"Thoughts on Education Abroad" is a monthly column written by CAPA The Global Education Network's Deputy President and Chief Academic Officer Dr. Michael Woolf.
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Christmas can be celebrated in the school room with pine trees, tinsel and reindeers, but there must be no mention of the man whose birthday is being celebrated. One wonders how a teacher would answer if a student asked why it was called Christmas.
– Ronald Reagan
Photo: public domain
Introducing Winterval
Things about which I am sceptical are unavoidable in these cold dreary days of December. If you live in London (or in most of the cities in which we operate) Christmas is omnipresent in our media, streets and shops. It begins, in fact, in early October and drags on for close to three monotonous months. It is in our eyes—tinsel town and twinkling lights —urging us to commemorate the conjunction of holiness and poverty by buying more and more things. It is also in our ears. Many of the Christmas Carols with which we are familiar were written in Victorian times. They are now heard, more often than not, as a kind of seasonal muzak in department stores: droning reiterations of sound devoid of meaning.
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Words by Emily Kearns, a 
Words by Shannon Hart, a Spring 2017 CAPA student in Dublin.
