It didn't take long for news of the school administration's newly written "limitation" on Religious music that would effectively cause all Christmas concerts to be cancelled in Marshfield, Wisconsin schools to reach the town's citizens and the rest of the nation. While some of the Marshfield residents called it a "War on Christmas" or a "War on Christianity," others who are not of the Christian faith, including one self-described atheist, stood up against it as censorship at a special school board meeting. Hundreds of students, parents and community members packed a Wausau school auditorium Thursday night to be heard.
The Wausau Daily Herald reported that even before dozens of residents stood to speak, the board had already voted to put the decision about whether to schedule winter concerts back into the hands of school principals. They had also decided to change the new limits on the performance of sacred music (choirs could either perform no religious songs or limit them to one to every five secular songs), and voted to revert to an older policy in which principals, rather than district administrators, will be the ones to review song lists of performances. The School Board also voted to work out a new policy in the next year with input from the community.
The high school’s elite Master Singers choir group, which had been temporarily been disbanded since the majority of their December performances are filled with Christmas music, will resume their pre-school day rehearsals on Monday.
School superintendent Kathleen Williams said that the administration rule was "never intended to ban sacred Christian music entirely, nor did it impose a ratio." She defended the committee's decision saying that they had decided that the Christmas carols the Master Singers perform at about a dozen community venues were simply "too close to a public school endorsing religion in violation of the Constitution."
