Excerpt from a good summary:
"Say a prayer, a spell, or a demonic incantation for Halloween. This October, as in past Octobers, many schools are refusing to celebrate the holiday. Others have recast it as "Fall-o-Ween" or "Orange and Black Day" or, in words carefully calibrated to be as generic as possible, the "Fall Festival." In Anne Arundel County, Maryland, one councilman-nominally a Republican, but spiritually a member of the Everything Not Prohibited Is Compulsory Party-has reacted with a resolution to require his county's schools to hold Halloween parties. I don't approve of his solution, but I understand his aggravation....
But the alliance's most important members are driven by fear, not faith. They're the key to the coalition: the risk-averse bureaucrats. Where the fundamentalists would like to see Halloween eliminated entirely and the Wiccans would replace it with a two-day teach-in about the Burning Times, the bureaucrats merely want to drain all the blood from it, eliminating anything that might offend somebody or give a parent something to worry about. Many would be happy to keep Halloween around as long as the witches wear bicycle helmets instead of dangerously pointy hats. Barring that, they'll sadly sacrifice a school's celebrations altogether, suggesting softly as they wield the knife that it's all for the best, really; all those costumes and candies were distracting the kids from their lessons.
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