How do you maintain an enthusiastic demeanor about your child's school play, when inwardly you HATE that it is nativity?

[nevergoogledragonbutter]

Ok, so i'm not religious. I'm personally somewhere halfway between atheism and humanism depending on whether i can see a difference between the two, a moment that comes and goes.

But, I have come to accept that we live in a country that teaches a 'broadly christian' approach after being initially a bit wtf to find that him going to a non-faith school actually doesn't mean we can avoid the subject.

I don't feel that taking him out of assembly would make any difference other than to make him feel different about something he's too young to understand.

But, it irritates me highly that he is taught bible stories at a non-faith school and it irritates me even more that he will be expected to re-enact the nativity story and spend the next 6 weeks learning his songs and lines.

And while i would dearly love to see my 5 year old sing and dance or say some lines, the experience is marred by the play being religious. i have to somehow look past the religious aspect.

I don't want my own beliefs to ruin what could be a very enjoyable thing for him to do with his friends.

Is it possible to keep my feelings hidden? Is that the appropriate way to deal with it?
Why can't they do something else that would be entertaining for everyone?

But equally if you read the census reports 77.7% of people in England and Wales described themselves as "Christian" (Scotland asked slightly different questions and there the proportions were 68.9% "currently" Christian and 79.2% Christian "by upbringing").

I do disagree almost entirely with GrumpyYoungFogey, but the majority of the UK population does self-identify as Christian.

Britain has traditionally been polytheistic/animistic. Christianity has no part in our culture and British kids are missing out, having their culture taken away from them and replaced by Christianity introduced by successive Italian interlopers so that they miss out on hearing the truth about Taranis, Toutatis and Lugus.

If the only religion with cultural input to Britain was Christianity, why are the days of the week named after Norse Gods? Why is (as mentioned before) the spring festival named after the godess Eostre?

But Professor as very few of them practice as Christians I think that's fairly meaningless. Perhaps more of a cultural than a religious identifier. Attendance at church (at least the traditional mainstream sort) has been dropping for decades now. Only 5% of adults attend every week, which is pretty marginal really. I have a feeling I read that there were more regular attendees at Mosques than churches now.

I'd like more about Toutatis - always one of my favourite Asterix gods "by Toutatis". I'm sure religious lessons would be a lot more colourful if we looked at older gods more. Perhaps not very suitable for primary schools though (although I can recall being told plenty of stories about Martyrs and that bothering me not at all).

It would be interesting to know what proportion of the box-tickers had any real concept of what 'Christian' means. A neighbour, bemoaning the necessity to attend church to get her child into the village school said: "I'm a Christian... I'm a good person and I believe in God". Theres not really much distinctively 'christian' about that definition, is there? I forebore to mention that I'd always thought that the starting point was that you weren't a good person but a sinner in need of salvation.

Exactly Grimma. In my dh's family it seems to mean that they get their children christened and have a church wedding, and nothing more. Because the CoE is the established church they have that right, but it is fairly meaningless if you wanted to think about any sort of spiritual aspect, let alone doing the boring bits that most religions entail. Of course there are Christians who don't belong to an organised church and who really live their lives in a Christian way (which I guess I associate with prayer and some level of sacrifice). But then maybe that's because I was brought up as a Catholic, so think all religious people should in at least some sense be permanently feeling guilty

I think a lot of non faith schools don't do a nativity. Ours either does a total non religious play or does one with a variety of religions (so we had one with Hanukkah in and some other stuff ).