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Winter Concerts Question (religious related)

Posted by MSBD on 5/23/2025, 9:24 am

Has anyone done away with Winter Concerts at your school? There a many students in our program who's religions are not allowing Christmas related programs, so we are considering doing a Fall Concert instead.

Just seeing if anyone has done this before. We would spend our December with Solo and Ensemble prep, and fundamentals to prep us for UIL.

Re: Winter Concerts Question (religious related)

Posted by HSBD on 5/24/2025, 8:40 am, in reply to "Winter Concerts Question (religious related)"

Our "Winter Concert" usually includes some winter-themed music that isn't Christmas-themed. If it is Christmas music it's more Frosty and Rudolph than religious. We have a very diverse community, including a significant Muslim population, and I do my best to keep it neutral.

At the MS level there's nothing stopping you from having a concert in October or November instead of December.

Re: Winter Concerts Question (religious related)

Posted by BDSO on 5/23/2025, 4:42 pm, in reply to "Winter Concerts Question (religious related)"

We started doing our UIL march, a non-holiday themed song (sometimes not even winter themed), and one holiday song (usually a novelty type song). This gives everyone a chance to participate and if they don't play the holiday song, it's fine. It's worked for us for about 10-12 years. Also, we had to stop doing a patriotic themed concert at the end of the year because a couple of families protested. Funny enough, these families that protested never showed up to any concert, regardless of the theme but we still had to stop doing the patriotic concert.

Re: Winter Concerts Question (religious related)

Posted by nananananananana FATMAN on 5/23/2025, 10:24 am, in reply to "Winter Concerts Question (religious related)"

I've considered it. We already did our winter/Christmas/etc. concert right before Thanksgiving break last year. Nobody says you *have* to play Christmas music. There is plenty of good winter-themed rep.

Re: Winter Concerts Question (religious related)

Posted by Me on 5/23/2025, 10:05 am, in reply to "Winter Concerts Question (religious related)"

Have you considered doing a Winter concert without making it all about Christmas?

There's plenty of other choices of music. Furthermore, there are dozens of "Christmas" songs that have nothing at all to do with Christmas.

Frosty the Snowman, Jingle Bells - neither has a single thing to do with anything other than winter as a whole.

Secondly, is it celebration of Christmas that they don't allow, or public hymns? If it's just the first, that opens up a whole world of other possibilities.

Finally - where are these communities with huge JW populations? I've never known another faith to prohibit holiday celebrations like that. Where in Texas does this actually happen?

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