OSLO, Norway – If students at Norway’s Lesterud School in Oslo want to dance around the school’s Christmas tree, they’ll need signed permission slips from their parents.

School officials imposed the requirement in an effort to ensure no students are subjected to anything potentially religious their parents might object to, Express reports.

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“We interpret going around the Christmas tree, which includes singing Christian songs, as an event that tends toward religious content,” school official Gry Hovland told the news site. “We want to protect ourselves and not cross any boundaries. That’s why we ask parents and guardians to give permission to go around the Christmas tree.”

Parents like Karianne Haug said they were surprised by the new opt-in format for the school’s Christmas celebrations because she contends the opt-out system worked well for years.

“It’s fine to ask to be exempt from the religious service, that has worked fine for years, but to have a check off permission to dance around the Christmas tree?” she said. “What will be nest? Where is the limit for how many considerations we should take? How makes these consideration, and for whom?”

Haug said she thinks the change will likely do more harm than good.

“Norwegian traditions are important, that’s how I see it,” she told the Express. “We live in a society with rapid changes and families that are splitting up.

“Traditions help to protect our children,” Haug said. “I think it creates a problem if all students, regardless of their beliefs, can’t gather around the Christmas tree – how harmful can it be?”

The change was prompted by a years-old European Court of Human Rights decision that encouraged schools to be “especially cautious” in regards to religious activities, and follows similar precautions taken by schools across the world in the name of political correctness and inclusion.

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Hovland told the Aftenposten news site very few parents opted their children out of the Christmas tree activities.

Diversity consultant Loveleen Brenna said she believes the school’s Christmas tree permission process is a slippery slope that could ultimately erode the country’s identity.

“One must be careful not to wipe out part of the cultural foundation in Norway under the guise of respect for diversity,” she said.

Breitbart points out the Christmas permission slips come a month after the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration attempted to force all private entities helping a surge of refugees to remove all traces of religion from their facilities. The government retracted the requirement when Degan, a Christian newspaper, issued an editorial calling the move “a prime example of the Norwegian authorities’ genuflection to Islam,” according to the news site.

“Asylum seekers and migrants have no reservation in passing the Norwegian border despite the cross in our flag being one of the first things they see,” the paper’s editor in chief Vebjorn Selbekk wrote. “They surely wouldn’t be hurt by crosses in Christian centres either.”

The Evidence of Faith centre in Kvinesdal, set to help about 1,000 refugees, also refused to erase God from its hall.

“The hall was built by Christians who wanted to spread the word of God,” leader Rune Edvardsen said. “To remove the cross from the hall would be like removing the rose from the Labour Party.”

Elsewhere, numerous schools have canceled Christmas altogether for the sake of Muslim students.

Most recently, parents of students at West Virginia’s Hollywood Elementary School were fuming after school officials canceled the school’s planned “12 Days of Christmas” after a single complaint, WVNS reports.

Principal Tamber Hodges told the site “a lot of people are upset, and I can’t blame anyone for being upset.”

Many parents at Hollywood, however, plan to send their children to school with outfits and other items initially suggested for the celebration, regardless of who it offends.

“Don’t tell me that my son dressing like an elf ‘offends’ you. He’s 4!” parent Jennifer Myers posted to Facebook. “He still believes in the magic of Christmas. Let him be a kid! You might not agree with me, and that’s okay. But my child WILL be participating, even if he’s the only one. You’ll be able to recognize him … he’ll be the one dressed like an elf.”