Alex Pedersen
June 18th, 2015

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According to DF, Danish kids shouldn’t be educated about other cultural holidays (photo: Azlan Mohamed)

It might be too late to deter some of Dansk Folkeparti’s Muslim voters, but today’s Metroxpress has reported how the right-wing party will be seeking to end the practice of schools and kindergartens giving time off to selected pupils for religious holidays like Eid, or even celebrating them in a bid to raise awareness of them.

Should the blue bloc prevail in the election, the proposal is apparently high on the Venstre ally’s wish-list and it has made a carefully-worded law proposal.

“It has to be included in the laws pertaining to public schools that you are not allowed to celebrate other cultures’ holidays,” the DF spokesperson on immigration issues, Martin Henriksen, told Metroxpress.

“Schools and kindergartens are only supposed to celebrate Danish holidays, not ones from other cultures.”

Pork backed, halal scrapped
DF also wants pork back on the menu and halal meat removed from home economics classes and kindergarten lunches. Danish favourites meatballs and liver pate (frikedeller and leverpostej) are both mentioned directly in the law proposal. It does, however, state that kids who don’t eat pork should have alternatives.

Copenhagen Municipality in 2009 revealed that 44 of its public schools and 11 other schools – altogether 76 percent of all its schools – gave their pupils time off for holidays such as Eid and Ramadan. Some 30 schools didn’t use pork at all and many tended to buy halal meat.

The DF law proposal referred to Marting Skiver, a member of the public who in February wrote in Berlingske about his son’s nursery: “When we were told for the fourth time that besides the food there were also a week-long Eid party included, it became too much. It is just too much that our kids are exposed to other religions’ special rules.”

Support is lacking
However, DF’s ally Venstre has said the law proposal probably won’t get passed.

“I find it extremely difficult to imagine a food and holiday watch,” Jacob Engel-Schmidt (V) said in Parliament.

“It must be in the decision of the parent boards.”

While the social minister, Manu Sareen, told Metroxpress he had more important things to concern himself with  – like getting re-elected probably.

“I want to express clearly that I am not the minister for meatballs and holidays in Danish kindergartens, and I probably never will be,” he said.

“It isn’t a job for the government to make laws about meatballs and Christmas parties.”