Two things

[conuly]

First, somebody on my friends list recently posted this video which I'd never heard before and I think I like a lot.

Relatedly, at Eva's school apparently they play music during passing periods rather than having a bell. A group of kids chooses the playlist, and they announced that during this month they'd be playing Christmas music, so Eva dutifully went up and reminded them that lots of kids at the school don't celebrate Christmas and they should play something else. They were open to this and asked, naturally, what she recommended instead, which stymied her because she hadn't thought that far ahead. (Lesson learned: Always have your alternatives prepped and ready to go!) So she asked me for advice, and now I am asking you. Are there any thoroughly secular wintery celebratory songs that are worth suggesting?

Comments

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Santa is secular, especially the modern American version; he's not part of anybody's religion. The Yule Tree is originally Pagan, as are most of the Christmas holiday traditions, and has no Christian religious significance. The Winter Solstice is an astronomical event - "axial tilt is the reason for the season" - as well as a Pagan holiday.

The point being, 'secular' means 'not religious', but that's a huge slippery slope, as the very word (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularity) presupposes a Christian world-view:

"The idea of a dichotomy between religion and the secular originated in the European Enlightenment. Furthermore, since religion and secular are both Western concepts that were formed under the influence of Christian theology, other cultures do not necessarily have words or concepts that resemble or are equivalent to them.[7] In many cultures, "little conceptual or practical distinction is made between 'natural' and 'supernatural' phenomena" and the very notions of religious and nonreligious dissolve into unimportance,[8] nonexistence, or unawareness, especially since people have beliefs in other supernatural or spiritual things irrespective of belief in God or gods."

Being both a teacher and a Wiccan High Priestess - and later as the mother and auntie of Pagan children - I had to address this question every Yuletide for decades. My ultimate solution in my own classrooms was 'All Classical Music, All The Time' - Bach and Vivaldi wrote most of their stuff for the Church, but the kids didn't know that, and the Nutcracker Suite is as traditionally Christmassy as anyone could wish, while still containing less than 2% Christian imagery (or none at all, if you count the tree as Pagan.) Baroque music keeps a classroom cheerful and productive like nothing else, and there's nothing even the pickiest parent or director can say against it, so that might be a solution for Eva's school too. "If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it."