Witches Pitch Fit – School Board Says No CostumesInside MagicMagic News Updated Daily for the Professional Magician

Pointing Not Pointy

Puyallup, Washington’s school district has banned Halloween activities because they are offensive to witches. Please note this is not Magic Fiction but Magic News. In other words, if I’m lying, I’m dying and my momma’s home crying.

Because the Wiccan Religion ? the denomination under which you could categorize witches ? is a religion, the school district thought it best to apply the rules against discrimination uniformly to apply to witches and born-again Christians.

The district said the ruling was “final and irreversible.”

Karen Hansen, spokesperson for the school district, said witches have complained to schools about the manner in which Halloween is celebrated. Out of respect for the Wiccans’ discomfort, the district suspended all celebration and costumes.

Channel 13 of Birmingham, Alabama reported that “Hanson said members of the Wiccan religion did not ask the school district to cancel the Halloween events. But she said they have expressed displeasure with such images as witches with pointy noses and witches flying on broomsticks. She said that witches with pointy noses are not ‘respective symbols of the Wiccan religion’ and that their district wants to be respectful of that.”

Melissa Joan Hart who plays Sabrina the Teenaged Witch noted that she does not have a pointy nose.

You can read one of the many articles about this controversy here.

In a related story, hobos have protested the “stereotypical caricature of their group. We do not ride the rails, whistle through the spaces in our teeth, eat baked beans from a can, carry our worldly belongings in a red handkerchief tied to a stick, and steal warm apple pies from window sills.”

The school district disagreed with the hobos protest and said the portrayal was “accurate and certainly not a caricature. As long as a child does not dress up as a pointy-nose witch hobo, they will be allowed to come to school in…