Cecil the Lion or rather his pelt will be competing for most common costume this Halloween—appropriate, considering this is the holiday on which, traditionally, we celebrate the dead.  Beyond Cecil, we should expect to see a lot of stock 2015 movie characters.  I’m talking about costumes worn by adults, here.  Children may be wearing jeans and sweatshirts, as fewer schools are celebrating Halloween in an effort not to offend—anyone.

I grew up in the Halloween Capitol of the World where we could Trick-or-Treat for days before so that we wouldn’t be left candy-less, as on the day itself were parades down Main Street, one during the day and one even larger at night following the football game at the Pumpkin Bowl.   I can remember three of my costumes: a rabbit, a hobo, and a Southern belle.  The other years I was probably wearing a band uniform, a kind of costume; nothing to take the prize away from this year’s Pizza Rat or Marty McFly.

When my children were babies, we put them in their brightest onesies and painted their faces with lipstick and eye shadow.  Clowns, of course.  Cheap and easy.  Now they hate clowns.  Maybe this was where I began to go wrong.

I remember a robot—a box on the head with tin cans up the arms and legs, a ghost—eye-holes cut in a pillow case, and another pillow case—painted to look like a piece of Wrigley’s Gum.  We were Jack Frost, Baba Yaga, Boba Fett, the Phantom of the Opera. Not that costumes mattered much as, when it came time to go out, everyone put on jackets, boots, mittens, hats, and scarves.

Except there was that one year we went out to San Diego, our costumes exposed for everyone to see.  We might as well have been naked.

Then there was the following year when three feet of snow fell and still my intrepid Trick-or-Treaters went out, their valiant father cutting a path, while I ministered to the snowy beggars making it to our door.

One year, channeling  A Nightmare Before Christmas, we honored Dickens with the six of us dressed as Scrooge, the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Ghost of Christmas Future, the Ghost of Christmas Present, Marley’s Ghost,  and Tiny Tim.  We were an amazing sight!

Whom did we hurt?  Whom did we offend?

I’m not unsympathetic to those who are put off by Halloween in school.  I raised a Jewish family in a mostly Christian school district and dealt with my share of “Oh, Holy Night” and ornaments for the Christmas tree we did not have.  But what of TRADITION?  Face it, these holidays are all revenants of a pagan world, from which we all sprang.  There are myriad ways of honoring these traditions without calling the Faithful forward and leaving all Others behind in a slough for the damned.  How can we so blithely accept political correctness, a concept in its pure form that denies us all the delight and mystery of ancient traditions?  As far as I’m concerned, religion has no place in schools or in government.  But our traditions, our memories, our history:  these are the roots that secure us to our world and to each other and to ourselves.