I asked my Mom about this (she used to teach 3rd & 4th grade), and her response was pretty much the same. Plus the problem of dealing with a dozen over-elaborate costumes that the kids either can’t get into without help, can’t fit into any of the lockers, or have to wear all day because they didn’t think to bring regular clothes. Dealing with the inevitable tears because of parts getting broken, lost, swiped, stained or confiscated was a major headache.
Political correctness never entered into it, despite the offenderati’s constant need to feel victimized.
INDEED ! Sorry for the hijack. To reply to the OP’er, if it is a public school, then the public needs to attend School Board Meetings. Be vocal. Get them to establish firm policy. What is permitted each year? What is not? How are issues such as religious objection handled? Get them to pin it down, so that year to year, the kids as well as the community know what will occur as each school year moves along.
Kids lose a day of learning due to distractions on Halloween! The earth stops spinning and everything goes to hell! Sheesh. I am getting gladder by the day that I went through the school system before everyone lost their minds.
And then when they bring back Halloween celebrations in school, we can go right back to listening to the same bunch of yahoos screaming, “why are my tax dollars going to pay for a bunch of glorified babysitters to throw parties? Back when I was a kid, we went to school to study, dammit!”
Our school goes from Pre-K to 12 th grade and there are different rules for each part of the school regarding halloween celebrations.
Traditionally:
The younger children (3-5 year olds) are allowed to wear their costumes to school, they play some games and have lunch then go home. Usually they do a 9-3:10 day, but Halloween is a half day. They get over excited and frankly freaked out by wearing strange clothes to school.
Grades 1-5 bring their costumes with them. They have an ordinary morning and change after lunch. There is a parade and classroom parties in the afternoon.
The middle and high schoolers must be in dress code, and they have a halloween dance that evening.
One rule that applied to all though: no costumes with weapons. All guns, knives, swords, etc had to be left at home. Yes, we do have parents who think it is amusing to dress their child as a terrorist…
However: The principal of the elementary school doesn’t like halloween, so today there is a faculty training day scheduled so that there will be no halloween at school. It really depends on who is in charge…
My gut would call this the influence of the radical religious right rather than political correctness, personally. Those (fundies) are the only people I’ve ever heard go nuts over their kids celebrating Halloween. I could be wrong, though.
OTOH, I don’t distinctly remember dressing up for Halloween at school. We dressed up for lectures on the American independence movement (I was Paul Revere) and some other things, but going to school in costume on Halloween sounds way distracting.
If this is a high school thing, I would’ve missed out on it anyway, since I went to a charter school with a dress code.
Growing up, we were allowed to go to school in costume (Catholic school, late 60s to mid 70s) in elementary school. It was a treat to have a day out of uniform.
At the school where my sister teaches, they celebrate character day. The kids dress as characters from a book that they have read. Some classes go with a group theme. It gives the kids a day to dress up, an educational element and no religious connections. It appears to be a good, working solution, as they’ve been doing this for years.
One of the occasions in which I got to dress up at school was for the 12th grade dinner, which was (and still is) part of the high school’s yearly feast called the rectorales (a thursday and friday in march).
During the years I was still in the school across the street (I think you guys call those years Middle School or Junior High), there was increasing worry because some folks were renting costumes and sometimes spending a ridiculous amount of money.
The year I was in 8th grade was the peak. A girl had rented a Marie Antoinette dress that was too wide to pass the school’s double gates, so she had to lift the skirt up and show her panties to the whole wide world, or at least to the about 700 kids between 9th and 11th grade ages who were at the gates checking the costumes out. Oops.
This was used by the school as the perfect reason to ban rented or bought costumes. The only bought stuff acceptable was if anybody happened to own a regional costume; other than that, you had to make it yourself.
In my 12th grade dinner I danced with three of the five guys who came in dressed as jellyfish - and to this day I still don’t know with which of the five!
Personally I think holidays, celebrations and rights of passage are essential to a happy and healthy society. But we are slowly losing our holidays, or having them transformed into nothing more than “a night that adults go get drunk on.” Why do we learn? Why do we work? Pretty much so that we can live happy, full lives. And yet we sacrifice these things that make us happy and fulfilled so that we can work…makes no sense.
Bullshit. I grew up in a dirt poor school and almost everyone I knew had free lunch. I’ve never head of anyone who could afford a costume. It takes nothing to put on black and draw a cat nose and whiskers. It takes nothing to put on your sister’s clothes or come to school in your pajamas. Indeed, Halloween is one of the best holidays around for poor kids- the price of admission is an ounce of creativity and the reward is a huge bag of candy. I promise every one of these poor kids manages to scrounge something up and go trick-or-treating at night.
No, they actually don’t. See the numerous threads bitching about trick-or-treating-kids-not-in-costume that crop up on Nov 1st for more details.
The argument wasn’t that they’d not be able to come up with a cheap costume, it’s that they couldn’t *match *the costumes widely available in stores now. I don’t know the last time you shopped costumes, but there’s some frankly awesome stuff out there these days! But of course it does cost money, and there’s fear that the poor kid wearing his sister’s dress is going to get tormented by the kids in the “good” costumes.
Me, I think they’re going overboard in worrying about the precious little snowflakes self-esteem, personally. But I’m not entirely insensitive, either. Back when I was in school and we did dress up, costumes were almost entirely DIY, with a few crappy plastic aprons with superheroes printed on them from the store. (You know it’s a lousy costume when it has to say “Superman!” on the front! :D) Since everyone was DIY, it rather evened the playing field. Now some parents would rather drop the $30+ on a costume (I did it myself for my daughter this year, although my son and I built most of his), and there’s a more obvious chasm between store bought and DIY. Kids in a consumer culture have never appreciated DIY - goes over about as well as Eddie Murphy’s mom’s “McDonald’s”.
Anyhow, my point was simply that, accept the reasoning or not, there are quite a few reasons a school might decide to eliminate Halloween celebrations besides Political Correctness or Right Wing Christian Hysteria. There are Leftie Pinko Librul reasons to ban Halloween, too.
Excellent point. Half the fun of halloween was working with my mom to figure out and make my halloween costume. As an adult, my husband and I spend lots of time together figuring out, making, and shopping for our halloween costumes. It’s a fun thing to do as a couple, and it’s a fun thing to do as a parent and child.
(ftr, I don’t have a dog in the fight, and don’t care whether there are Halloween, Xmas or other celebrations in the schools)
This brings up an interesting question; one I hadn’t considered before.
Given the religious origin of Halloween ----albeit Paganism and Satanism, of which Halloween is largely taken from -------why wouldn’t the celebration of Halloween garner as much objection as Christmas does based on the Separation of Church/State?
Drove through Whitesburg, GA a few hours ago. Traffic got stopped by a Sheriff. It got stopped to allow a bunch ( 3? 4? ) of big pickup trucks pulling flatbed trailers to go onto the roadway. They were packed with small children in costume. A second sheriff’s vehicle, with lights flashing, drove behind them on the road.
We all crawled along behind this pediatric party line. They all slowly pulled into the parking lot of a bank- where a small tent was set up. WITH candy. And an adult waiting to dispense to the kids.
An hour later? I drive back past that area? Same caravan, with police escort, pulling out of a quickie-mart parking lot. Kids went in to get MORE loot.
THAT, my friends, is how they do Halloween down south. Un-Freaking-Believable.
There have been various discussions at my kid’s (elementary) school to eliminate or limit halloween, but none of it for religious reasons. The concerns were 4-fold:
Some younger kids are legitimately afraid of the halloween decorations and the like. (My son is part of the problem - he is absolutely terrified of a lifesize werewolf put up by his gym teacher).
Some kids get too much into character, leading to injuries. They already banned toy weapons and wands because of this. (Again, my kid, who is dressed as a ninja this year and wants to be in martial arts fights on the playground, is part of the problem.)
Costumes are expensive, and some kids feel they can’t keep up with the more affluent kids.
The entire day is almost wasted academically - the kids can’t concentrate. (IMHO - this would happen if they were in costume or not.)
I am glad our kid’s school has rejected the attempts to eliminate Halloween, but don’t jump to the conclusion that it is all the work of those “evil intolerant Christians”.
Check out the lyrics to the song they sing. They’re cheering Queen and Country for shutting Fawkes down.
Because the modern celebration of Halloween is not a part of the practice of any particular religion, while any official celebration of Christmas runs a danger (however small) of being a government establishment of religion.
The “religious origin of Halloween” came long before any of the current pagan or Satanic religions existed. The religions that gave birth to them have long since died out, so while we might use some of the old symbols or traditions (carved produce - turnips then, pumpkins now; door to door visitation - although it wasn’t about candy as much as creating mayhem when the Celts did it, as far as we can tell), there is no religious significance to them any longer. While we’ve created myths about our “unbroken line of secret witches back to the mists of time when we all lived in a utopic matriarchy under the Great Mother Goddess”, it’s not literally true, and everyone but the most starry eyed fluffy bunny newbie neopagan knows it and accepts it.
Costumes and trick or treating are not part of the current religious holiday known as Samhain that is celebrated (was celebrated, and I’ve got the aching head to prove it!) on Oct. 31 by many neopagans. Nor are werewolves and superheros and princesses. Samhain (named after, but not temporally or religiously contiguous with the ancient Celtic harvest festival) dates back to good ol’ Uncle Gerald (Gerald Gardner) starting the Wiccan movement in the 1940’s. Many other branches and sects “do” Samhain as well. It’s a holiday when we remember our ancestors and do divinatory work, believing that the veils that separate this world from the spirit worlds are most penetrable on this day (and its springtime counterpart, May 1). It’s most analogous to the Mexican Day of the Dead.
Religious Satanism started even later, in the late 1960’s, and likewise has no connection with door-to-door solicitation of sugary treats or wearing of costumes to school. Those activities are purely secular.
Of course, I’d also argue that Santa Claus, decorated evergreens and shiny nosed reindeer are also purely secular at this point, and coincide with the sacred holiday celebrated by many Christians. I’d actually have no problem with 9/10 of “Christmas” stuff being in schools in a participatory way, and I don’t think it would violate church/state law, but I’m probably in the minority there.