To not want my DC to participate in nativity?

[Spru]

I asked school to excuse DC from nativity (due to religious reasons - we do not depict jesus/mary/joseph.) They were absolutely fine with it. Happened to mention this to work colleagues - and they basically told me that I wasn't willing to integrate!

I was a bit shocked that they saw it like this despite the fact that I explained why. I didn't realise that this decision was perceived as a lack of willingness to integrate - in a country which I have been born and brought up in.

I had to bite my tongue for the sake of peace!

So...MN jury... AIBU to exclude DC from nativity for religious reasons (note: DC is not excluded from other christmas activities at school). Am I just not integrating well into the society that I was born and brought up in?

TIA

(please be gentle)

Yes lequeen you are an atheist, so you don't believe an all seeing all powerful being has told you not to let your kid in the nativity play..

why is this so difficult?

They sell halal Haribos in my local shop, TerryPratchett. No one is safe!

Are they very boring? We don't have them where I am from weiss in publicy attended schools... would love to see children dressed as the back half of a donkey though

And secondly, they're my beliefs, and I refuse to let them influence or taint or hinder my DDs in anyway.

I agree-it has been explained by many people- but there are still those who put their beliefs in front of the DC.
(I thought it was acting-some plays would never be done if the actor had to agree with the sentiments!)

Spru I think your last post goes to show that you have made the right decision to do things how you are, and that you are raising your son with a fantastic respect for his own religion and understanding of others.

Jinsei my DD is also assiduous about checking marshmallows and Haribos for stealth pig products so she can share them with her Muslim mates. She's a lovely (staunchly atheist) girl.

The OP is presumably passing on her cultural and religious beliefs to her children,

Perfectly OK as long as she is fully open to the fact that her DC may reject them and think completely differently.

Where has she suggested otherwise exotic ?

"There are those who put their beliefs in front of the DC"

Oh yes, I'm one of those. I do it when the children don't want to share their toys, when they fall out with their friends and I make them say sorry. When they want to stay in and watch tv but I make them get some fresh air and exercise. When I make them say please and thank you. When I allow DD to choose clothes from the 'boys' section instead of the girls.

Being a parent means trying to raise children to follow a moral code. Some people also feel it's important to follow cultural or religious codes. The OP obviously feels strongly about not depicting prophets, so she makes that choice for her DC.

And I say again, it is a nativity. It is not the party of the century. Her DC will NOT be traumatized by not taking part. And as a teacher I've done hundreds of the things, and have taught a few children who were excluded from them- so I do know what I'm talking about.

LadyIsabella, my dd is also a staunch atheist. She thinks religion is "ok, as long as people don't get too obsessive about it"

i am sorry but a work colleague commenting that I perhaps should have let my kid have a go at something is not akin to being 'persecuted', it is giving an opinion. Saying that this is persecution is doing a disservice to all the people in the world who are truly persecuted for their religious beliefs. It seems to me that the OP didn't identify this with being persecuted but simply as someone giving an opinion that she would like responses to - after all, she did invite responses. Equating this to being persecuted is just massive overreaction.

It is a simple nativity play! Even if you only celebrate Christmas in a totally non religious way, explaining that the winter festival was hijacked, it is simple general knowledge that a DC ought to understand why it is called 'Christmas' and how others celebrate it. In the same way if they wanted to act a story from another religion I can't see why you would stop it. Mine have done all sorts- celebrated Diwali, Hanukkah etc. I can't see why you have to be a Christian to see 'Jesus Christ SuperStar'. It all seems very narrow minded. If they are to make their own choice in the future-which they surely will-they need to know all the options.
I am thoroughly glad that my mother put me first. Hopefully your DCs won't mind in the way that I would have done.

I once had a parent insist that their child did not participate in an Indian Dance session during activities week. The parent said it was because he didn't want his son to do dance, but I am pretty sure that the parent would not have minded if it were ballroom. The poor child felt very left out and ended up growing up with a 'them and us' mentality with regards to other races and religions. It is your choice ultimately, but I think it is nice for children to experience different cultures and beliefs through the arts, it helps them to learn tolerance and understanding.

exotic - I think you need an up to date information that not all children are the same. A child just as easily hate and resent being made to do a play just as much as hating not doing it (which the OP's child shows no sign of doing). I was very clear about hating doing such things as a child, much to my parents 'fit in and do things with everyone else's" ideals sadness.

I was in the plays as a child. And the choir and dance clubs. My parents very much believed that children needed to be with everyone, to be like everyone else, that you need to be experience what everyone one else was doing, that being on stage would give me great skills and friends.

I hated it. Every little bit of it. The whole thing was biggest viper den of boredom and bullying. One can be in the middle of it all and still be excluded and left out especially if it doesn't fit your personality. I put a veneer on at times to make it easier (better to laugh than to cry) but I was very clear on disliking it/doing it because it was what my parents wanted even from an early age (there is a video of me saying such in the middle of a dance performance, I'm about 4 in it, I wasn't allowed to quit until I was 16). I was relieved to get picked for nursery duty at 9 because it meant I had an out for choir (and they had an awesome auto-broom). When I finally quit it all (in my last year of school) I was so relieved. Everything to do with my parents' 'fit in and experience it with everyone else' mantra made me miserable.

I also greatly disliked Christmas as a child - shockingly to most. To me it was a time of family stress and nonsense, with me being dragged out of my bed (literally, by my two siblings as a child for presents then figuratively by my parents when I was a teen to go see relatives). I was very clear about it then - I would hide to avoid it and as a teen I began lighting Channukah candles and hiding more. I haven't celebrated Christmas since I left home.

Telling the OP that her child is going to resent this is nonsense. You have no more of a crystal ball than my parents did. No matter what your information tells you, a child can happily go without being a nativity without scarring (especially when he's quite happily stood up for himself before and isn't doing it alone, he has other classmates as well). And a child being in a play because it's the done thing can be miserable and hate it for the rest of their lives.

Over-bearing parents again then-putting their beliefs first.

If OP DC had come home and said 'they are doing a play but I don't want to be in it' that would be different. That isn't what happened-OP didn't want it and DC followed.

Exotic - are you finding it really hard to understand the idea that the religion of the OP doesn't permit depicting prophets and THAT is the problem with the nativity.

Its nothing to do with it being a Christian story, nothing to do with Christmas either. It is simply about her own beliefs and those that her son is (at the moment) happy to believe aswell.

exotic, are you deliberately missing the point? The OP has made it clear that she has no objection to her dc understanding about Christmas, learning how others celebrate it and even taking part in those celebrations. She has merely withdrawn him from one activity that she regards as being specifically prohibited by her religion as it relates to the depiction of a prophet.

I have never considered withdrawing my dd from any activity in school, and I love that they learn all about different faiths and traditions, but I sure as hell wouldn't be happy for her to be taught by someone so incapable of respecting a different world view. Thankfully, the teachers at our school do truly embrace diversity, and all that diversity entails.

I really don't get the attitude that children having fun is always the most important thing, regardless of the impact on others. If a child decides that carrying litter to a bin is boring and their friends don't have to, would you make them? If brushing their teeth every day seems like a waste of time when a dentist can fix any damage, is that OK? If a child's classmates are bullying someone should they be allowed to join in? If not you're putting your belief that bullying is a bad thing (what if your child decides it's character-building?) ahead of your child.

I was brought up to not always put myself first, and I'm very glad of it.

Spru: For what it's worth it sounds like you are doing a pretty good job of raising your DC to be aware of difference and comfortable with it. The school also sounds pretty multi-culturally aware - all UK schools have to peddle a certain amount of Christianity to their pupils by law, even when a significant percentage of the pupils are not even nominally Christian.

My point was always that the reason why some of your workmates/acquaintances and some posters on this thread might have got arsey about your wanting to withdraw your DC from the school play might not just have been fuckwitted racism. People who make a big deal of their superstitious obervances (as opposed to bumbling along paying lipservice to the culture they grew up in) are sometimes hardliners, and all hardline religion tends to be harmful to women and children.

But exotic - the fitting in, not being excluded, doing what everyone else is doing so as to not be left out, and so on are the beliefs that you and many that you have agreed with have been saying all over this thread - completely forgetting that these are beliefs in themselves that could need to be put aside for a child's best interest.

A parent has to decide what is in the child's best interest. My kids have said they haven't wanted to do things that they should and have said they wanted to do things that they can't. We won't always be shown to be right in the long run, but professing a child will resent his mum when he's shown no signs of it (when I and all the others I know who do did show signs at the time) I think you are saying something is true when it merely familiar and wrong when it is only strange in your eyes.

I mean, my DS1 didn't even know who Father Christmas was until he was 6, and still calls him 'the guy in the Christmas costume' and my daughters know no carols (but have been singing Channukah songs at me for weeks straight). But the older two at least know what Christmas is and how to celebrate - though that's not hard when it is bloody everywhere - so at least there general knowledge in safe. Still the OP is doing a far better job at being "willing to integrate" than I am. She should get a shiny star for it, being integrated into her own country and all.

Also (treading carefully so as not to out anyone else) one of my mates who is not, AFAIK on MN, has just posted a similar 'don't want my DC in the nativity play' on Facebook. She's white, and a Wiccan/Pagan. And I have told her to get the fuck over herself and her superstitions as well.