My parents told me we were moving to the UK in the summer of 2015, for my fifth grade year, to a diverse, multicultural city so completely different from the Bible Belt town I’d grown up in. I was completely ecstatic – excited to meet people who thought more like I did, and ready to escape the Southern Baptist hegemony I lived in. Yet, I’ve never felt more isolated in being Jewish than I did while living and going to school in England.

Come Christmastime, a season during which I’ve always felt left out, the school announced its plans to have its annual Christmas dinner. The pre-Christmas festive mood was high, but I wasn’t feeling it. Naturally, the school administration decided the best way to celebrate Christmas 2015 was to make all of the students sing Christmas carols. I cried. Nobody understood why I was crying about having to sing Christmas carols. Primary school Christmas dinners are a celebrated tradition in the UK, with the fond memories of Christmas crackers and roast dinner being nostalgic for many Brits. For me, they were just another sign that I was different from everybody else.

In the US, I live in Arkansas – not exactly a pinnacle of religious diversity. I, however, had never been exposed to school-sponsored explicitly religious events like I was when I lived in England. Our Christmas parties were always winter parties, and we would at least talk about Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Our spring break was always called “spring break” – never Easter break. And, most importantly, there were never any required Christian assemblies. Institutionally, I’ve never felt isolated for being Jewish in the United States. Though I know it’s not everyone’s experience, the feelings of difference that accompanied my Jewishness back home were almost always inflicted by other kids, not by the schools and government itself. In England, where kids tended to be more accepting, I felt different because of the school as an institution – not the student body.

For me, the institutional isolation felt much worse than the interpersonal isolation. In England, I felt as though the people I was supposed to trust to make me feel welcomed in a safe educational environment did not acknowledge my identity. It seemed as though the school itself attempted to marginalize religious minorities, and a place that was supposed to support me instead brushed away my right to practice my religion. The interpersonal isolation stateside was tough, mostly because I couldn’t relate to other students. The school itself always tried to make the voices of religious minorities heard, teaching the kids in my classes about Jewish holidays and keeping many of the winter-themed parties completely secular. I didn’t realize how much more included I felt having secular winter parties instead of Christmas parties until I was in England.

Wow… just wow. They won’t be happy until we completely silence our own cultural celebrations. Imagine an American living in Japan crying and complaining that the Japanese society is celebrating their own traditions in their own schools.

Stay strong ole England, don’t fall for this shit. Christmas has been ruined in public in the U.S. because of this whining.