Happy Halloween All! It's complicated...

When I was younger, Halloween was a fun, uncomplicated occasion. I got dressed up in something I scrounged up from the closets in the house, grabbed a pillow case, and headed out the door to meet up with my friends and collect goodies. Parents mulled around driveways and front doors talking with one another. They didn't come with us unless we were babies and if you were older than first grade, you didn't need your mom along for trick-or-treating. We rang doorbells and were greeted with smiles and homemade goodies. Who remembers "real" candied or caramel apples? What about popcorn balls? My friends and I didn't look for the houses that gave out full sized candy bars, but we "smelled" our way to the houses that gave away the fresh baked goodies. Then we ran around the neighborhood scaring each other until we were exhausted and our mothers called us home. Another thing that was important was our city always had Halloween on a Saturday no matter what day the 31st fell on. This was important because there wasn't any homework to do or bedtime that had to be met.

Nowadays, things are a bit more complicated. Halloween has become the "evil" day. It's the devil. I never once felt this day was evil or thought of the devil more than just another costume. It was fun. We got to dress up and ate lots of goodies. Also gone are the homemade treats. Even if you baked anything these days it would probably get thrown out for fear of poisoning. I know we went through a phase of having to x-ray candy (healthy, safe levels of radiation) because some jerk somewhere decided to put a razor blade in a candy bar. Then there's all the kids who've developed allergies. They have allergies to peanuts, chocolate; heck I'm sure some have been forced to have an allergy to fun. I know these allergies are serious. When we lived in Iowa we couldn't bring any homemade treats to school ever because so many folks were cooking their meth in the same pots and pans they made little Billy's school treats in and kids were ingesting meth!

It's complicated. The school has banned it and gone are Halloween parties (Christmas parties too, but that's another post). Why does this occasion have to be anything other than fun and why did we have to go and ruin it? Why did someone have to put a razor blade in a candy bar? Why do have to go and buy $60 costumes for our kids? What's wrong with two holes cut in a sheet? Ah, we've come so far...