Norway: Muslims not the reason for dropping school Christmas celebration
A couple of days ago I posted about a school in the Norwegian city of Drammen that decided to drop Christmas from its Christmas celebration. This started off a major debate, with commentators blaming Humanists and Muslims for this step. However, according to the school principal, this had nothing to do with Muslims or students of a foreign cultural background.
Via Drammens Tidende (Norwegian):
Principal Tove Fredriksen says this measure was taken to protect students from Norwegian religious minorities who do not celebrate Christmas. Despite the impression people got, it was not done out of consideration of Muslim students.
"The decision to have a neutral Christmas celebration without Christmas hats and other traditional items and elements was made with the best of intentions."
"The goal was to be able to include everybody and specifically in this case, also students from Norwegian religious minorities. Since this involves children, I don't want to go further into which minorities these were," says Fredriksen.
