Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Sanitized Holidays

Pirate Cat disagrees with your antiquated notion of maturity.
In October, I overheard one of the teachers at my kids' school say, "We don't do Halloween at school, but we have a lot of fall-related activities."

Halloween is my favorite holiday. You get to dress up and eat candy and everything has this fun spooky sheen. It's the best possible combination of things, culminating in an experience of childlike joy.1

The teacher's words gave me a mental pause, and in that space I thought, "Wow. I am startled by how much this doesn't bother me."

Schools today have the most bland, sanitized version of every holiday. They do it on purpose, so as not to offend anyone, and I never really knew how I'd feel about that until my favorite holiday was affected.

It breaks down like this: it doesn't matter if my kids celebrate at school, because we're celebrating it at home. And we do it up right at home.

So, let school be bland. It doesn't matter, since your kids get the real experience with you.2


(1) Not to be confused with "childishness." Childlike joy means you hop up and down when you see a rainbow. Childishness means you punch someone in the face for dissing your rainbow because you have no emotional control. Childlike joy is getting blissed out on your favorite ice cream. Childishness is pouting or screaming or breaking things when you are denied that ice cream. Some people do not understand the difference between childlike pleasure and immaturity, and those people suffer from a terminal case of "dull" with the occasional symptom of "awful person."
(2) This applies to any holiday you celebrate which your school does not. I'm looking at you, Christmas.