No Candy For You!

Several years ago I learned of a horrific event. The elementary school that I had attended and loved no longer allows the children to celebrate Halloween. On that day, the children are not allowed to wear their costumes to school and no party is held in celebration. The reason given for this is that a celebration takes up valuable time for teaching and preparing for SOLs. The other reason is that the school administration only allows three parties per school year and it had to choose when to celebrate. The current "holidays" are celebrated: Winter, Valentines Day, and Spring. I believe my recollection of that list is correct but the school may use different names for the same times of the year. It is worth noting that the celebration on Halloween was cancelled a few years before the limit on parties allowed per year was imposed. I have it on good authority that a large part of the reason for its cancellation was that a minority of parents felt that the holiday was promoting the practice of witchcraft and/or other satanic practices. The administration obviously did not feel that it was worthwhile to stand up for the majority of parents and students that felt differently. I am aware that when Halloween originated it did involve practices of the occult but since those two thousand years ago it has evolved into a much more fun and friendly holiday. The children in the schools do not care about Halloween's origins. They only care that it is a day on which they get to dress up, receive candy, and have fun. I know because I was one of them and the people who ended this celebration should have thought back to when they were children and asked one simple question. Which did I care more about then, witchcraft or candy? I realize that I am posting this far in advance of Halloween but with the approach of Easter or "Spring" holiday I find the need to comment on it. For the sake of political correctness and deference to those of other religions the Easter celebration and the one near Christmas were renamed even before the Halloween celebration was cancelled. I have no problem with this because we had plenty of paper cutout menorahs to go with the paper Christmas trees. I do believe that this is a bad sign that these celebrations could fall victim to attacks from individuals who believe that they are representative of religion in our public schools. I have no desire to see school children loose more of their few chances for parties. The school's claim that the five or six parties we had before these policies existed take valuable time away from teaching and SOL preparation is ridiculous. The teachers found it impossible to teach us on Halloween because our minds were occupied with what we would fill our bags with after class not because we were celebrating in class. As for the SOLs, I did fine without them and so did most of my elementary school class. For proof of this I have my diploma from high school and in two more years the one from my chosen University. Children have the right to have fun and I think these policies are snuffing it out bit by bit. My message goes to both the people who want to remove celebrations in schools because they promote the occult and the people who want remove them because they are associated with holidays they do not believe in. Leave our candy alone!