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Oct. 27, 2006
Busy Thursday! and thoughts on Halloween.
Oh, my gosh, we are LOVING Story of the World, Vol 3. We're only a week into it, and PJ is already asking to "do history" EVERY DAY. We love standing in front of the giant map with the erasable markers and drawing all over it about the routes. He loves the activities and the mapwork because geography is his favorite subject. Best of all, I'm learning new things too. What a great, great resource. I'm just sorry we didn't start it sooner! Right now we are studying post-Columbian Spanish colonialism and the spread of the Spanish empire under Phillip II in the 16th century and its impact on the South American indigenous people. We are learning about the Aztecs as well, and tonight we'll be watching The Road to El Dorado. It's historical fiction and we have seen it before, but I really enjoyed it, and now I think he'll get a lot more out of it knowing the historical context of the story. I will also be renting Man of LaMancha since it is about the story of Don Quixote, set in that time period in Spain. We're also reading The Secret of the Andes and really enjoying that, too. History and literature are suddenly really coming together for us, and I'm getting a lot out of it too!
Yesterday we were up late doing schoolwork because we had a very full day. In the morning, we saw Once Upon a Mattress done by the Miami Children's Theatre. I have to say, I was very disappointed in the production. It was very, very racy at times. It had been directed by a young man who had just graduated from the New World School of the Arts. He emceed the production and I immediately recognized him from an AMAZING New World production of 42nd Street we saw last year. He is VERY talented and was very good in that, but the direction of Once Upon a Mattress frankly had an obvious teenag boy's sensibility. There was a lot of unnecessary innuendo that was added in for no discernible reason except to get cheap laughs; the out-of-wedlock subplot was very emphasized and explicit as well; Princess Fred got very drunk on stage; during the "Man to Man Talk" - a number which has ALWAYS been ommitted in children's theater versions of this show that I've ever seen - there was a lot of body-part grabbing and crude gestures etc. There were children as young as 3 in the audience and I know a lot of parents were not happy about this. I think they should be able to put on whatever kind of production they want, but this was a 10AM showing marketed for elementary students. I just wish they had let us know that there were so many adult themes in this production so that we had been able to make more informed choices about it. Fortunately most of it appeared to go over PJ's head, but I have been meaning to initiate a discussion about the play to see how much he understood and if we need to talk about the out of wedlock and the "It isn't a stork that makes a baby!" things. :(
Then we went to our homeschooling group's park date. We were throwing a little Halloween party for the kids and they all had SO much fun. PJ dressed as Nightwing from Batman Beyond. It looked cute... AT FIRST. I paid SO much money for that costume and it ist he flimsiest thing ever. It tore all over the place. I have to patch it up before our other Halloween party and trick or treating on Tuesday. :(
We treat Halloween as a "big dress up day," since PJ loves to dress up in costumes for ANY occasion. (This is also a big appeal of renaissance fairs and scifi conventions for him. LOL) But we do talk about how the scary occult/ supernatural aspect some people throw in to the holiday is not Christian and how fear isn't something that Christians need to experience because we can trust that God's always in charge instead. Fortunately PJ is very much NOT into the horror thing AT ALL. For example, during those awful "Fright Night At Universal Studio" commercials that they air at ALL HOURS OF THE DAY, GAHHHHH... he covers his eyes and says "Tell me when it's over!!" So we do only "harvest fest" type of decorations, pumpkins and scarecrows and autumn leaves and things like that.
I do understand the rationale behind why some Christian families object to even recognizing the holiday, but I also think that those folks often overlook how psychologically cathartic it is for human beings to deal with and confront intuitively frightening things in a controlled environment, such as with horror movies and haunted houses and "ghost stories." For many people, things like this aren't so much a celebration of the macabre as it is a way of demystifying the fear of the occult/ supernatural/ spiritual evil for themselves. Not for everyone, but for some. It's not unlike the reasons I enjoy rollercoasters, for example. Our version of Halloween is so far removed from all of that; even if it does have "pagan roots" or whatever, what WE do doesn't have any pagan roots insomuch as it has ties to silly culture-specific fairytales. It's like saying we shouldn't watch the Olympics because it's named after Greek gods and the Greek pagans did it as a religious thing zillions of years ago. Objecting to kids doing something because 1600 years ago it was tied to pagan traditions is IMHO not just unfounded, but I feel like it's almost denying that God has any power to transform something from bad to good. "He makes all things new," after all. I do respect and understand other people's different views on this subject, however, I am at peace with our decision to celebrate Halloween within a non-macabre, non-occult context.
For my kid, it's just an excuse to run around in a Batman costume in public. And what 8yo doesn't love doing that? :)
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