area, and they are really one of those things that each district and school must have a dialogue about.

“Our committee was started up this fall because we realize the increasing diversity in our students--not just Christians and Jews, but Islamic and Buddhist children--means that we have to think of new ways to include all kids in our cultural setting.”

San Diego district calls for stressing cultural aspects of religious holidays, asking that schools avoid religious messages that would be more appropriate in a church, synagogue or religious school.

“We need to be sensitive to the beliefs of all peoples, but I don’t know if you can have a hard and fast rule,” Tina Dyer, chief attorney for the district, said. “Is Santa Claus a religious symbol? Many would argue that he is secular today, that Santa is mainly commercial, but others will point out that he evolved from St. Nick and is clearly Christian.”

‘Fraught With Emotion’

“The subject is fraught with emotion, and the best time to deal with it is not in November and December,” said Morris Casuto, San Diego director of the Anti-Defamation League of B’Nai B’Rith and a member of the religion in schools committee. “The younger the child, the more the ‘imprint’ of the school can occur if there is a manger scene, for example, which is clearly religious.

“Where the tipping point is, I don’t know. I personally think that Christmas trees and Santa Claus are almost non-religious. I know the difference between day and night, but it’s much harder for me to say when day actually becomes night.”

The consensus among educators is that each school must tailor celebrations to neighborhood desires, within legal and political limitations.

For example, at Linda Vista Elementary--the school with the heaviest Indochinese enrollment, almost 60%, in the county--the school has no Christmas assemblies. Instead, celebrations focus on a February Brotherhood Festival that coincides with various Asian New Year’s celebrations, said Principal Adel Nadeau.

“It’s OK for a teacher to put up a tree or Santa Claus in a classroom, as long as it doesn’t stress religion, and we do carols like Frosty the Snowman,” Nadeau said. “I’ve never had Indochinese parents complain, but I don’t know if that is because they have no concerns or because they don’t question what we do as the ‘host’ society.”

The student council at Sessions Elementary School, on La Jolla’s Soledad Mountain Road, decided this fall to sing Christmas carols for senior citizens at a nearby nursing home. One parent contacted Principal Karen Gates-Marshall to ask about the suitability of singing religious songs, despite the fact that the public-service effort was to be voluntary and after school.

“I knew that, particularly in this community, I would hear from parents unless I set those ground rules and, lo and behold, I heard even before I could get the ground rules out!” Gates-Marshall said.

“I try to anticipate such problems, since we are supposed to be non-sectarian and we try to be multicultural and expose students to all different cultures. Kids do need to know that there are differences in religious beliefs and that not everyone believes in Santa Claus, although when talking with my staff earlier, we decided that the religion of Santa Claus is commercialism.”

Variety of Music

Musical selections for Torrey Pines Elementary’s annual concert include a cross-section of songs from different nationalities, cultures and languages.

“It’s very cosmopolitan, which is a reflection of our nearness to UC San Diego,” Principal Barry Bernstein said. “For example, we have many children from Iran, and we are including a Persian dance and song that is not celebrating Christmas but is for the wintertime.”

Bernstein said the school’s volunteer music teacher called the parents of a Jewish child to ask whether the student could sing, “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth,” as part of the music assembly.

“The parents were thrilled that they were asked and said there was no problem, since the song was not related to religious aspects,” Bernstein said.

But, as Gates-Marshall pointed out, while one community may want few religious songs, a community like the one near Sherman Elementary “would be very upset if they didn’t hear ‘Silent Night.’ ”

For many children at Sherman, the gift from Santa Claus--the role played alternately over the three-day period by members of the Chicano Federation and the San Diego Police Department--may be the only one they receive during the holidays. The gifts are donated by businesses.

“This got started because, before Horton Plaza was completed, our kids never saw a shopping center or had a chance to see Santa,” principal Estrada said. “That is why this is such a big thing in our community. Our Santas speak Spanish, English and even Cambodian.

“Personally I think Santa Claus is non-secular and this is what our community wants to do, to have a joint, big effort for Santa’s arrival.”

No Hard-and-Fast Policy

The Bird Rock parent who was bothered by Santa’s appearance called San Diego city school-board member Susan Davis.

“It is a dilemma for some people, especially in Bird Rock, which has more Jewish kids than Sherman,” Davis said. “That is why there is difficulty in setting a hard-and-fast policy, because we want to be sensitive to religious feelings but we also want schools to be sensitive to the needs of their neighborhoods.

“I don’t want us to be so rigid that there couldn’t be a Santa Claus anywhere, but when a school bombards the students with Santa Claus, then some kids can be made to feel uncomfortable and left out.”

Casuto of the Anti-Defamation League said: “The problem most often is where teachers inadvertently initiate programs with a religious nature that seem natural to them, without thinking of the numbers of students who do not believe in it.”

“I think the key is for teachers to understand how to include all students rather than exclude any student,” he said. “But we will continue to see this kind of ‘bumping’ between groups in San Diego because we are a new, growing community of different groupings that needs to work out a modus vivendi.

“Cities in the Eastern United States have been working on this form of interaction for a long time.”