![\"151029Spoons\"](\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/151029Spoons.jpg\")
Oct. 29, 2015<\/p>\nOct. 29, 2015<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be … inventive to brand yourself as a Halloween capital \u2013 extending a one-night affair into a monthlong celebration and inviting hundreds of thousands of visitors into your streets \u2013 when for centuries you were known as the community that put innocents to death for witchcraft. How did Salem, Mass., repackage a tragedy as a holiday, appointing itself \u2018Witch City\u2019 in the process?…<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout 200 years after the trials, a Salem silversmith issued a\u00a0souvenir spoon<\/a>, featuring a witch holding a broomstick. Other mementos followed. It was difficult to hit the right note: The Salem-based Parker Brothers company issued, then quickly discontinued, a witchcraft card game…. When Arthur Miller visited Salem in 1952, he discovered\u00a0the subject was taboo<\/a>….<\/p>\n \u201cMeanwhile the city fell on hard times…. As if by magic, a different kind of enchantment arrived in the form of the ABC sitcom, \u2018Bewitched<\/a>.\u2019 It seemed that an ancestor of Samantha, the main character, had been convicted of witchcraft during the trials….<\/p>\n \u201cIn Samantha\u2019s wake, Salem recast its inglorious past, or at least some version of it…. The city transmuted its secret shame into its saving grace. In 1982 it introduced \u2018Haunted Happenings<\/a>,\u2019 later extending the holiday into a four-week festival. \u2018Salem owns Halloween like the North Pole owns Christmas,\u2019 The Boston Globe declared….\u00a0 Halloween is to some extent year-round in Salem, where you might well bump into a goblin in a sandwich shop in July.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u2013 From \u201c<\/em>First, Kill the Witches. Then, Celebrate Them.<\/em><\/a>\u201d by Stacy Schiff in the New York Times (Oct. 24)<\/em><\/p>\n![\"151029Statue\"](\"http:\/\/www.littlerascalsdaycarecase.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/151029Statue.jpg\")
\u201cThree hundred years after the trials, Salem unveiled an elegant, understated memorial to the victims. Three hundred and thirteen years after the trials, it unveiled a gleaming statue of the \u2018Bewitched\u2019 star, Elizabeth Montgomery, on a broom. Not everyone liked the idea: A former historic district commissioner clucked that one might as well plant a likeness of Colonel Klink at Auschwitz. But the 1992 memorial was arguably not itself possible without \u2018Bewitched.\u2019 It isn\u2019t easy to commemorate an atrocity. ABC\u2019s domestic goddess had both laundered and folded the history….\u201d<\/p>\n