Two Small Christmas Miracles

By Gene Lalor

Every once in a great while, the public education community slips up 

and forgets its NEA-dictated politically correct liberalism.

It happened last year at a Long Island middle school awards ceremony, when a soldier just back from Iraq was honored by allowing him to present a good citizenship citation to a student.

After being introduced and before he was able to make the presentation, the soldier was showered with appreciation by the 800-strong audience. They leaped to their collective feet to offer their own award for his service, a standing ovation that went on for minutes.

Teachers and school administrators in the district, which will not be identified to protect the innocent, were belatedly embarrassed into joining in.

Well, it happened again, this time at a concert-not a Christmas concert, of course, but rather a "winter concert"-at a high school in the same district where not only were America's armed forces honored but Christmas melodies, including religious-themed hymns, were performed and met with comparable approbation.

When the National Education Association gets wind of that combined patriotic/religious rebellion, heads will surely roll.

In the greater scheme of political correctness, neither the military tribute nor the celebration of Christmas were earth-shaking yet both represented a radical departure from the PC norm in the Long Island neck of the national woods. They furnished irrefutable proof that there is some hope for sanity in Democrat Lawn Guyland.

After the band director asked veterans and active duty members of the Navy, Army, Marines, and Air Force to stand at the appropriate moment, the Symphonic Band offered selections from the fight songs of all four branches of America's military.

Unprompted, the audience enthusiastically applauded both the servicemen and women and "Anchors Aweigh," "The Caissons Go Rolling Along," "The Marines Hymn," and "The U.S. Air Force."

Pacifists in the audience must have been cringing.

The Festival Chorus then sang a rendition of Vince Guaraldi's "Christmas Time Is Here," a cheery song about sleigh bells and snow flakes which could pass muster even with atheistic grinches. The festival choristers went overboard when they followed that innocuous holiday ditty with the gospel song, "Every Time I Feel the Spirit."

Whatever was the chorus director thinking when he allowed public school kids to sing, "Ev'ry time I feel the spirit moving in my heart, I will pray. Ev'ry time I feel the spirit moving in my heart, I will pray"?

Did he think they were praying to the goddess of political correctness?

Depending on one's perspective, the zenith or the nadir was reached in the winter concert when the Concert Band performed as its final number, Leroy Anderson's medley "A Christmas Festival."

The Concert Band director, who coincidentally happens to be retiring, actually allowed his students to play music repectfully recognizing the reason for the season, music including "Joy to the World," "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "Silent Night," and "Adeste Fidelis."

(The fresh-faced teenagers in the band obviously enjoyed their own music and played masterfully and enthusiastically. Although it doesn't come close to the quality of the high school band, ahem, a professional performance of Anderson's "A Christmas Festival" is available for the reader's listening pleasure here http://tiny.cc/qbsc3.)

No, one school and one concert do not constitute a trend, a movement to reverse long-standing, negative attitudes toward the military or toward secularizing Christmas. What it does represent is a sign that not all is lost in this season of hope, that little miracles still happen, and that Long Island is not yet a vast liberal wasteland.