http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071130/ap_on_fe_st/odd_where_s_christmas;_ylt=Aqg0kMUSBiEI.2tbGayQ9wQZ.3QA

A Spokane Public Schools calendar recently sent out had an important omission on it: Although Kwanzaa, Human Rights Day, Hannukah, and Eid al-adha made the cut, Christmas was conspicuously absent.

The school is calling it an error of omission, and, frankly, I'm willing to believe them. I personally believe the "war on Christmas" is just a nice tool to help Bill O'Reilly and Michael Medved sell more books. But errors of omission notwithstanding, this was, in my opinion, a glaring one, and a sad one.

I, for one, am glad the other holidays made the calendar. Not because I'm a sucker for inclusion, but because the purpose of schooling is education, and part of education is understanding others' cultures and beliefs on some level. I think it is very telling, though, and perhaps not a little ironic that in the craziness of the season, Christmas is forgotten. It is, for many Christians, the most revered of our pagan co-opted holidays, and I find it odd that in a culture where Santa's "arrival in town" usually nets a picture in the local paper, a school employee assembling a calendar could actually forget.

Oh, I'm sure it will be heralded as the latest front in the culture war by our esteemed commentators. And I'm sure someone will be paraded up as the villain of the week for it, and that my email inbox will soon have emails claiming outrage. But an omission on a piece of paper can't omit it from people's consciousness.

I'm sure the Spokane WalMart would concur.