Posted on 12/23/2005 10:07:40 AM PST by TexasGreg
Grinchy remark sends kids home in tears By RORY SCHULER Staff Writer Lebanon Daily News
LICKDALE — Jamey Schaeffer stretched her mouth open wide, showing off a pair of twin gaps in her smile. With a mouthful of fingers, she said she has no interest in two front teeth for Christmas. Instead, she’d like a Barbie doll from Santa Claus — and Santa Claus only.
But a substitute music teacher almost came between the 6-year-old and a Christmas Eve spent dancing cheek to cheek with sugar plums.
Theresa Farrisi stood in for Schaeffer’s regular music teacher one day last week. One of her assignments was to read Clement C. Moore’s famous poem, “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” to a first-grade class at Lickdale Elementary School.
“The poem has great literary value, but it goes against my conscience to teach something which I know to be false to children, who are impressionable,” said Farrisi, 43, of Myerstown. “It’s a story. I taught it as a story. There’s no real person called Santa Claus living at the North Pole.”
Farrisi doesn’t believe in Santa Claus, and she doesn’t think anyone else should, either. She made her feelings clear to the classroom full of 6- and 7-year-olds, some of whom went home crying.
Schaeffer got off the school bus later that day, dragging her backpack in the mud, tears in her angry little eyes.
“She yelled at me, ‘Why did you lie?’” recalled Jamey’s mother, Elizabeth. “‘Why didn’t you tell me Santa Claus died?’”
Elizabeth Schaeffer said she was appalled by Farrisi’s bluntness.
“I had to call the school,” said Schaeffer, a part-time custodial employee for the school district who is on temporary leave after complications from her last child’s birth. “I had to do something.”
Meanwhile, Farrisi, who is well versed on the history of “Santa Claus” — the traditional and literary figure — clarified her comments.
“I did not tell the students Santa Claus was dead,” she explained. “I said there was a man named Nickolas of Myrna who died in 343 A.D., upon whom the Santa Claus myth (is based).”
On Monday night, Jamey started to recite Moore’s famous poem while sitting on a couch next to a freshly cut tree, trimmed in tinsel and topped with a golden star: “’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house. No creatures stirred.”
She paused, looked up, and said that’s when the teacher interjected, just a few lines before the verse that announces the arrival of “a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.”
“The teacher stopped reading and told us no one comes down the chimney,” Jamey said, curling into a ball on the couch, bracing her chin on her knees, her voice shrinking away like melting ice cream. “She said our parents buy the presents, not Santa.”
Sharing in the belief of Santa Claus is a very special event in the Schaeffer home. Jamey’s the second youngest of five children. The three oldest have already grown up and left the family nest. Only Jamey and her 18-month-old sister, Amanda, remain.
Last year, Elizabeth Schaeffer recalled, Santa left a trail of boot prints in charred ashes from his feet-first landing in the fireplace. And this year, the family will continue their tradition of leaving him a plate of cookies, a tall glass of milk and a ripe, shaved carrot for Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer.
The Schaeffer family wasn’t the only one taken aback by Farrisi’s approach to Santa.
Tim and Beth Rittle said they found their 7-year-old daughter, Holly, in tears in the back seat of their car after they picked her up from school that day.
“All of a sudden, Holly just started crying,” Beth Rittle said. “She said she had a substitute in music class, and she told the class there’s no such thing as Santa Claus.”
Schaeffer and Rittle both called Northern Lebanon School District Superintendent Don L. Bell.
Since the issue involves personnel, Bell said Monday, there is little he can say about the incident, adding that it has not been determined if any disciplinary action is warranted against Farrisi.
Bell said he was aware that several parents have expressed concerns about the incident.
He also noted that the handling of Santa Claus isn’t covered in the school code.
“We do not have a Santa Claus policy,” he said. “It’s unfortunate, but I really can’t say anything about it.”
Farrisi said she considered approaching the school’s administration with her concerns about how to handle Santa Claus in class. Instead, she said, she decided to add a disclaimer to her lesson.
“Those same children are going to know someday that what their parents taught them is false,” she ex-plained. “There is no Santa Claus.”
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Schaeffer was carefully thinking about her next step. She decided to make a photocopy of editor Francis P. Church’s famous response to a little girl, who wrote to The New York Sun many decades ago, asking the same question Schaeffer’s daughter struggled with last week.
“I mailed (Farrisi) a copy of ‘Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,’” she said, giggling with satisfaction. “I wish I could be there when she opens it.”
As for Jamey, in an attempt to reaffirm her spot on Santa’s nice list, she drew up a new letter in bright red magic marker, a message destined for the Santa she refuses to abandon.
“Dear Santa ... How is the North Pole?” she said, reading her letter loudly and proudly. “How is Mrs. Claus? You are Great. From Jamey.”
"I taught my sons that "Santa Claus" was not only fake, we didn't adhere to pagan customs. We didn't act like iconoclasts, (wanna bet?) but we didn't cater to other children's myths either."
"I have never lied to my children. Never. Don't justify lying by saying it is "loving". What a crock."
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You are a bundle of Christmas joy. I want to "Holiday" Party with you.
Odd thing about substitute teaching...sometimes you can go for a long time without ever being called in to teach a class. It'd be a real shame if this b**** was unable to find work in any school system.
You may not lie to your children, but if you tell them not to tell other children, you're telling them to lie.
Keep telling yourself that.
What exactl is the difference in YOU not telling your children about Santa Claus and them not telling their friends?
Not one thing.
Why does the writer feel the need to defend why this woman was at home?
Yeah. My late husband and I didn't want our son to think that some fairy determined whether he got a gift or not. We didn't encourage a belief in Santa Claus, but said that his parents loved him, he was always our good boy and we provided the gifts at Christmas.
That said, Santa Claus is all over the place. His grandparents talked about Santa, the school (back then), the commercials, the TV shows, the music at this time of year all mention Santa. I'm not sure if his dad and I got thru all that. I know he thought 'Santa might be real' and we just let it go at that. I would never, ever tell someone else's child that there was no Santa. Jeez. What is with people?
Government schools should be abolished.
I don't know who most of the people on this thread are - all the people I know are against participating in "Santa" nonsense, and teach their children the same as we have.They are ordinary people who enjoy passing a wonderful legend on to their children.
And there certainly are many more of us than there are of you "purists." Thank God.
I'm betting you really wanted to post "a real Christian," but thought better of it; I'm sure you wouldn't want to imply that those of us who celebrate Christmas are not "real Christians," would you?
Us, too! Right down to their presents being wrapped in tissue paper because that's what Santa uses. :-)
Thanks, I see you live in NJ as I once did. Get out while you can.
And I resent your overheated criticism of the "silly" myth of Santa Claus--now we're "Nazis" and "PC" because we resent someone intruding upon our decision to let our kids be thrilled and entertained by the story of a man who dispenses gifts on the birth of Jesus Christ. What rot. The Santa Claus story, in a variety of forms, has been part of Christian culture for hundreds of years, and we'll tell our children what we wish, thank you very much, without the intrustion of malicious teachers. Or name-calling Freepers, for that matter.
You have that wrong; if the Democrats were LYING (about Santa Claus) and we don't CORRECT THEM, that's a lie of omission.
I stand by my statement; tell your children what you want, but don't pretend by telling them NOT TO TELL OTHER CHILDREN, you're not asking them to lie.
Now, that does sound kinda like 1930s Germany.
Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi analogies) is an adage in Internet culture that was originated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states that:
Although the law does not specifically mention it, there is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.
I was raised on the "reality" of Santa until I was old enough to figure it out for myself. I consider my time of belief in Santa to be some of my greatest Christmas memories of my life, and something I would never wish had not happened. By the time kids figure out the truth, they are usually old enough to be able to handle it, perhaps barring some brief period of disappointment.
All kids are different and there are exceptions, but Santa is basically a HARMLESS myth that children OUTGROW.
Am I the only one who sees it as sort of inevitable that the child thus lied to will naturally assume the same about what his parents told him about A-mighty G-d? And am I the only one who has noticed the similarity between all the "Santa Claus isn't literally true, but he's true in a much more important sense" rhetoric and liberal, non-Fundamentalist theology?
And there it is folks...the basis for the disease "Liberalism"...displayed for the whole world to see.
If this woman were a Conservative, she would not give a hoot about making sure that everyone else think as she does.
She would want the children to discover the truth for themselves...a true learning experience.
Personal responsibility. Liberals hate it.
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