Teacher Refuses Tribute to Santa Claus

1910

By Samuel Parker of Chicago

During the recent holiday season a teacher in one of the Chicago public schools was subjected to not a little criticism for refusing to pay tribute to the Santa Claus myth, declaring it to be wrong morally to teach a child a falsehood or to tell the child anything as a truth which it would discover to be false later on.

Instead of being a target for thoughtless ridicule that teacher should command the respect of every teacher and parent who conscientiously regards the moral training of children. The holiest thing this side of heaven is the faith of a little child and he who carelessly or purposely abuses it perpetrates a wrong from which the abused child seldom fully recovers. If parents and friends would sidetrack the heathen myth and bestow their endearing gifts in their own names the dear children would be just as happy and escape the shock of falsehood and deception at the hands of those who ought to love them too well to expose them to such danger.


Romance of the Future

"Do you see that cloud? It was behind one just like that that I first kissed you." — Town and Country.