Reasons for Days Off of School for Non-christian Holidays

Introduction

This research paper is about the inequality of having only Christmas Day as a required day off from school in public schools across the country. In it I will address the legal status of only having Christmas off from school as well as the legal status of celebrating religious holidays in public schools. I will also discuss a couple of possible solutions to this problem and the pros and cons of each solution.

Every year, all around the country, students of all ages anxiously wait for the time off to spend with their friends and family during Christmas time. But what about the students of other religions who celebrate different holidays such as hanukkah or diwali? In most public schools, the only required day off from school for a religious holiday is Christmas day. But important Jewish or Hindu or Islamic holidays are often spent by students sitting in a classroom listening to a teacher rather than acknowledging their heritage or spending quality time with friends or family like they should be. The government should require schools to give time off of school for important holidays of religions other than Christianity.

Reasons This is a Problem

Only having Christian holidays as mandatory days off from school obviously is a problem because it makes it seem to the students of other religions that their religion does not matter or is inferior to christianity, which is not true. It creates a sense of inequality for students who follow less recognized religions and this is bad because not only does it belittle these students, it could also create a feeling of hostility or even conflicts and arguments between groups of students who do not follow the same religion and that seems very medieval. But it poses a couple other problems as well.

One of these problems is that it forces students who are Jewish for example, to choose whether they should skip school for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year which is from September 29 to October 1 during which time most public schools are still in session, to respect their religion but risk missing important information in class or if they should go to school. Students of other religions are forced to choose whether to value education or religion more and this should not happen.

Laws Regarding Holidays in Public Schools

According to the first amendment, having school off for any religious holiday, even Christmas, is unconstitutional. According to Charles Haynes, director of the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute, the only reason that we do not have school on Christmas day is that “The problem is that Christian holidays like Christmas were baked in to the calendar when public schools were founded by Christians.”

In fact, public schools are not really even supposed to put up Christmas decorations or anything like that around Christmas time, but are allowed to teach about the history of the holiday as long as it does not get too religiously biased. Public schools may teach the history of any religious holiday as long as it is deemed appropriate by someone in charge of running the curriculum and the teaching of the lesson is not for a religious reason.

Alternatively, if a religious holiday that is deemed appropriate is being taught and a student decides that he or she does not want to be a part of learning about it because they believe that it is against their religion or they simply do not want to learn about it, they may ask to be excused from class and the teacher must oblige. This is also true for religions that many view to be secular and are permissible to be taught in public schools such as Halloween or Valentines day, that some people would argue actually have religious roots.

Asking to be excused for holidays such as Halloween and Valentines Day is much more common in elementary school, where parties and other celebrations are often held for these occasions. These practices are allowed but the courts have made it clear that it does not mean that schools are free to teach whatever they want about religion and just have students ask to be excused if they feel uncomfortable.

Public schools must give an excused absence to any student who does not show up to school for any religious reason, but the student is still required to make up any tests or quizzes he or she missed and he or she may miss important class discussion or insight from the teacher. Schools often will cancel school on a religious holiday if many students will likely be absent because of it and it would seem pointless to have school.

Possible Solutions

One solution to this problem is to simply give all important holidays for each religion off of school and this would end the problem at once but it would also create a couple more. Firstly, having that many days off from school would extend the length of the school year in order to cover all the required information in the curriculum and many teachers and students would surely be very unhappy with having their summer vacation shortened.

Another problem is who would decide what is considered an important holiday or not. For example, schools would definitely give students the day off on holidays such as Hanukkah, Diwali, Eid, and the Chinese Lunar New Year, but would they also cancel school on a holiday such as National Bagel Day on January 15th? Maybe not something that ridiculous but there would surely be conflicts over which holidays are important enough to have school cancelled on them and which ones are not.

Sadly, National Bagel Day would probably not make the cut because it is quite pointless.Another idea of a solution for this problem would be to have students state their religion at the beginning of the school year and then they get the days off on all of their major holidays. So the students with different religions would have different breaks.

Obviously there are many problems with this solution. The first and most obvious would be that it is basically religious segregation and as we have learned from history, that is never a good thing at all. Another problem with this solution is that it would be harder for kids to be friends with other kids of different religions because their breaks from school would be at different times of the year.

In this scenario, if there was a catholic boy whose best friend was islamic, their time off school would be different and they would rarely have any time to socialize with each other. Another possible drawback of this solution is that if kids were given the choice of what religion they followed, many students would simply lie and say that they followed whatever religion got the most time off school and that would not be good because that is just teaching kids that religion is not important at all when it really should be something that everyone respects.

A third possible solution to the problem here is to make it fair and have no vacations for any religious holiday at public schools, not even Christmas. In this scenario, there could be private schools that celebrate the religious holidays of their own religion and no other but the public schools would simply not be allowed to celebrate or even really acknowledge any religious holidays. The public schools would probably give more time off for more secular holidays such as Veterans day or Halloween.

The obvious problem with this solution is that it would eliminate important breaks from the school year that many children look forward to and students would have less meaningful time to spend with their family and friends. A lot of times, Christmas break is important even for non-christian students as it gives them a break from all of the stress and pressure that a grueling school year can have on students and the two weeks that are given off of school can give children time to relax and not have to be stressed out about their next big exam or the big project they have to work on.

According to Oscar Kimanuka, “Long school holidays help students clear their heads, relax a little and stretch their brains in different ways.” This applies not only to Christian students, but to students of all religions because all students, no matter their religion, need this time off of school to recover from all the stress that comes along with going through an entire school year.

Conclusion

In conclusion, there are many non Christian holidays that are basically disregarded when it comes to getting time off of school to celebrate with family and friends. These holidays need to be acknowledged not only to be fair to the followers of that religion, but also to raise awareness of these other holidays.

Probably everyone in America knows what Christmas is but not that many people would be able to give a definite answer when asked what Yom Kippur or Diwali was celebrated in honor of, and that surely does not make the followers of these other religions very happy. America has come a long way in terms of religious tolerance throughout its history, and hopefully the next big step in this history is the acceptance and acknowledgement of these non christian holidays in America’s public schools.