I got an e-mail from a friend of mine telling me I must check out Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost. And I must say, I'm blown away. I'll probably end up doing a review on it at some point, but in the meantime, it does bring an interesting issue to my attention. We've seen a number of things done to our freedoms (and indeed, everyone's freedom) under the heading of "What About the Children?" Well, that's all well and good, but what about our children?

I should start out by saying this: I'm not a parent, though I hope to become one someday-- I've recently discovered that we men also have biological clocks, and I've been hearing mine tick lately. Sometimes I think it's because my best friends, Rob and Charlene, have an absolutely wonderful five-year-old daughter who is just too cute for prime time. She's also doing something that most of us never got the chance to do: she's growing up Wiccan.

Actually, Rob and Charlene are doing a marvelous job of raising her, keeping a good balance between the so-called mainstream and their own pagan beliefs. I have no doubt that if she came to them a few years down the road and said she was interested in another religion, they'd be supportive. But in the meantime, they're showing her both worlds. And like all parents today, they are forced to share their parenting duties with the television.

Children's programming is in many ways superior to regular programming, because it actually is written with the understanding that people-- particularly little people-- learn and form their opinions based upon what they see. They think about them. Many of my own convictions can be traced back to cartoons and children's programming.

Fortunately, children's programming is for that very reason very non-specific. And a lot of the good stuff is very progressive. "Sesame Street" and "The Muppets" taught us that we need to look past the labels. The people on Sesame Street were-- and are-- of many races. And the Muppets-- well, some of them are monsters. But just because we call them monsters, doesn't mean that they're evil.

However, sometimes there's a need to show kids that what they (and their parents) are is a good thing, a strong thing, and something in which you can take pride. For that purpose I present "Scooby-Doo and the Witch's Ghost". I'm not kidding.

Oh, it's inaccurate, of course, but not as much as you'd expect. And for once, the word "Wiccan" is used as well as the generic "witch." (Actually, the two terms are separate-- "witches" are bad and "Wiccans" are good in this cartoon, but it's a really good start.) There are some silly things, like the fact that they speak as if being a Wiccan is genetic-- one of the characters is "one-sixteenth Wiccan blood"-- or the fact that the same character is an "Eco-goth." Can't say I've heard the word before.

I'm afraid no other examples leap directly to mind. I just finished the second of the Harry Potter books, which was as absolutely delightful as the first, but Harry isn't a Wiccan. I would have to lump these books in with A Wrinkle In Time, The Secret of Nimh, and other marvelous children's books that include a healthy dose of fantasy.

As a community, I think it's important that we find or develop more of these and stand by the ones we have. An "alternative lifestyle" is difficult enough for an adult. But for children-- and this covers the whole range from pre-school to high-school-- it can be doubly so.

© 1999 by Cather "Catalyst" Steincamp