Today&rsquo\;s battle over religious pract ices in American public schools has deep roots. In the nineteenth century\ , it was a struggle between Protestants and later-arriving Catholics. But at Christmastime in 1905\, when the Presbyterian principal of a Brooklyn e lementary school urged his Jewish students to be more like Jesus Christ\, Jews entered the fray. Jewish activist Albert Lucas accused the public sch ools of illegal proselytizing and demanded limits on religious content in the schools. \;After the Board of Education let the principal off with a slap on the wrist in 1906 and declined to clarify the rules governing r eligion in schools\, the New York Jewish community staged a boycott of the school Christmas pageants\, leading to widespread student absences. The p rotest prompted policy changes\, but these generated an enormous antisemit ic public backlash. The Great Christmas Boycott of 1906 describes how this moment shaped the Jewish community&rsquo\;s long-term efforts to challeng e Christian influence in public life and traces the Christmas celebration dispute to the present day.
\nScott D. Seligman is a national award- winning writer of narrative non-fiction and biography with an interest in the history of hyphenated Americans. A former corporate executive who hold s an undergraduate degree in American history from Princeton and a master& rsquo\;s degree from Harvard\, he has written three books on American Jewi sh history\, including The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902\, which won gold medals in history in the Independent Publisher Book Awards and Reader View s Literary Awards and was a finalist in the 2020 National Jewish Book Awar ds. He lives in the Van Ness neighborhood. Visit his website at www.seligm anonline.com.
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