You just KNEW this was coming, didn’t you? Via The Christian Science Monitor:
RALEIGH, N.C. – School principals from Newton, Mass., to Denver find themselves increasingly haunted at Halloween by this refrain: Get out, ye ghoulies!
Bowing to concerns of a wide range of groups – from Christians who consider Halloween to have pagan or satanic overtones to church-state separatists who object to the holiday’s religious roots – some elementary schools are canceling their customary costume parades and Halloween celebrations.
In their place are “Fall-o-ween” events, which take note of harvest and seasonal change but that eliminate all things spooky – or controversial.
Hey! “Festivus” may be a REAL HOLIDAY in schools very soon! MORE:
“There’s been a steady growth of the number of people and the kinds of perspectives objecting to Halloween, and it’s become a real issue for schools,” says Charles Haynes at the First Amendment Center in Arlington, Va. “There’s a lot of strangeness around this issue.”
The downplaying of Halloween at school runs counter to the nationwide trend. The holiday is now a $3.3 billion business, as those who mark the season of goose bumps set the mood with decorations, costumes, candy, and party goods.
Though Halloween entered the schools “through a secular door,” as Mr. Haynes puts it, its sometimes-dark imagery – and the gory movies and masks that go along with it – mean that some Christian and Muslim families keep their kids at home that day.
Increasingly, those families, which can make up a full 30 percent of a school’s student body, are calling in their objections – and schools are listening.
The challenge to Halloween in schools “really gets to the heart of minority rights and minority feelings in a pluralistic culture,” says Jo Paoletti, an American studies professor at the University of Maryland in College Park.
It’s all part and parcel of the inexorable advance of political correctness in this country. No matter who’s in power, no matter who runs school boards, no matter who says they’re winning the culture wars the real victor is constantly Mr. PC — and we don’t mean Mr. Personal Computer.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.