Children should experience this ...

Jesus, Hitler, relax. It's one day. Let the kiddos have a little fun.

 

They have plenty of fun. Teaching is hard enough as it is, especially at that age. I think the trend is definitely toward no costumes, so I'm not some out-of-the-mainstream party pooper. Just someone who empathizes with teachers. I certainly hope that whatever school my kids go to don't have Halloween costumes at school.

 

A fair question. The reasons:

1) Mom says no. I let my 8-year-old son take his scooter a half-mile to his friend's house -- mind you, my son is 4-foot-8 and 85-90 pounds, he is not the kind who is likely to get dragged into a car even if you do believe in that bogeyman -- and the wife was not happy. Her friends gave me the stinkeye too. Moms are hyper-protective, what can I say?

2) To get to the ballpark would require my kids crossing several major streets including one that at times can look like they're filming Fast And The Furious. Not something that existed on my bike path to the field. Speaks to the lack of parks in city planning/development in the last few decades. Plus, remember how you used to need your glove to play baseball, and you'd just choose the bat and helmet that fit best out of the three or four the league gave you and you'd take swigs of rusty water out of the fountain every few innings? Now every kid has his own bat, his own helmet and a 16-ounce water bottle. Lotta equipment for an 8-year-old to tote down a major thoroughfare.

3) My parents felt secure because they knew we were traveling as part of a pack of at least four kids and usually more like six or eight. These days, if I sent my boys out, they'd be the only ones out there. Just the way it is. I think it's more a function of time than place; I live in a big city now, but when I went back to my hometown last year my friends said their kids were the same way about needing to be chaperoned everywhere. (See: moms, hyper-protective.)

 

If it's kindergarten, kids in costume at school on Halloween is OK, because really, why not? It interrupts Play-doh time? Otherwise, I oppose it on slightly different grounds. To me, it's part of the takeover of Halloween as a holiday by grownups at the expense of kids. Let kids trick or treat in costume and enjoy the holiday AS KIDS, enjoying the illusion or partial reality of night freedom. Here in New England, Halloween has become unbearable. There are almost as many houses decorated as at Christmas, and the decorations go up before the end of the baseball regular season. Plus there are costume parties for adults. I am too damn old for costume parties, and so are my neighbors.

 

That was part of my point, too. It's actually not about the kids. It's about their parents, wanting to doll up little Suzy and Johnny in the cutest possible Halloween costume and continue to vicariously engineer the perfect childhood.

 

I guess you don't remember being a kid, because kids love dressing up on Halloween, regardless of what their parents have to say.

So what's your take on Christmas?

 

Love every last second of it.

I'm not a party pooper. I just happen to particularly believe that Halloween costumes don't belong at school, for reasons I articulated. Feel free to disagree. But I promise that it doesn't have any relation to my personality overall. Just something I happen to feel strongly about because of my closeness to teachers who deal with it.

 

I agree with Dick on this.

I loved Halloween as a kid and loved the costumes my kids wore for trick or treating. They were all homemade and handsewn courtesy of my former sister-in-law. There was a piper, a scarecrow, a wizard, and others I can't remember but they never wore them to school.

Like every other holiday, Halloween has been commodified. Stores go up for costumes, candy, right after Labour Day and it's a six week sales blitz.

 

You people are the devil.

 

Dick,

You totally ignored my post that the principal has a beef against Halloween in general. As I stated she would not allow pumpkins for "Harvest Night" because it was too closely associated with Halloween. That had nothing to with costumes.

The school allows "Crazy Hair Day" which also is a distraction.

You had said it makes your business look Mickey Mouse when adults wear costumes to work on Halloween. Why does that bother you? Are they asking everyone to do this?

At our paper on Oscar night, people (maybe 6 tops) dress up as characters and it is quite cool not a distraction at all.

At a former paper I worked at a co-worker used to put up a menorah. Nobody had a problem with it. Having been around few people of Jewish faith myself I was fascinated by it and asked him several questions and actually learned a lot.

 

Are you serious?

 

Because it is wildly unprofessional.