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Hallowe’en has come and gone for another year, so time for some thoughts on this now controversial "holiday".
Grinning jack o’lanterns and ersatz spider
webs still festoon porches and businesses.
We’re all munching on leftover candy or that purloined from our
children. There was a lot of talk about how to celebrate Halloween with children in the local
media. Having so many newcomers living
here gives us a chance to think about what we do and why. I can’t imagine what it’s like to immigrate
here and see homes with tombstones in the yard, scary images of old women, images
of death, and the absurdity of seeing a clown or Spiderman sitting in the car
next to you at a stop light. We have many families here who have escaped horrors of
war, persecution, and unfathomable natural disasters. Here in Canada we have been so relatively
safe for so long that we like to scare ourselves for fun. The amount of time and money that we can put
into outlandish costumes must seem a luxury to an outsider too. Just last evening my South Asian cab driver was
in awe of a fare on her way to a party who was wearing a scuba outfit, complete
with flippers and “air tanks” consisting of two bottles of booze strapped to
her back. Often in Canada our biggest
Halloween problem is how to use the toilet while in costume. What a blessed place to be able to play in such a way.
Getting back to the matter of children and Halloween, many
people feel the morbidity of Halloween is inappropriate, and the expectation of a costume and
candy is a big expectation to put upon families. Very important considerations in working with
families of diverse backgrounds. Also,
teachers and early childhood educators have to deal with many religious
considerations, inappropriate costumes; swords, guns, knives, Miley Cyrus,
slutty Disney princesses, cheap costumes that rip and break the wearer’s heart,
children with no costumes, parents who shove a bag of costume stuff at you, little kids who are afraid of their own costumes, etc. So some places choose to have Black
and Orange Day, Dress as Your Favourite Saint Day, or ban it all together. It supposedly takes the pressure off
everyone.
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| Early Literacy Specialist, William Shakespeare leads Halloween Circle at the DVE Ontario Early Years Centre |
As a RECE who has survived many, many, Halloweens with other
people’s children, as a mom of my own children, a big sister to hoards, and as
a child who loved to dress up myself, I think Halloween can be a playful and
really fun day for children.
Working in this field, I know children get excited about
other holidays too, but not as much as they do about Halloween. People used to worry that children got too
worked up too soon about Christmas. We
wouldn’t decorate our child care before December 1st in an effort to keep the
frenzy in check. In reality, for most of
November the children still wanted to chant Five Little Pumpkins and reread The
Dark Dark Tale, by Ruth Brown. (This is
normal child behaviour that ECES would often try to stop by saying, “Halloween’s
over, we’re not singing that.” But that’s
a blog for another day!)
On December 1st and
even December 20th, the children could still be heard saying, “Next year I’m
going to be . . .” It’s the one day of
the year when little children, who very often feel powerless in the big old
world, can be whomever and whatever they want to be. They fantasize about it, change their minds,
and wonder about it all year long. In my
opinion, that is likely the biggest part of the fun of Halloween. Maybe I’ll be Iron Man, or Usain Bolt, or Fairy Queen, or a baseball player, or a Zombie, or a Zombie – insert anything-here,
or Sherlock Holmes, or Medusa, or French Toast, or . . . And then they have a costume they can wear
around the house, or to family birthday parties: “You said I could wear
something nice to Grandma’s. Buzz
Lightyear is nice.”
My friend and colleague, Fumiko Fujikawa has incorporated Halloween in her English School in Ikoma City in Japan. The children and parents love it just as much as Fumiko does; and they learn new vocabulary in a meaningful way. https://www.facebook.com/flat.ed My friend and colleague Cherry Xu has incorporated into her school in Changzhou, China too. http://www.cherryskids.ca/gallery.html
So, as I contemplate what I'll be next year, I smile a the pictures I'm seeing of family and friends enjoying the fun and imagination of Hallowe'en 2013.
