But today’s Halloween is a wee bit different than the Halloween traditions I enjoyed as a child.

This year, I will not open my front door to the usual hobgoblins, ghosts, witches and pirates; my front porch will be visited instead by adults wearing sports jerseys or no costume, who demand candy… or else.

Old versus new

According to Welsh mythology, Halloween marked the end of the harvest season and beginning of the ‘darker half’ of the year, winter. It was seen as a special time, when the spirits or fairies could more easily come into our world and were particularly active. Offerings of food and drink, or portions of the crops, were left for the fairies. Places were set at the dinner table or by the fire to welcome them. After this the eating, drinking, and games were played.

Halloween entitlement society

The last five years, Halloween in my neighborhood has become a freak show. No longer is it about little children donning scary and cute costumes and Trick-or-Treating for candy and goodies.

Buses and vans now drop off loads of children, teens and adults. Some wear costumes, many don’t. Young girls wear wildly inappropriate costumes, often with their parents in tow.

My first memory of Halloween was in the late 1960’s. I dressed in a tacky Blue Fairy costume with a creepy plastic mask. To my chagrin, this costume is now sold on eBay as “vintage.

No longer is the candy request “trick-or-treat;” I open the door to angry faces, intimidating and defensive stances, thrusting open pillow cases at me, while their vans and rented buses idle nearby.

The standard “costume” is greasepaint under the eyes and a NFL jersey… or a plain white T-shirt.

Until last year I used to say, “no costume, no candy.” But that only got my sprinkler heads kicked off, crushed pumpkins, and broken potted plants.

Before calls of racism and elitism are leveled at me, here is an example of the attitude:

“Every Halloween some (mostly) suburban olds start firing off letters to the Editor of the local paper frothing about the *wrong kids* Trick-or-Treating on their lawns. They have a big problem with parents from the *wrong side of town* driving their kids to the neighborhood to get in on the better candy. They hate it for the same reason that Republican voters hate *welfare* and *redistribution*: they’re big racists.”

The blog post is titled “Send us your racist Halloween stories!” and is pure race-baiting.

Speed trick-or-treating

I was raised in a very no-frills, working-class neighborhood in Sacramento. Our parents never drove us to another neighborhood to trick-or-treat.

Granted, the neighborhood was relatively safe. I understand parents want their kids to experience Halloween in a safe neighborhood.

But the thug entitlement mentality is making me turn off the porch lights this year. The demands for mountains of candy by adults and teens is strange. The concept of trick-or-treat has turned into homeowners providing a years’ worth of expensive candy for people they do not know. It’s about volume, and how much candy people can collect from perfect strangers. The celebration is gone.

Absurd Halloween bans

It’s the adults who have ruined the holiday.

The other issue swirling around Halloween now are the recent school bans. Unfortunately, it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that schools are banning Halloween activities.

School boards all across the country seem to eventually find ways to ban everything near and dear to many Americans. Starting with a ban on common sense, they’ve also banned traditional American holidays, sports, certain books, art, music, theology and religion. Parents have even been banned from schools.

School administrators have sent home notes this year telling parents superheroes, witches, princesses and goblins are not welcome at school on Halloween this year.

Why are schools banning Halloween activities? Equality – because of cultural, financial and social differences, it’s not fair to celebrate Halloween, according to many school administrators and teachers.

Inglewood Elementary School, located in the Philadelphia suburb of Towamencin, announced its cancellation of of All Hallows Eve festivities, citing concerns that the cultural holiday was “filled with religious overtones,” according to PennLive.com in Pennsylvania.

It is not fair to celebrate anything American, according to this logic. Schools seem to work overtime now preventing kids from experiencing anything new or different… as long as it’s an American tradition.

On Halloween, while it is still light out, I will hand out candy to a few of the littlest ghouls, goblins, witches and pirates who come to my door with their parents. And then I will turn off the porch light, bring all of my pumpkins into the house, and go out to dinner — if I can navigate through the gridlock on my neighborhood streets.

With many public schools now feeding children breakfast and lunch, and even forbidding parents to send homemade lunches to school for their children, it is obvious that the state has decided that it is a better parent.

Many school principals say they are encouraging “healthier choices” and claim they are trying to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices, while making an impact that extends beyond the classroom.

But many parents are not happy and are rebelling.

This totalitarian control over students’ diets, which really only seems to be benefiting the school food service providers, is not the role of the state, nor a part of the education plan.

But it is part of statists’ agenda.

Another Statist Agenda

A recent essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association argued that in extreme cases of obesity, state intervention is needed to save the lives of fat children. The “experts” recommended that obese children should be taken from parents and placed in foster families.

The essay, written by Dr. David Ludwig and Lindsey Murtagh, said that temporarily removing children from the custody of their parents and placing them in foster care is more ethical than surgery as a strategy for fighting life-threatening complications arising from obesity.

Ludwig is an obesity specialist at the Harvard-affiliated Childrens Hospital Boston, and Murtagh is a lawyer and researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Teachers, educators, researchers, lawyers and Harvard doctors have decided that they are better equipped to parent America’s kids.

Too many American dimwits have been lauding First Lady Michelle Obama for her “Let’s Move” initiative aimed at combating obesity. But I think she needs to butt out, and worry about her own family’s weight and eating habits. Obama is hardly a healthy vegan, and rarely is she the picture of how to eat.

Ironically, many of the people making these decisions on behalf of the state are also overweight.

“Inadequate or unskilled parental supervision can leave children vulnerable” to these obesity-causing influences, wrote Ludwig and Murtagh.

And I have yet to read an explanation of what constitutes a “skilled parent.”

State intervention already occurs in many areas, beginning with state-run schools. Teachers claim to advocate for “healthier choices,” but have been caught assisting young girls seeking birth control pills or even abortions in some cases, instead of involving parents.

The leftist agenda is full of holes and is not at all about healthy lifestyles or caring for children.

Teachers already report parents to Child Protective Services for neglect and abuse, but the state meddling is extending to far too many areas of parenting.

Schools long ago sold out decent lunches for profit motives. When I was growing up in the 1960’s, my neighborhood public elementary school had a cook who made hot lunches in the school’s kitchen. From our classrooms we could smell the bread baking every day. It was a treat to be able to buy an occasional hot lunch, as my parents made me bring my lunch from home most days.

But by the 1990’s, when my son was in elementary school, the schools were trucking in Taco Bell and McDonald’s for meals. So he too brought his lunch from home. I wouldn’t let him eat at the school.

Even today, the supposed “healthy” school lunches are frozen foods, pre-packaged and usually taste like cardboard. Kids throw most of the food away.

State Lunch Program

The California School Lunch Program and the State Meal Programs are child nutrition programs funded by the State of California. The programs provide money to public school districts that serve “nutritious” meals, free or at a reduced price, to “needy children.” The program is administered by the California Department of Education.

While this may sound sincere, the meal programs at schools are feeding far more kids than just the needy children. Lazy parents of all social and economic classes are regularly dropping kids off at school in the morning for a free meal, and partaking in the free lunch programs.

Is it any wonder children are obese? Parents don’t prepare meals.

It doesn’t take a registered dietician to know what a healthy meal is, or if a child has a weight problem.

And schools are a big part of the problem. School physical education programs and recess activities have been greatly limited thanks to lawyers. Monkey bars, dodge ball and other physical recess games are no longer allowed. And because so many female teachers complained about sweaty, smelly children in the classroom after recess and PE, programs have been cut.

A lack of PE and outdoor playtime during the school day have coincided with the increase in the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Disorder. Kids just don’t get to blow off enough steam — particularly little boys. Many teachers prefer that parents medicate their boys instead of running them ragged in sports or physical play during the school day.

Many parents are rebelling against statist schools and reminding teachers and administrators who the rightful parent is, as well as reminding them of the correct role of schools.

But with lawmakers continuing to intervene, crowding out parents with increasing anti-parent laws, it feels as if we are all becoming wards of the state. In California “Mother may I?” will soon be replaced with “Governor may I?”

— Katy Grimes