Sluts and hookers: it's pretty much what every woman dresses up as for Halloween
How adults ruined Halloween for the kids: “We can kill off Halloween, or we can accept that it isn’t dangerous and give it back to the kids. Then maybe we can start giving them back the rest of their childhoods, too.”
Exactly.
Let kids be kids. Let them play out side by themselves. Let them ride their bikes across the neighborhood and into the next one, too. Let them solve disputes amongst themselves. Let them fall (how else will you ever teach them to get back up?). Let them use their own imagination to invent new games with their own rules, to build their own forts and club houses, and to go trick-or-damn-treating on their own.
Take “stranger danger,” the classic Halloween horror. Even when I was a kid, back in the “Bewitched” and “Brady Bunch” costume era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties.
[snip]
So stranger danger is still going strong, and it’s even spread beyond Halloween to the rest of the year. Now parents consider their neighbors potential killers all year round. That’s why they don’t let their kids play on the lawn, or wait alone for the school bus: “You never know!” The psycho-next-door fear went viral.
And then it got worse.
I’m probably the world’s biggest Halloween Scrooge. I don’t dress up in costumes, and generally shake my head in ridicule at other adults that do. As a kid I loved it. But that’s because it was our holiday. We made our own costumes from stuff found around the house and sometimes complimented by a cheap plastic mask with a string to hold it to your face. We were free to roam the streets of our neighborhood with all of the other neighborhood kids while the adults stayed home and handed out candy to all of our friends.
But a lot of adults have a hard time letting go of being a kid, and many others simply never grow up. And now we’re stuck with a holiday that is only just barely about the kids, but is mostly about women dressing up like sluts and hookers (not that there’s anything wrong with that) and drunk men ogling them.
Lenore Skenzay who wrote the linked article for the Wall Street Journal is also the author of the excellent blog Freerange Kids.
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I’ve already posted elsewhere about Halloween being destroyed by a mixture of eternal adolescence, political correctness, and pseudo-Christian self righteousness. When I was a kid, the holiday was a wonderful excuse for dressing up, being out without close parental supervision after dark, and getting lots of candy. Decorations (made in public school) usually consisted of construction paper black cats and pumpkins. Now, housewives buy lots of talking skulls made in China and light up their over-decorated homes as though it’s Christmas – it’s all mommy-orchestrated, not kid instigated. More adults dress up in costumes than kids. The costumes are far darker as well – the more gory or evil, the better – heck, the masks displayed in the grocery store are enough to give the average 4 year old nightmares! Finally, the churches have decided that a wholly secular, kid-centric American holiday, is evil and demonic. Yes, I’m well aware of the Celtic Day of the Dead (and the church’s holiday of All Hallow’s Eve). I maintain that America’s post WWII Halloween had minimal, if any, relation to those pagan roots and was merely a fun holiday for children. No more. The past ten years, the number of trick-or-treaters has dwindled from few to none (one year there were a few carloads of out-of-neighborhood Mexicans). Now I join my “neighbors” (all the Asians go out, parents and grandparents in tow, and leave their homes dark; the Pakistanis stay home and leave their homes dark as well) and don’t even turn on the light. My kids’ Christian schools have no sort of fall observance at all. What used to be a lovely lead-in to the holiday season is dead – another victim of America’s decline and fall.
I have a wench outfit I bought at the Renaissance Festival several years ago. I like to wear that, but Halloween and the RenFest are the only places I wear it. When I was little I went trick or treating w/ a few friends in our SW Houston neighborhood. No one worried about poison or razors in the candy or treats from total strangers’ homes. It was years before I learned the people’s last name across the street. They had no kids and the only time I saw them was at Halloween and they gave out Only plain Hershey bars each year. I always thought of them as “The Hersheys”. I now collect gargoyles (over 70) and love the macabre side of Halloween.
A wench outfit?
SB, I always thought you were a dude, not a dudette.
Aah, the Olde TRF. It’s going on right now, too. I haven’t been in so many years, not since I moved to Dallas in the early 90′s.
When I was a kid, living in a small town, safety wasn’t an issue and us kids were allowed to roam free and wide. The costumes and spooky shit never really appealed to me, just the chance to be out on a school night and gets lots of candy.
As a teen it was just about pulling pranks and causing mayhem with eggs and water balloons.
As a young adult, that was when people started putting blades and pins in candy, so when my kids came along it was only reasonable to only allow my kids to trick or treat with us near by and only from people we knew.
I understand people wanting to let the kids go out and have fun, but there are some seriously fucked up people out there.
As for adults still wanting to dress up for Halloween, hey, whatever floats their boat. I won’t have anything to do with it, and turn off my lights and disengage the door bell.
Several years ago, when it came to political related blogs and a few others, I decided to use my initials instead of my first name.
You aren’t the first to assume SB Smith is a male. Many usernames do not indicate gender and I’ve guessed a few wrong, myself.
We haven’t been to the TXRenFest in 3 years. (45 min. drive for us) My husband has a pirate outfit that’s so good (includes sword but not parrot) that one of the RenFest photographers asked him if he could take his picture. But J.’s picture wasn’t used in any of their ads or flyers, I guess the guy just thought it looked good.
You know what they say about assumptions.
I was living in Austin when it first started and my best friend in Houston told me about it. I drove to Houston on Friday night and we all piled into his van on Saturday morning and made the trip, not knowing what to expect.
I went each year for the first six years and still think of it fondly. Such a great location for a fest and so well done.
There has never been a case of a child being randomly poisoned by someone on Halloween, ever
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp
We as a society have become scared of entirely the wrong things. Our children are 1000 times more likely to die in a car accident as we drive them to their friend’s house than to get kidnapped as they walk over there. Its insane, crime rates are down yet we are more and more afraid. Turn off Nancy Grace and let your children live! I have two kids and I encourage them to walk up to the grocery store, Wally’s, etc. by themselves because its good for them.