British school reverses ‘Christmas ban’ after hundreds of emails sent in response
A British school that threatened to ban Christmas has been persuaded to reinstate it after receiving hundreds of “thoughtful” letters and emails from pupils, convincing teachers why celebrations should continue.
Lady Lumley’s School in North Yorkshire first posted a statement to its website in mid-November, saying the children had been told Christmas would be cancelled for 2018 as the meaning had been “lost and buried under an avalanche of commercialisation”. “Christmas is a day celebrating the birth of Jesus and should be a time of goodwill to all, yet it can be a very stressful, expensive, argumentative and lonely time,” the school said. The teacher said there would be “no cards, no parties, no gifts and no Christmas tree” unless pupils wrote a persuasive argument about why the school should celebrate the holiday. The miserly move brought complaints from some parents who described it as “horrible” and “disgusting”.
Students were then requested to direct emails to scrooge@ladylumleys.net, detailing their reasons why they believed Christmas should still be celebrated in a bid to change the school’s mind. Over the course of the ten days that followed, more than 500 emails and letters were posted, convincing the school to reverse the ban.
Confirming the change of heart in a statement released on Tuesday, the school said it had been implemented to encourage students “to discuss and to explore their own ideas and those of others”. In a message to parents on Tuesday, the headteacher Richard Bramley said the idea had been to challenge students to consider the true meaning of Christmas.
He said: “Those students who really thought about the situation and challenged the decision appropriately created the change and brought back Christmas. Well done to them and I hope they (and, in the true spirit of the season, everyone else) has a good Christmas.”
“They had to consider the way in which society celebrates Christmas and think about the social problems that arise around this time. “Culturally, students were asked to challenge the status quo; to ask ‘why should we do things just because we have always done them?’ and spiritually, how do we deal with the emotions of disappointment, anger, the feeling that a decision is unfair and to question whether non-religious people should celebrate a religious festival? “Those students who really thought about the situation and challenged the decision appropriately created the change and brought back Christmas”, Richard Bramely said.
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