Posted on 12/23/2005 7:45:33 PM PST by mcg1969
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.”
It's not this broads place to tell these children that. This is a family matter, far more than it's a school matter.
I agree, but this article has been posted at least 2 or 3 times here already so it's getting old. In fact, I wonder if it's a variation or a repeat of the same story the seems to creep up every Christmas season. I swear I've heard it before this year. I just can't remember where.
What a heartless woman! The Santa Claus story makes Christmas a little extra exciting for the kiddies. It's harmless fun. Parents also get a kick out of pretending Santa came to the house. The woman obviously cannot relate to children and should be in another line of work.
They were given beautifully wrapped boxes containing a Santa hat and a letter explaining that Santa WAS indeed real- he was the spirit of giving and wanting to make someone's Christmas magical and wonderful, and that spirit expressed itself in the form of Mom and Dad and Grandma and Grandpa and many other people. And now they were old enough to BE Santa for others too. There's one rule: they were not to tell any younger child about the Santa Society - it was up to their parents to know when the time was right.
As to the school system not having a "Santa policy", the policy of common sense should cover the subject. That is a policy, however, that is sorely missing in public schools across the nation.
It doesn't matter what the teacher believes...these are not her children..the parents have the right to teach their kids their beliefs without the teachers deciding that they know best!
As a music teacher it was her job to teach music, period. Anything else was overstepping her authority.
My relating of our telling the girls about Santa was directed toward parents who indulge in the practice of Santa Claus but then worry about "lying" to their kids, etc. We did the "Santa Thing" until the girls were nearly 11. We enlisted the help of our neighbors who had no children of their own to put our gifts out for us when we visited one of the grandparents. They loved doing it, and still played "Santa" even after they moved to a different community. The point of my story is that when the time comes for a child to leave the world of magic behind, that it need not disappoint.
I thought everyone knew there ain't no sanity clause.
There is no Santa Claus.
However, this is an old story. It being posted several times is meant to flame the flames so to speak. I have to wonder if it's a repeat or another version of the same old story. I swear I heard it last Christmas.
Thank goodness all I need is a good ol' Bible on my lap and a nice, warm blanket to get into the Christmas spirit.
I like your Santa system. I loved it when I was old enough to become a "Santa" to my younger siblings.
It's Hannity Clause, didn't you know?
Oh Thanks. Sorry.
Actually you seem like a very common sense person, something sorely lacking in the world nowadays.
I HAD to reply to you to THANK you. I don't have children of my own (haven't been able to for several years) so I REALLY appreciate you and your kids for doing something like leaving presents. I don't know if you have any idea what that means to someone, but I KNOW they really appreciate it a lot. That is the real "spirit" of Christmas, one where we forget all the politics and treat people nicely because it is "right" so to speak. You have taught your children the magic of Christmas and "Santa" and it will continue to live in their hearts for forever more I believe. That alone makes you a very worthy parent, actually deserving of some award I believe.
It's amazing how insensitive some people can be sometimes. Other options aren't available right now, but hopefully someday I can raise a child of my own. I will love that child like no other and will thank God every day for him/her when that day comes. Sometimes people say things like, "Why don't you want kids?" or "So you decided you didn't want any kids?" I have long ceased being offended, but have realized that many such comments are made in ignorance or innocence. People just don't realize what they're saying.
But then there are some on here who try the insult, "I see that you don't have any kids...." That loses credibility with me from the outset and that's all I will say on that.
All I will say is that if anyone has kids or family they're spending Christmas with, they better dang well be on their knees on Christmas Eve thanking God for that opportunity. If you have the privilege of raising kids, thank God for that opportunity too.
I thank God for all the blessings that he has given me and continues to give me, especially in my capacity as a teacher in serving those in my own neighborhood. I will always try to keep the Christmas "magic" going in my own classroom.
Heck, I was so bad I used to think that the airplanes at night were Rudolph:).
Have a merry Christmas and God bless you for your efforts.
Grinch!:)
It's not this broads place to tell these children that.
Say it again Sam.
Some folks just never learn
“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.”
What a drip! No imagination,and what seems like a sour disposition to boot. It wasn't her job to squash the happy Christmas dreams of first graders.
What makes you think I have ever learned anything?:) I'm of the species dum-dumicus.
One of my students came right up and gave me a dum-dums lollipop this week. She must have known what I wanted for Christmas.
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