Kids were heartbroken after finding out their cards don't fit the hospital's policy

Dec 27, 2013 09:06 GMT  ·  By

In the holiday spirit, children from Grace Academy in Prosper, Texas spent hours creating hand-made Christmas cards for Dallas' VA Hospital veterans and were more than disappointed after finding out that the institution wouldn't take their hard work.

The attempt of thanking the veterans for their service and spreading the holiday spirit was crushed by the hospital's policy to respect the patients' beliefs, by removing all religious references from holiday greetings. The work of 51 students was turned down because it contained things like “Merry Christmas” or “God Bless.”

Susan Chapman, teacher at the academy, was outraged by the hospital's policy and by the fact that she would have to tell her hard-working students that their cards won't end up with the brave soldiers. Married to a veteran and volunteering with the American Legion for a while now, Susan believed the cards would bring joy to the hospital's patients on this special time of year.

“It really didn't occur to me there would be a problem with distributing Christmas cards,” the teacher says, according to Fox News. Everything was set in motion and Susan decided to call and set the final details of the cards delivery when she found out that most of the children's work wouldn't fit the Veterans Health Administration handbook policy.

The donated cards were to be reviewed by a multi-disciplinary team of staff in order to determine their non-religious character, prior to being distributed to patients. The now-called “Grinch Administration” believed that references to the scripture or any Biblical events would have interfered with the veterans' well-being and turned down anything considered not fit.

“Targeting the benevolent work of little children for censorship is disgusting. Do the Grinches in the administration of the VA really believe our bravest warriors need protection from the heartfelt well wishes of small children saying Merry Christmas?” Hiram Sasser, director of litigation for Liberty Institute said while admitting this was a “new level of low.”

The kids were heartbroken after finding out that their cards wouldn't end up with the veterans because of some controversial policy. The well-intended cards will not be thrown away as they will be sent to another veterans’ facility in Louisiana, to bright up some other patients' holidays.