To think the nativity play is a waste of time...

[PointyJat]

And the biggest parts are given to teachers favourites/those with pushy parents?

Ds is in year R and they've spent weeks preparing. He and his friend say they spend lots of time sitting in the hall watching the main parts 'practice'. Teacher has cancelled PE since half term for this 'practice'.

Only a few children have a big part, the rest are varying levels of nothing ds is a 'villager' but doesn't even go on stage, he just sings the songs along with all of the others.

Nativity seems like a waste of time and a lot of waiting about, other than for a minority of pupils. I'd rather either all children got a part with a similar level of input, or they just stopped bothering with the play and did PE as usual. Aibu (and grumpy).

And the world would be a significantly better place.

Laughing at "adopted" by the way. It wasn't adopted, it was stolen - forcibly. It's very much a "do as I say, not as I do" belief system, isn't it.

I'm laughing at the image of 'the Christians' marching in and wrestling the Christmas trees from the poor Pagans

That would have been preferable. They demanded they convert to their people control method religion or die. They used violence and rape. Still laughing?

Laughing aside, I think your view of History is a little skewed and I find your tone patronising. The myth of the gentle and tolerant Pagan is a well known one. The western world has a long history of persecution and violence between different races, groups, religions, and cultures. Christians themselves have long been persecuted from their early origins as well as being persecutors themselves. Violence and rape was commonplace in earlier times from all sorts of people. Human rights and respect for religion, women, culture, animals that we in the west expect today was non-existent. We probably live now, in one of the most peaceful times in History- even though it often doesn't feel that way and I think we would be shocked by the views of our ancestors.

I myself am atheist.

There is a bible verse about not taking trees of the forest and decorating them with gold and silver, because it's a pagan custom.

toffee, the verse you refer to is misinterpreted. It refers to the making and decorating of wooden idols for worship, not christmas trees.

Good fucking grief

Ah. That makes sense Fresta. The Bible is so open to interpretation and it's this openness that's the cause of so much tension.

I was a main part in every school play I was in and my parents had zilch to do with the school if it wasn't about me. I just enjoyed acting and was a good speaker Now that is quite a few years ago but my nieces and nephews generally get varied roles and none of there parents have much to do with school either.

(disclaimer because they are very busy people, not because they wouldn't like to be involved)