Danny Westneat / Times staff columnist
Banning Tiny Tim? Humbug!

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Along with "Bah, humbug," it's the story's signature. There's the Christmas setting along with some allusions to Christian ideals, but Tiny Tim's blessing is the tale's most overt reference to religion.

Yet that was too much for Lake Washington High School in Kirkland. Students were to see a staging of Dickens' story on Dec. 17, but the principal has canceled it, in part because it raised the issue of religion in the public schools.

Ah, it's that special time of year, when the spirit of the season is more about offending no one than celebrating anything.

Schools and libraries ban Christmas trees. Holiday concerts replace Handel's "Messiah" with bland numbers such as "Frosty the Snowman."

This year the controversy has boiled over in New Jersey, where a school banned religious carols. In Denver, people were barred from singing hymns in a parade. And in Italy, a teacher told Muslim students to replace the word "Jesus" with "virtue" if it helped them sing a Christmas carol.

The motivation is always well-meaning: to keep religion from distressing anyone in the diverse public square.

As a secularist and agnostic who doesn't subscribe to any particular religious doctrine, it's a goal I support.

But even a lifelong doubter like me can see that something crucial is being lost, especially in the schools.

If kids can't see a Charles Dickens play, hasn't the cause of separating church and state gone too far?

Dickens said "A Christmas Carol" was nothing more than a "ghostly little book." With its apparitions of hope and death, it's more supernatural morality tale than religious dogma.
 
He hated the institution of his Christian faith, the Church of England. He's considered the father of the modern secular Christmas, in which many of us celebrate with friends and family instead of attending a church service.

Yes, the work has Christian themes. So what? The students can handle it. They might even learn something — about Christianity, or redemption. Or about good storytelling.

Banning "A Christmas Carol" because it says too much about religion is like banning "A Catcher in the Rye" because it says too much about adolescence.

And that goes for much of the rest of this seasonal controversy. We fall all over ourselves to keep religion from the schools. Yet a major gap in my public education was the lack of religion in the schools.

I learned a lot about math and science and literature, and literally nothing about the belief systems of billions of the world's people — an educational hole as stunning as if they'd decided not to teach, say, world history.

The schools say they walk a fine line. Religious holidays can be taught, not observed.

If Charles Dickens is over that line, then I don't have much faith today's kids are learning any more about religion than I did.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com