Author by : Tad Cronn

As Halloween approaches, I find myself beset by thoughts of hobgoblins.

(No jokes about small minds, please.)

I’m plagued not by mere images of the flower-crushing, soap-slinging, doorbell-ringing, candy-mooching variety of bugbears, but by weightier musings and misgivings.

Halloween is easily the strangest event of the year, in my book.

It’s an extremely parent-intensive non-holiday, for starters. While children may consider the decision between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, Yu-Gi-Oh and Ninja Turtle to be of the utmost urgency, Mom and Dad have a lot more on their plate.

Hold a party or go trick-or-treating? Dish out handfuls of sugar bomb candies or stick to your principles and risk a soaping by giving out granola bars and apples? Spring for a trip to the local haunted house or stay at home for a Frankenstein videofest? Hand sew a costume or buy?

Capital outlay can be considerable, and if you’re not careful, your budget plan can disappear faster than a black cat at midnight.

More troubling, though, is the question of whether Halloween isn’t a tradition we should abandon altogether.

Probably every grownup realizes it’s not the festival it used to be. I think most adults can recall when they were children going door-to-door with a ghostly pack of friends to ply neighbors for sweets. The moment the sun set, the residential streets would be packed with whole families circumnavigating whatever blocks constituted the neighborhood.

Homeowners had no qualms about opening their doors to roving packs of little beasties. And parents had no real concerns about what their kids were getting in their goody sacks.

Now it seems that it is the rare street indeed where children and their parents will even venture out on Halloween. Hospitals routinely offer to X-ray candy to check for things like razor blades. Anything without a wrapper or whose wrapper appears loose is summarily tossed before it can touch children’s lips.

Festivities are confined to private — or at least controlled — gatherings out of safety fears. In some towns, Halloween is a night for the criminal element to run rampant, a night of fear and fire. And there are often public hints of even darker things going on — owners of black cats are advised to keep beloved pets indoors on that night.

Far from the evening frolic of youngsters that it was only a generation or two ago, Halloween has moved slowly but steadily into the possession of miscreants and social misfits.

Long ago shedding its identity as the evening before the Feast of All Hallowed Saints, Halloween in pop culture is now the Feast of Samhain, a Celtic god of death revived by modern neo-pagans. No matter that today’s paganism is of recent invention, the conjuring of such an ancient image can freeze the blood of the most stalwart realist.

And if we choose to participate, what is Halloween teaching us? Greed and inurement to the darker corners of the human psyche.

Halloween never completely fit into the Christian world outlook, but apparently survived for centuries as a popular expression and run up to the Church’s annual celebration of the deceased, masks and costumes serving as a way to scare off evil spirits before welcoming the spirits of the good.

Some churches try to reorient their parishioners to a more wholesome outlook on the day. A few of our local Catholic churches hold a special “Pumpkin Mass” for parish children, followed by “trunk-or-treating” in the parking lot. The kids all come in costume, and a handful even follows the rule of dressing as biblical characters.

Other churches think Halloween is beyond saving and avoid the day altogether.

As the parent of a youngster, I’m torn. My doubts about the value and virtue of Halloween wrestle with my reluctance to see another piece of our American heritage slip away, joining the ranks of Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.

But soon, the day may come when it’s time to forever blow out the candle on the jack-o’-lantern and say goodbye to Halloween.

[tags]Halloween, family, holidays, religion, children, parenting[/tags]

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