Halloween

Earlier this week, while Lisa was treated to some down home southern hospitality courtesy of the belles of Mississippi, the kids brought home the bright orange flyer announcing a “fun-filled night of treat giving followed by a costume contest” at Eagle Glen Golf Club in cooperation with the Wilson Elementary School PTA.

Another flyer announced the pizza party on Friday for Katie’s class (Jake wasn’t impressed in the least), which actively solicited pizza donations, small pumpkins for dissection, and asked us parents to help the kids to make a “fall festive hat”.

When I asked the kids why they weren’t allowed to talk about Halloween at school they impolitely questioned my sanity and my outlook but I think they missed the big yet ever-so-subtle picture.

I’m old enough to remember the exciting after school “carnivals” we had at public elementary school. It was called the annual “Halloween Carnival” and all the kids wore costumes, the parents set up booths filled with fun games like the one where we threw real darts at real balloons and if you popped three of them you got a cheesy prize that fell apart by the following Tuesday. There was candy, popcorn balls, fudge, home made ice cream, and all the moms brought stacks of trays filled with decorated cookies.

The kids still do similar kinds of things. Well, okay, they don’t throw real darts and they aren’t allowed to eat home made popcorn balls, but still, you recognize what’s going on as Halloween, but we just can’t call it that.

Like the Jehovah Witness member that coincidentally shows up at mom’s house with a special gift a few days after her birthday (but it isn’t a birthday gift, mom) these folks pay a hypocritical sort of lip service to the notion that we can’t call it Halloween because some kid in a witch costume with a beat up broom might offend the pagans of Wicca or their polar opposites, fruitcakes like my sister who believe that demons are real and Harry Potter films and books are Satan’s work.

We report, you decipher.

MS, guest hosting for my better half