October 28, 2004

RIGHT...For ALL the Wrong Reasons

As most of you know, our family has longstanding ties in Washington State. This week, the City of Puyallup has been the subject of international news coverage, which is pretty rare. The last time Puyallup was mentioned this much was after Johnny Carson butchered its pronunciation badly on "The Tonight Show" many years ago. (It's "pew-al-up"...)

In a surprise announcement this week the local school district canceled the annual Halloween parade and school officials proclaimed there would be no celebration or acknowledgement of the pagan festival this year. The ensuing uproar prompted the largest turnout for a school board meeting in the city's history.

For many years I've contended that Believers should have no part in the recognition of Halloween and the accompanying activities. So, as an evangelical Christian most folks would probably think I'm elated that my new home town would make such a bold move. However, I'm not.

The reason the school board canceled Halloween was because they didn't want to offend local witches with the celebration!

The epitome of political correctness has struck!

A school district spokeswoman, quoted by local KOMO-TV, says, "Witches [masks] with pointy noses and things like that are not respective symbols of the Wiccan religion, and so we want to be respectful."

Several self-proclaimed pagans, Wiccans and other assorted occultists protested against the ban during the school board meeting. Regular folk did too. Nobody seems to like the decision for one reason or another. Mothers brought their children to the meeting in full Halloween costumes; others gave speeches defending Halloween as "an American tradition" (which its not). Regardless of the protests though, the school board is sticking to its guns and there'll be no Halloween going on in the Puyallup schools anytime soon.

Only one Jewish girl spoke up concerning how Halloween offends her. Imagine that? No Christians made any statements according to the news reports. (I understand why - who wants to publicly side with the witches on the issue of Halloween in order to attempt pointing out the fallacy of how wacky political correctness is to a school board whose officials are dominated by it?)

The bottom line here is that precious few (if any) school boards seem to care much about what concerned Christians or Jews have to say regarding the occult practices and sorted history of Halloween. School officials worldwide have shoved Harry Potter and other occult material (including the celebration of Halloween) down the throats of Christian families nonstop and sometimes in the process just simply dared anyone to resist. Yet in an effort to avoid a holiday which they perceive could possibly offend the practitioners of witchcraft, the "P.C." Puyallup school board now finds themselves embroiled in a sticky controversy the likes of which the local palm reader on Meeker St. could never have seen coming!

Make no mistake, I'd like to see the rejection of Halloween by every school district but that's not about to happen - at least for the right reasons anyway. The Puyallup school board is exhibiting just the sort of twisted thinking that is gripping our world today. Right has become wrong and in an effort to appease those who practice evil, good and truth suffers. Offend the pagans - never! But who cares about Bible believers? Kinda reminds one of the skewed way the world and much of the US media seem to view the liberation of Iraq from the hands of one of history's most infamous and crazed villains doesn't it? They have it backwards.

Efforts like this to placate pagans have overtones of another sort too. You can count on the idea that the politically correct crowd has its sights set on limiting or eliminating the voice of Christians as we proclaim Jesus as the only way of eternal salvation too. We wouldn't want to upset anyone with the reality of the Cross or the finality of hell for those who reject it now would we? That would hardly be "politically correct."

(c) copyright 2004, Eric Barger

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