Why Do Some Schools Ban Trick-Or-Treating And Halloween Celebrations? How Did The Halloween Holiday Get Its Start?

Most of us fondly remember celebrating Halloween when we were kids.  The festivities involved trick-or-treating of some kind and usually also included a school classroom party.  Students spent the day dressed in their costumes;  often there was an all-school costume parade that let the kids show them off.

Now, fast-forward to 2015.  At most public schools, the celebration of Halloween has been cast into the same closet as Christmas or even Thanksgiving.  Kids aren't allowed to dress in their costumes and there isn't any mention of the holiday.  What happened?

The easy answer to that question is Political Correctness but that begs the question:  Why?  What about Halloween could be considered offensive to someone?  To get to the bottom of that question we need to go back in time - almost 1,300 years - to learn about the origins of Halloween.

The celebration that we know as Halloween is the day the occurs before the dual Catholic feast days - All Saints Day - a holy day of obligation - on November 1 and All Souls Day on November 2.  On All Saints Day, Catholics commemorate those individuals who have passed on that have attained beautification in Heaven.  Meanwhile, the feast of All Souls Day recognizes all individuals who have passed on.

The celebration of Halloween came to be as people prepared for the two feast days to come.  Often, individuals would visit cemeteries to place flowers or other items on the graves of loved ones.  Somewhere along the line, commercialization promoted the secularization of the holiday and people began to dress in costumes of the dead.

It's safe to make the assumption that for a lot of people (especially Protestants and non-Catholics) the Halloween holiday became more of a secular celebration, with any correlation to its religious origins completely forgotten.

Halloweens popularity continued to rise until the early 1980's - when a rise in anti-Catholicism spread stories and rumors about the holiday being a celebration of the "Devil's Night".  Those who sought to displace the holiday from society started to press the issue in the school system.  As the 1990's wore on, many public school systems dropped the celebration of Halloween (along with Christmas and even Thanksgiving) to pacify those in opposition.

Looking for more Halloween-related stories?  Here's a link to some good ideas on what else you can use pumpkins for besides carving them into jack-o'-lanterns.