SEATTLE -- Two suburban school districts have had to do some backtracking over holiday religious issues, one for lunch menus with the words "Merry Christmas" and the other for a "giving tree."

In Federal Way, between Seattle and Tacoma, December lunch menus for all 23 elementary schools were recalled and reprinted with the words "Happy Holidays" at a cost of $494 after a new nutrition services employee mistakenly prepared them with the greeting "Merry Christmas," spokeswoman Diane Turner said.

The 11,500 misworded calendar-style menus were never distributed and were recycled, Turner added.

Using "Merry Christmas" on the menus violated school system policies because "it has a religious connotation for some people," Turner said.

"Our objective is to provide information to the diversity of the people that we have in our district," she said. "We try to respect each individuals point of view."

In tony Medina, east of Lake Washington, a Christmas-style tree bearing mittens labeled with gift ideas was up for about a week at Medina Elementary School before it was removed, office manager Chris Metzger said.

The idea was for pupils to take a mitten, get the listed gift, wrap it and bring it to school to be given to someone at Lake Hills Elementary School in a less well-off section of neighboring Bellevue.

Some parents had put up the spiral, lighted tree with a star at the top, but it was removed Monday after another parent complained that it had religious connotations, Metzger said. The mittens were transferred to a counter in the office so the gift program could continue.

"We covered the star and called it a giving tree. We hoped it would suffice, but it didn't," Metzger said. "Now we just have a giving counter."