Just Leave Hymns and Spirituals As They Were Written !!

School Omits 'Christ' from 'Silent Night,' Upsetting Parents

By Beth Greenfield, Shine Staff | Parenting – 17 hours ago

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Christ has officially been removed from Christmas. At least that was the case at one middle school on Long Island, New York, where its holiday-concert chorus sang a version of "Silent Night" that had all references to "the savior" and "holy infant" removed by school administrators. But the effort to avoid alienating people seems to have backfired.

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"It's offensive," one father of a student at the Ralph J. Osgood Intermediate School in Kings Park told CBS New York. "If you're going to remove words to not offend other religions, what about the religion that that song belongs to, which is Christianity?"

The fifth-grade students sang the edited classic — which mixed and matched verses in a way that left out the most religious references — at the concert, on Dec. 12. But that upset some parents, who felt the song was sacred and should have instead been left intact or instead been performed as an instrumental or kept out of the concert altogether. Some spoke out about it at a Tuesday board of education meeting.