Rethinking the Good Old Days

 

Sometimes you don’t know.  You think you do, but you don’t.

I saw some unhappiness online yesterday about how some schools celebrate (or don’t celebrate) Halloween. There are some things that touch a nerve in people, because of happy memories in their childhood. I remember that when the Columbia Association was working on what they called the Aquaplan - - to rethink Columbia’s pools - - they came up against this phenomenon.

Don’t mess with things in my childhood that gave me joy. They’re sacred.

If you have memories of happy Halloween celebrations at school when you were young it may feel wrong when that isn’t what happens at your own child’s school.

We may not understand that there are children in our schools whose families don’t celebrate Halloween, perhaps for religious reasons, and so they are excluded from a big happy day with their classmates. We may not understand what it feels like to be that child, year after year, who family has no money for costumes or whose home life is far too chaotic to cope with anything extra. We may not know the fear of a parent, whose child has anaphylactic food allergies, every time there is a celebration at school that includes food.

It isn’t the same as when we were little. Sometimes that is hard to accept. It feels so, so simple to us - - a day to dress up, let off steam, maybe have a little classroom party with a few games - - but it is only simple if we ignore people whose life experiences are different than ours. Is it truly worth it to persist in recreating the school Halloween experience of our childhoods if it hurts others? Excludes others? Makes them feel less valuable or less a part of their own community?

Some times it seems so simple. It isn’t. Sometimes we just don’t know.

For more on this topic, come back in February.