How to Ruin Halloween in Ten Days

As part of their ongoing coverage of Halloween, the NYT has ignored the fact that Halloween is a day where parents all over America are fraught with worry and fear, particularly if they are the parents of children aged 17-34.

Instead, they have produced an in-depth investigation of recent trends concerning the continued infringement of students' first amendment rights.

In elementary schools across the nation, children are no longer allowed to wear Halloween costumes that are, in a word "scary." This is, of course part of the same movement that wants to do away with the "competitive" part of competitive sports and the "food" part of cafeteria food by replacing scoring with polite applause and mac & cheese with peas & carrots, respectively.

Little Bo Peep would make the cut at the Halloween parade at Riverside Drive Elementary School here on Friday, but the staff she used to menace her sheep would probably have to go.

I never thought of Little Bo Peep as a figure that was particularly "menacing" to sheep. I always thought she had just lost them. Apparently, however, they ran away, probably in horror. I'm just glad that we finally know why those lambs would not stop screaming.

In a school district in Illinois, students are being encouraged to dress up as historical characters or delicious food items rather than vampires or zombies.

Historical characters or delicious food items? Why not combine both? Ladies and Gentlemen, today's costume winner is 10-year old Sally Perkins, who came in dressed as a tart!

In Texas, a school has issued suggestions for “positive costumes” for the annual Halloween dance.

This is, of course, the opposite of "negative costumes," which include Eeyore, Daria, and Joseph Lieberman. The criteria? Costumes that bum everyone out.

At Riverside Drive, a Los Angeles public school in the San Fernando Valley, the Halloween parade is being defanged right down to its jagged fingertips.

Anatomically, this sentence makes little sense. If anything, it is suggestive of unspeakably horrific acts. You not only defang something, you keep going until you reach the jagged fingertips? Are we talking mutilation of the whole head, arms, and torso here? I thought the whole point of this was for Halloween to stop being scary.

“We’re balancing a tradition here with the times we live in,” said Tom Hernandez, a spokesman for District 202 in Plainfield, Ill., where costumes depicting animals and food (preferably carrots or pumpkins) are in favor.

Wait, what happened to the defanged parade in Los Angeles? All of a sudden we are back in Illinois? What purpose did the anatomically confusing sentence before this one serve? Also, any kid who shows up dressed as a carrot should be hung from their underwear until dead.

Even at a public school named after the man who practically invented cloak and daggers for children, there are restrictions.

Wait. What?

“Children are not allowed to bring any weapons or masks to the costume parade, no swords, and they can wear moderate face makeup — nothing extreme,” explained Addys Gonzalez, the office assistant at the Walt Disney Elementary School in Burbank, Calif.

OK. Now I'm really confused. Walt Disney practically invented cloak and daggers for children? I thought he invented the single greatest merchandising icon known to mankind. When did he start giving kids cloaks and daggers? Maybe he did it during Jew hunts.

And now we're back in California? Is this the defanged parade? Did Walt Disney have fangs? Help!

A memo about costume appropriateness sent home recently by Riverside Drive’s principal made the following points:

Ooh, a memo! Great!

¶They should not depict gangs or horror characters, or be scary.

Your son cannot dress up as a crip. He especially cannot dress up as a blood. Also, the Halloween costume cannot be scary or depict a horror character. This includes, but is not limited to, Frankenstein monsters, wolfmen, vampires, zombies, serial killers, mummies, leatherfaces, invisible people, dragons, dinosaurs, giant animals, mutants, Dick Cheney, creatures from black lagoons, cousin Itt, Hulk, Shrek, Elmo, Dr. Jekylls, Mr. Hydes, aliens, goblins, orcs, communists, reds, elves, Jasons, Freddies, Them, bigfeet, witches, wraiths, deaths, gremlins, and bat boys.

"Be Scary," actually, is all inclusive. Somewhere out there, someone (raises hand) thinks brides are scary.

You know what, I'm not even going to bother listing the rest of the rules. They are as superfluous and unnecessary as that sixth pitcher at last call.

Riverside Drive goes beyond the guidelines, written a few years ago, said Monica Carazo, a spokeswoman for the system. Those guidelines discourage fake weapons, costumes that mock race or gender and anything too sexy; French maids are explicitly discouraged.

Isn't this discriminative of the French? The French have as much a right to employ a maid as any other country. Heck, call them Freedom Maids if you have to. Just don't ruin it for the rest of us.

“Several years ago, there was some push back in our community,” said Mr. Hernandez, the school district spokesman in Plainfield, Ill. “Some people thought Halloween was a Satanic ritual. Well, let’s not say Satanic — let’s say they were not comfortable with what it represents.”

That's right, unless people are dressing as angels and/or highly ornamented candles, nobody should ever dress up.

“If someone shows up in a witch costume, we’re not going to tell them to take it off,” he said, but the district will not countenance claws of any sort.

He continued, "We are well aware that we should not tell children to take their clothes off."

At James F. Bay Elementary in Seabrook, Tex., costumes are forbidden outright, according to the school’s principal, Erin Tite, but an exception was made for the Halloween dance. “The purpose for the dance was to allow them a safe place to wear their costumes in place of trick or treating for some of our students,” Ms. Tite said in an e-mail message. “We established the guidelines of ‘positive costumes’ from the beginning, knowing what we might see if we chose not to establish boundaries.”

In an entire article full of ridiculous statements, the last paragraph is perhaps the most ridiculous one of all. They forbid costumes. Except on Halloween.

For our next measure, we will prohibit the distribution of beads. Except on Mardi Gras.