The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906

Today’s battle over Christianity in U.S. public schools has deep roots. In the nineteenth century it was an intramural struggle between Protestants and later-arriving Catholics. But at Christmastime in 1905, when Frank Harding, the Presbyterian principal of a Brooklyn elementary school, urged his Jewish students to be more like Jesus Christ, Jews entered the fray in a big way. Harding’s exhortation was just the trigger orthodox Jewish activist Albert Lucas had been waiting for. Fresh from battling Christian settlement houses brazen about their intent to convert Jewish children, Lucas accused the public schools of illegal proselytizing and the Jewish community circulated a petition calling for the principal’s ouster.

After the New York Board of Education let Harding off with a slap on the wrist, Lucas and a delegation of rabbis from all branches of Judaism pressed for clear guidelines about what religious practices would, and would not, be permitted in the schools. When the board ducked the issue, Jewish parents across the city kept their children home on the day of the 1906 school Christmas pageants. As many as 75% of the students in Jewish neighborhoods stayed home that day and the Board of Education, feeling the pressure, finally moved to exclude sectarian hymns and religious compositions. But the ban generated an enormous antisemitic backlash and the media portrayed the issue as a Hebrew attack on Christmas.

Where Lucas and company wished to fight a battle over the law, their detractors relied on condescension, patriotism, antisemitism, tradition and outright falsehood. The backlash, however, was more than enough to persuade the conflict-averse board to rescind most of its order.

Religion has never been absent from American public schools, and the Harding case raised the perennial issue of how much of it – if any – should be permitted. The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906 traces the school Christmas celebration dispute to the present day. Since politics appear unlikely ever to permit an unalloyed victory, still less a long-lasting one, Jewish organizations in the twenty-first century have moved on to fighting Christian nationalism in other ways they believe are more winnable.