Most people know that we are not a particularly religious family. I don't really want to go into it here, but let's just say we sum it up like the facebook relationship status "it's complicated."
To that end, we don't pass along any particular beliefs to the kids, nor say too much about the pros and cons of other people's religions - which around us range from lapsed Catholic, to Catholic, to normal Lutheran, to crazy Lutheran. So we've basically relegated our children's religious education to their peers. Thumbs up. I hope it works this well with sex ed too.
So, over the weekend Allison had to write an opinion essay titled "Why Christmas is My Favorite Holiday." We actually had a big hurdle to pass over first because Allison insisted she could not write the essay because Christmas was NOT her favorite holiday. I actually think she was just trying to get out of the assignment. So, we changed it slightly to be titled "Why Christmas is My Third Favorite Holiday."
It was a standard five paragraph essay and we tackled the three middle paragraphs first. Topic 1 - Santa. Topic 2 - Giving gifts. Topic 3 - Seeing family. Then we circled back to the introduction and conclusion paragraphs.
Other than the fact that 5 paragraph writing assignments make me want to bang my head against the wall - it was going OK. We did have three topics, sentences almost all related to those topics in paragraph form, and all related to things Allison likes about Christmas. And all completely.... secular.
So - imagine my surprise - when Allison insisted on the following as her lead-in introductory essay sentence:
"I love Christmas because it is a holiday to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Savior."
Uh..... OK. Well, technically, it's true. That is, in fact, the definition of Christmas. How it came to be that Allison insisted on it as the first sentence of her essay, I'll have to blame on the fact that she stole my Christmas piano book to play sing-along the other week. So, teachers, have fun with that one.
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