TRIVIAL - BUT DANGEROUS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 12, 1993                   TAG: 9301120403
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short
TRIVIAL - BUT DANGEROUS
IN ONE OF the more inane demonstrations of the past year, 900 people jammed the auditorium of Christiansburg High School Jan. 5 to argue before the Montgomery County School Board over usage of the words "winter," "spring," "Christmas" and "Easter" to describe the vacation periods in the secondary school year. All seemed to agree that these periods should be regarded as "breaks."
According to the dictionary, "breaks" in this context means to discontinue, interrupt or suspend, as typified by the word "breakfast," which is derived from "breaking the fast."
What then is the "break" in this case? The breaks are in the winter/fall semester and in the spring semester. They are not breaks in Christmas or Easter. The accurate naming of these periods are "winter break" and "spring break." To be more consistent with the other description, perhaps a renaming of the semesters to "Advent Semester" and "Resurrection Semester" would be in order.
With many parts of the world engrossed in mortal conflict arising principally from differences in religious beliefs, it would appear that we in the New River Valley would have more sense than to start down this path over such trivial, time-consuming and potentially combative issues. ALEXANDER ABASHIAM BLACKSBURG

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB