Halloween vs. Harvest
Would you rather count pumpkin seeds or candy bars this fall holiday season? Would you prefer to dress up in a fun and creative costume or spend the school day tallying the number of fallen leaves you can find in different colors? How about carving a pumpkin? Visiting a haunted house? You might find that generally you lean towards the things more closely related to Halloween. The spooky, the scary, the sweet, and the skeletal have all become a big part of popular culture in recent years. None of the options presented above are inherently bad, of course, but some people have different views about the kinds of activities kids and teens should engage in on October 31st.
A hot topic this October has been the elimination of Halloween and Halloween-related things from schools across the country. In many institutions, especially in elementary schools, the fun and fright of Halloween is being replaced with the idea of the “harvest party”. During a harvest party, students at these schools celebrate fall, the time when crops will traditionally be harvested and gathered from the fields. Smaller children might engage in activities like coloring pictures of leaves, counting pumpkin seeds, or painting pumpkins. Older kids and teens might go to fall carnivals or go apple picking.
As justification for the change, these institutions argue that schools should be celebrating life, not death, as well as stating that Halloween is against the religions of some people. After all, since schools are not meant to show any religious affiliation, isn’t it wrong for students to practice things related to this holiday during school? I am not here to say that people who think this way are wrong in their ideas, but I aim to provide both arguments against and solutions for these problems.
First, the argument that Halloween celebrates death instead of life is not true. Halloween among children is a celebration of imagination and creativity more so than it is about death. The most common costumes among younger kids include insects, cartoon characters, fairies, superheroes, ninjas, policemen, firefighters, and princesses. If anything, the glorification of these figures helps celebrate public service, magic, and imagination, all qualities that should be encouraged in young kids.
Second, another argument against Halloween lies in its perceived association with the devil. Some fundamentalist Christians believe that by celebrating Halloween, people are committing sins. They believe that Halloween is a pagan or even satanic holiday. The rebuttal to this argument lies in the actual history of the holiday. Halloween stems from the Catholic tradition of All Saints (or All Hallows) Day. The end of October and the beginning of November were seen as the time when the spirits of long-dead holy figures were most likely to commune with the living. This is anything but satanic! There is also merit, however, in the statement that Halloween began as a pagan ritual. There were indeed people in non-Christian countries who celebrated the harvest by dressing up in costumes to placate roaming, belligerent spirits. Nowadays, though, Halloween is, if anything, a relatively non-denominational holiday.
Even if this history of halloween does strike a chord with some people, though, does this mean that kids can’t carve pumpkins and collect candy? Young children do not care where or why the holiday originated- all they care about is dressing up like their favorite characters and gorging on sweets. Depriving children of these experiences makes them less likely to relate to other kids who do celebrate the holiday… And it also deprives them of the adventures and even the candy-related cavities that are essential to the true childhood experience.
This disparity between Halloween advocates and harvest party supporters, of course, is not a problem here at AHS. Aurora City schools are perfectly fine with allowing people to make their own decisions regarding the celebration of this holiday, as long as the use of a costume doesn’t obscure someone’s identity or show something inappropriate.
It can only be requested that Aurora does not succumb to pressure forcing the celebration of Halloween and Halloween-related things to cease in the future. After all, is carving pumpkins really that dangerous to someone’s spiritual health? Is eating candy a sign of the end times? Not in my book. Aurora must stand strong and keep up the fun and interesting traditions that surround Halloween.
