This weekend as the snow began falling in Erie, I sat in my dorm room admiring the beauty of the snowflakes falling in the sunset. As I marveled the snow, I was reading my local news station’s website and I came across an article discussing how a local radio station banned the playing of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” this holiday season because the song “promotes bullying.” Now let the record show that I, in no way, shape, or form promote bullying, nor do I think that it is acceptable to bully someone.

But, apparently my radio station is not the only one that has these thoughts. In fact, a special education professor in Long Island, N.Y., contends that “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” promotes bullying and exclusion; a Connecticut psychologist says the song promotes ostracism of the handicapped.
My question is what is the motivation behind this censorship? I mean, think about it, Rudolph has been the epitome of non-religious Christmas tradition since 1949, and now 62 years later, we find it necessary to ban the song from the radio.

Censorship usually stems from moral, political, military or religious reasons, but how does Rudolph, violate any of those clauses? How can a song, that was created to help a small child deal with her father losing his job in the midst of the Great Depression and mother slowly dying of cancer, be taken so out of context as to promote bullying?
In modern times, bullying has become quite the issue; we see it on the news every day that someone is being cyber-bullied or committing suicide because the pressure of the cruelty of bullying has pushed them over the edge.
Bullying does in fact need to be put to an end, but do we as a society really have to take it to the level at which we are attacking children’s songs and holiday traditions?

Bullying is a serious problem worldwide. It’s not a new problem either; parents and grandparents can recall bullying incidents from their school years.

But yet we find it fair to push the issues of society off onto the innocence of a simple children’s song? Is it fair that there are radio stations, psychologists and professors that are throwing their claims of bullying into the mainstream in the midst of an epidemic of widespread bullying? I think not.

I believe that we need to let simple Christmas carols be left as Christmas carols, without having to worry about the accusations of promoting violence.