[J_Joseph]

Your thought process confuses me. You say that talking about Dec 25th as Jesus' birthday is better than lies but that in and of itself is in fact a lie. You do not have to take my word for it, google will show you the path.

I am actually an extremely tolerant person. I do not care how absurd or ridiculous somebodies beliefs are so long as they help somebody be a better person for having them. That is not the common result of belief I am afraid. I do draw the line at pushing beliefs on others. Sure, one can say that mentioning Dec 25th is Jesus' birthday is not pushing an agenda but it is. Religion should be left to the individuals and the families and as guests in foreign countries we should be especially low key on the subject.

The other issue I take is that some like to portray their beliefs as facts even after being shown how completely wrong they are. Belief != Facts, that's why they call it belief. Belief is a powerful thing and it can have such a strong influence on some that they eschew reason and no longer think for themselves and become less likely to question other things they are told by figures of authority. To me, that is dangerous. Extremely dangerous.

Making our students aware of DEC 25th as the birthday of Jesus just to introduce the children to the idea of Jesus or Christianity or Catholicism or whatnot can be sugar coated to sound like a great idea but most things can. I think you know better though. It simply is not the place of an ESL teacher to introduce students to this type of information, especially when it is inaccurate.

So if you wish to explain the facts of Christmas to your class, I will not object one bit. You should do some research and teach them the actual facts though instead of parroting what you gave been told, you may find you have just as much to learn as your students.

As for why I don't want this to turn into a religious debate (which we are very close to) it's simply because nobody is going to change their minds. I can present the most well though out and intelligent argument backed with facts to illustrate my points (not that I have, far from it) and people who believe other things will still believe them regardless of how wrong they are. Sad to say but belief makes people ignorant in many cases. There is nothing to win really except the small pleasure of 'hearing oneself talk' and that has worn thin for me here.