20.05.12

You know the holiday season has officially begun when the tabs begin dishing up piping hot servings of outrage over the so-called War on Christmas. This week saw the battle lines move to a new front: Rockland County, New York, where a second-grade teacher at the George W. Miller Elementary School in Nanuet committed what some call an unforgivable act of Yuletide sacrilege.

Leatrice Ann Eng was leading her young charges in a lesson about the North Pole when one of them piped up that they already knew all about it, because “that’s where Santa Claus lives.” Eng promptly dropped an all-too-blunt truthbomb on the eight-year-olds in her class: Santa, she said, doesn’t exist, and the presents under their trees were, in fact, bought with their long-suffering parents’ hard-earned money.

There’s no word as to the kids’ reaction, but class parents were understandably not amused, complaining about the incident to the school administration. (Neither Eng nor George W. Miller principal Elizabeth Smith were available to comment.) Word of the incident leaked to the local White Plains Journal-News , and the story went viral. Horrified readers accused her of destroying childhood innocence, and demanded she be suspended, fired or worse. Media institutions around the world quickly piled on, depicting her as a holiday-stomping cartoon Scrooge.

Source: Wall Street Journal (blog)