School holiday traditions worth keeping

For a child in elementary school, few activities are more exhilarating than the annual Halloween parade. Many of us have fond memories of carefully selecting a new costume – or hastily altering an old one – and circling the perimeter of our grade school while scooping up candy on the sidewalk.

For one day each year, our children identify each other by their favorite superhero or villain, and not by the color of their skin, their gender, or their physical appearance. Every child is welcome on their neighbor’s doorstep. The only requirement is a costume – any costume.

While schools across the country are busy preparing for another Halloween, one principal in Massachusetts sent his students a different message this year: Leave your costumes at home.

In a recent letter to parents canceling the school’s annual Halloween parade, Boyden Elementary principal Brendan Dearborn said, “The costume parade is out of our ordinary routine and can be difficult for many students. Also, the parade is not inclusive of all of the students, and it is our goal each and every day to ensure all students’ individual differences are respected.” Instead, the school has planned a “Black and Orange Spirit Day.” Students can wear the colors black or orange, but costumes are off-limits.

Boyden Elementary is not the only school that has decided to buck tradition and do away with Halloween parades. Similar decisions have been made at many other schools across the country, both public and private. This is but one example of a broader movement in our schools to abolish certain holiday traditions in the name of inclusion. If every child cannot participate, none of them can – even if the event itself is purely secular. This trend is unlikely to change, but it probably should.

Inclusion should be about acceptance and education, and not abolishing tradition. It’s all a balancing test. Inclusiveness and tradition are both central aspects of the human experience, and the latter should not automatically yield to the prior. Some holidays that are fundamentally religious might be best celebrated at home, but when they are basically secular, there must be a way to preserve these traditional school celebrations while also presenting quality programs to the students who choose not to participate. There is no perfect solution, but the world our children will inherit is far from perfect.

Even if Halloween costume parades do not seem important, the next celebration that falls by the wayside might be. If we can look back at our own childhood and recall these school holiday traditions with fondness, don’t our children deserve to have the same memories?

When our race to be all-inclusive is over, we’re bound to look back and wonder what has happened to our schools. Individually, these choices to do away with certain school events are somewhat painless. But when the dust has settled, we’ll look back and decide that some of them were worth fighting for.

This story was originally published October 21, 2017 at 10:05 AM with the headline "School holiday traditions worth keeping."