Turkish government labeled a Grinch for putting students’ holiday traditions on hold.
“No more Christmas celebration and/or lessons on Christmas including carol singing is permitted, effective immediately,” according to an email sent last week to dozens of high school teachers in Turkey.
About 35 German-funded teachers at Istanbul Erkek Lisesi (Istanbul High School) received a messaged saying that the National Ministry of Education had communicated that no more of these activities should take place.
That Turkey is the homeland of the real Santa Claus is an irony largely lost on most media: St. Nicholas, who secretly left gifts for poor children, was in fact Bishop Nicholas. He lived in circa AD 300 in Demre (formerly known as Myra), in Lycia, Southern Turkey.
Church history teaches that Nicholas attended the Council of Nicea, close to Istanbul, where 300 early Church Fathers agreed on their core beliefs as followers of Jesus Christ. It’s the teaching of these beliefs that now appears to be being challenged.
German broadcast media Deutsche Welle (DW) reported that the school management denied that they banned celebrating Christmas. However, DW reports the school said that German teachers have recently been “talking about Christmas and Christianity in a way that was not foreseen by the curriculum.”
Online portal Diken quoted the head of the commission for the new Turkish constitution and deputy from the ruling Justice and Development Party Mustafa Sentop as saying, “We will not allow missionizing/proselytizing in a government institution.”
The directive from the National Ministry of Education particularly affected the German teachers who’d been working hard over two or three months to prepare the content and choir for a Christmas carol concert to be performed at the ...
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