The Johnson County, Kentucky school district sent a notice to all schools a few weeks ago, telling them that all religious references must be removed from Christmas programs. No singing of religiously themed carols. No references to the real meaning of Christmas.

And this included a student production of the beloved Christmas story "A Charlie Brown Christmas."

Teachers at W.R. Castle Elementary School were directed to remove the moving scene where Linus shares the true meaning of Christmas by reading from the Gospel of Luke. 

Superintendent Tom Salyer confirmed to me that the entire passage was excised from the program after the district received a single complaint. 

“We’re not reading that, sir,” Salyer told me. “It disappoints men that we have to do this.”

The superintendent, who said he is a church-going man, said he was simply following the advice of school district attorneys. 

The live production, based on the 1965 cartoon, was ordered to remove the most important part of the play - the reminder by Linus of the true meaning of Christmas.

Ordinarily, the story would end there. Parents meekly giving in to the tyrannical dictats of a politically correct school district.

But parents at the school who attended the play took matters into their own hands, following a suggestion from radio host Glenn Beck.

Washington Times:

In Thursday’s performance, no student in the play performed the scene in which Linus recites from the Gospel of Luke: “Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in the manger. And suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good will toward men.’”

But people in the audience recited the lines, Mr. Cochran told the Herald-Leader. A video showed several parents joining in.

After that, “there were a few more lines in the play, and that was the end of it,” Mr. Cochran said, adding that he was disappointed in the audience’s response. “I wish that they had let the kids do the play.”

Glenn Beck’s The Blaze took credit for the protest.

“During his radio program Thursday morning, Glenn Beck suggested parents protest the school’s decision by reciting Luke 2:8-14 during the time the censored monologue is supposed to be delivered,” The Blaze reported.

“I would get together with parents and I would — if I knew this was coming — take the script of what Linus actually says and I would stand up as a block of parents and just stop the show and just all of us at that point, ‘Doesn’t anybody know what Christmas is all about?’ And all of the parents stand up and just start saying it, even as the play is going on,” Mr. Beck suggested.

A parent from the Kentucky school and a representative from Alliance Defending Freedom, which called for the school district to reverse the decision to cut Linus’ monologue, appeared on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends” Friday morning.

“The parents in the bleachers basically quoted the verse from the book of Luke, and it was just an amazing moment — it really was,” Joey Collins, parent of one Kentucky student, said, The Blaze reported. “Everybody was pretty much in tears and clapping. It was just a great time.”

That sound you hear is the exploding heads of the mandarins of political correctness in Johnson County.

Here is living proof of American exceptionalism. Where else on planet earth would parents take it upon themselves to right a wrong and set a dramatic example for their kids in the exercise of religious freedom? 

A simple act of defiance against forces that would deny people their heritage and their faith.