#moralizing

By: Christopher J. Ferguson

Published: Oct 15, 2022

Back in the 17th century, the Puritans banned holidays such as Christmas, which they declared to be a day of “fasting and humiliation.” In recent years, a new movement of moral puritans have taken aim at holidays, ranging from Thanksgiving, to July 4 and Columbus Day. Humiliation seems, once again, to be the guiding intention. Not spared from this moral purge has been Halloween.

Recent years have seen schools canceling Halloween celebrations, often citing “inclusivity” concerns. That appears to be continuing this year, with at least several schools across the US canceling Halloween on their campuses. Not surprising, these decisions are creating howls of protest from families; something that might suggest to schools that these efforts at “inclusivity” may be backfiring.

Indeed, cancelling Halloween is a horrible mistake.

To steelman a bit, schools are citing “inclusivity” because some families don’t celebrate Halloween for either cultural or religious reasons. If everyone can’t be involved, is it fair to let most kids have fun that a few kids aren’t? This isn’t an unreasonable concern. However, canceling Halloween is the wrong solution, and is going to cause more resentment than “inclusivity.”

Citing one group of kids as a reason to cancel events popular with a second group of kids is an excellent way to foster divisions and resentment between those kids (as well as groups of parents). It is, in fact, a disaster for inclusivity. You never want to give one group of people a reason to be resentful toward another group. Taking away a beloved holiday is always a poor idea.

In fact, secular holidays such as Halloween are an excellent way to bridge cultural gaps. Some kids may elect not to participate because their families’ religious beliefs forbid it. Such kids should be provided with fun, game-like alternative activities to do while other kids are engaged in Halloween celebrations. Other kids may wonder why they don’t dress up, but that’s a fine opportunity to talk about cultural differences, and most kids will accept that. Point being: kids who don’t want to participate in Halloween can be reasonably accommodated without canceling the holiday for everyone else. No one should be forced to participate, but we can’t cancel everything in our culture for tiny minorities of individuals who don’t participate in a cultural tradition. That’s not practical or reasonable. It is, indeed, a humiliation.

But Halloween is also a great way for kids who perhaps have recently come to the US to learn about one of our most excellent holiday traditions. This is a good thing! The bar for participation in Halloween is incredibly low. It doesn’t require any particular belief in anything. For kids who’s families can’t afford costumes, the schools could do costume drives, or make simple costumes from second hand clothes (or bedsheets for ghosts). A fun, secular, candy-driven holiday is a fantastic way to bring people together, and welcome them into part of US culture.

In general too, more holidays are better than fewer. They reduce stress, and bring people together. The whole movement to cancel holidays, even the controversial ones, is deeply misguided and harmful. Instead, I’m convinced by the argument that we should make more holidays, and make more of them official.

Instead, school officials (and the progressive movement more generally) appear to be casting themselves as the enemies of fun. Historically, it had usually been conservatives who were enemies of fun (and, sure, they’re still at it often enough), so it’s odd to see the progressive movement take this dark, ugly turn. Enemies of fun always have some kind of “save the children” or “this is morally good” argument for why they oppose fun. Yet, history rarely judges such movements with much generosity. There’s a reason few people look back on the Puritans with any cultural fondness. If anything, we’re still trying to escape some elements of that tradition. Let’s not let a few fuddy-duddy school administrators hold us back.

So I say, as a psychologist, schools…let the kids celebrate Halloween. It’s the healthiest thing for everyone.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween#Spread_to_North_America

Anglican colonists in the southern United States and Catholic colonists in Maryland "recognized All Hallow's Eve in their church calendars", although the Puritans of New England strongly opposed the holiday, along with other traditional celebrations of the established Church, including Christmas.

Like Puritans before them, the New Puritan Church of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion base their moral outrage entirely on the emotional fragility of some undefined third-party other, due to some undefined offence.

Of course, it’s less about actually protecting anyone, and more about demonstrating their own piety and moral superiority in comparison to the sinners.

We have to stop legitimizing religious fanatics.

From Shakespeare characters, to Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, to Anakin Skywalker, whenever they're discussed, these same assumptions seem to appear:

"This character is tragically flawed and at least partly to blame for their own downfall" equals "This character is a bad person who deserves to suffer and die."

"This character's choices are wrong, but well-meaning and understandable given their circumstances" equals "This character is an innocent cinnamon roll who does nothing wrong."

"This character doesn't start out as a villain, but is flawed and shows hints of their future villainy from the start" equals "This character was inherently evil from birth."

"This character is never entirely bad even after becoming a villain – at heart they're still capable of love and compassion" equals "This character is never a villain, they're just a misunderstood sweetheart."

"This character does bad things, but other characters share in the blame too" equals "It's all the other people's fault."

I consider the dichotomy of "good" and "bad" people to be inherently flawed and useless to society and people's lives.

firstly, it is impossible to be an "inherently" good or bad person. all people have the potential to hurt others within them just as everyone has the ability to be kind. its our choices and our behavior that determine what kind of person someone is and since we are constantly making choices and actions, that alignment is constantly changing. someone might have been a kind and considerate person a few years ago, but now they are angry and aggressive, and vice versa.

and because of that constant state of flux, I think its really useless and meaningless to try and classify people this way. I think its much more important to look at peoples current actions to determine what kind of person they are in a way that's specific and accountable.

I don't know what being a "good" or "bad" person looks like because those are subjective arbitrary moral judgments and not actions. I care much more if a person is kind, honest, and genuine than if they are "good".

I can't hold someone accountable to the vague notion of "good" but I can hold them accountable for being kind or honest because it's an action, not a moral value judgement.

I am either a good or bad person depending on who u ask. some people would say that since I think not nice thoughts that makes me a bad person, while another might say I'm a good person because I don't act on those thoughts and purposefully choose to be kind instead.

Many of us think of washing someone’s mouth out with soap as an outdated punishment for ill-tempered children, but for a long time it was also commonplace as a corrective for women who ventured beyond the bounds of what their husbands considered wifely. It’s also no accident that such a penalty was enacted in conjunction with the submerging of the offending party into a body of water. After all, washing away sin is an act as old as civilization itself, and one that’s most often associated with children, women, and others considered uninitiated in the ways of morality and faith. Baptism is meant to purify, through Christ, children born with sin. While any Jew can go to the mikveh, or ritual bath, women have to go after their mensesto wash away the impurity of their own blood.

In medieval times, and up to as late as the early 19th century, women who were presumed to be witches (or simply deemed immoral) would often be strapped to a chair and submerged in water as both punishment for their perceived crimes and as a form of purification. And soap, layered on top of the symbolically cleansing water, was often portrayed as the “cure” for nonwhite cultures that white imperialists sought to indoctrinate—violently, if necessary—in their notions of faith, family structure, and goodness. One infamous 1890s advertisement for Pears’ Soap depicts a military man washing his hands in a basin, with copy that reads, “The first step towards lightening The White Man’s Burden is through teaching the virtues of cleanliness.”

Prior to the mid-1800s, soap was handmade by artisans at great cost, and available only to royalty or the very wealthy; bathing itself was seen as more of an extravagance than as a matter of hygiene. But in the mid-19th century, multiple factors brought soap to the forefront of Western culture. Doctors like Ignaz Semmelweis in Hungary and, later and more famously, Louis Pasteur, recommended regular handwashing as a way to prevent disease. At the same time industrialization allowed for the more efficient production and distribution of soap. But along with the mass-market availability of soap came an increased sense of responsibility in the minds of the powerful for governing “uncivilized” outsiders through cleansing. These purveyors of morality turned their eyes, as they so often did, to those they believed were the most in need of purification: people of color, misbehaving children, and wayward women. The desire to maintain an ideal of spiritual spotless-ness has always been a driving force of patriarchy; the introduction of soap simply added an implicit caveat suggesting that natural means of purging impurity were insufficient—true cleansing required a man-made product designed to eliminate filth.