In Puyallup, Oregon, Halloween’s been cancelled this year. For obvious reasons, of course: dressing up as a witch is offensive to real witches.
“Witches with pointy noses and things like that are not respective symbols of the Wiccan religion and so we want to be respectful of that,” said Hansen.
The school district cancelled Halloween, of course, to be politically correct, to be kind to witches.
Building administrators should not tolerate such inappropriate stereotyping (images such as Witches on flying brooms, stirring cauldrons, casting spells, or with long noses and pointed hats) and instead address them as you would hurtful stereotypes of any other minority.”
Either that, or some witch cast a spell on the Puyallup school board. 😛
* via Wizbang
Chasing the Wind 
I wouldn’t be surprised if they ban the Frankenstein costumes under the excuse of they don’t want to offend “people with prosthetics”. Ooh! What about banning Power Rangers, Barney, various Disney Princesses, and other pop icons as being “illegal celebrity impersonations”? Maybe banning Kerry for being offensive to Catholics? Oops! How did something political get in here? 🙂
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How come we only expect people to respect our own religion? Is it somehow less offensive when it’s not directed at us?
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In answer to Jo’s question…..Yes.
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Frankly, for me Halloween witches have no more to do with religion (Wiccan or otherwise) than Christmas elves or Chinese New Year dragons. They’re make believe fantasy creatures.
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And personally, I’m not Catholic. I was just extending a joke.
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What? Christmas elves are fantasy creatures? You expect me to believe that? If elves aren’t real, then where does Santa get all those toys? Wal-mart?
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Jo… sit down, girl. I have some bad news for you. 😕
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This [censored] makes me want to PUKE. This is just a blatant attempt at ruining the holiday fun for kids in school. Waste of classtime?? Its a FREAKIN HALF HOUR. These OLD STUPID FARTS dont even realize how tragic and possibly damaging this is to KIDS. If I were in that town…..I would [idle threat of vandalism deleted] on Halloween. But this is just 1 smart mans opinion.
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i agree with the intelligent person ^
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since there are no real witches, they are just satan worshiping kooks,
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that like to “Cast spells” on people
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I have been a practicing Witch for many years now. I personally love
Halloween, it was always one of my favorite holidays. I keep some of my
Halloween decorations up all year. Now, celebrating Samhain (what Halloween
was originally called and what we Witches call it) is still one of my
favorite times of year. On my altar is a little porcelain witch (Halloween
decoration) given to me by a friend.
I am not offended at all by children, or adults, dressing up to celebrate.
I still dress up every year. Last year, I even went as a wicked witch.
Complete with basket of apples. And I didn’t offend myself. 🙄
This year, at our Samhain festival, everyone dressed up, and we even had a
costume contest before our ritual. One winner, who follows the Egyptian Path
won, with her costume of Cleopatra. Nobody was offended. My husband, who
is
6 foot 4 inches, dressed as Grumpy the Dwarf. I hope we didn’t offend any
little people. Some of the males chose to dress in “drag”. Hmm…maybe
we should have warned them about possibly offending cross-dressers. The
other winner was dressed as “Jesus-Tap-Dancing_Christ”. I’m sure that would
offend a lot of people. 😯
Really, you should not even TRY to P.C. a holiday like Halloween/Samhain.
Yes, for us, it is a serious holiday. We respect and honor that, and our
rituals are very serious. We know fully what this Sabbat is all about. But
almost every Pagan and Witch I know also enjoys the fun, irreverent, campy
side of the holiday. It is the one day of the year when everyone can be
politically incorrect, outrageous, and funny. It is a day full of fantasy
and magick. For pagans and non-pagans. The last thing I would want to see is
children being deprived of fantasy and magick. THAT offends me.
Layla
P.S. We don’t worship Satan.:twisted: We don’t believe in him. THAT’S a Christian thing.
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That certainly sheds some light on a lot of things, thanks. 🙂
Just a forewarning, I’m celebrating Christmas this year. I am *not* celebrating Winter Holiday, whatever that is. 😛
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