When was the last time you were able to wear your full Halloween costume to school? Schools have quite ridiculous restrictions on the costumes that students can wear to school. Many of these limitations seem to encourage costumes to be incredibly different from the original reason for the celebration of Halloween.
Halloween was supposed an opportunity for one to be able to express their creativity through their own unique costume ideas. It is a day to show off your scariest costume and spook your fellow classmates. However, bans on things such as fake weapons and masks completely gut these ideas. An infamous serial killer such as Leatherface goes from a mysterious, cold-blooded killer with a bone-chilling mask and chainsaw to a random idiot wearing an apron, with no mask and no weapon.
Schools have even been banning aspects such as blood and gore, which reduces the fun even more. This makes scary costumes pretty much unviable in school.
All of this dishonors the dark origins of Halloween and the motive of the costume-wearing. This ancient tradition originated with a Celtic festival called Samhain, where people would light bonfires and wear scary costumes specifically to ward off monsters and ghosts.
The people who started this tradition originally intended it to be a fun, thrilling, but terrifying opportunity for people to dress up to scare off ghosts themselves. Regardless of this, the modern costumes are usually more positive and do not capture an eerie aspect like before.
These days, schools are going as far as to even advocating students wear lighter and more cheerful costumes, contrary to the traditional, scarier ones that most people are used to. They are being encouraged to dress up as stupid things such as ‘historical characters’ or food dishes.
This shows the drastic and absolutely ludicrous turnaround that Halloween has went through in many places. It has went from a time to show your creative and scary costume to a time where you can wear your favorite type of cabbage to school.
Edward's Blog 