Comments for sursumcorda.salemsattic.com/post/hallowe-en-thoughts-give-back-the-holiday

Comment #2157

2010-11-04T00:39:32Z

Greetings, Friend Pepper. :) A wonderful Christmas gift for your parents, your children, and (apparently) me would be to get those old movies converted to DVD! Not that I should talk—I have a long, long list of such projects in various stages of (in)completion.

Comment #2156

2010-11-04T00:30:16Z

Greetings from your old friend the Pepper Shaker! We won a prize for (y)our creativity:) Ahhh, childhood. Actually I think my parents still have some old 8 mm (silent) movies of you as a cuckoo clock from the year before.

Comment #2155

2010-11-01T21:27:03Z

And we went out for dinner and a movie. Hallowe'en has become so, so, materialistic and commercial, and managed and boring, that I refuse to participate.

Bah! Humbug!

Comment #2154

2010-11-01T20:28:28Z

From an old Dave Barry column (full text here):

But getting back to Halloween: It's still one of the most fun holidays of the year, as well as one of the most traditional, tracing its origins back more than 2,000 years to the Druids, an ancient religious cult that constructed Stonehenge as well as most of the public toilets in England. The Druids believed that one night each year, at the end of October, the souls of the dead returned to the world of the living and roamed from house to house costumed as Power Rangers.

And thus it is that to this day, youngsters come to our door on Halloween night shouting: "Trick or treat!" According to tradition, if we don't give the youngsters a "treat, " their parents will "sue" us. That's why most of us traditionally prepare for Halloween by going to the supermarket and purchasing approximately eight metric tons of miniature candy bars, which we dump into a big bowl by the door, ready to hand out to the hordes of trick-or-treaters.

The irony, of course, is that there ARE no hordes of trick-or-treaters, not any more. We in the news media make darned sure of that. Every year we publish dozens of helpful consumer-advice articles, cheerfully reminding parents of the dangers posed by traffic, perverts, poisoned candy, and many other Halloween hazards that parents would never think of if we didn't remind them ("Have fun, but remember that this year more than 17,000 Americans will die bobbing for apples").

The result is that many children aren't allowed to go trick-or-treating, and the ones who ARE allowed out come to your house no later than 4:30 p.m., wearing reflective tape on their Power Rangers costumes and trailed at close range by their parents, who watch you suspiciously and regard whatever candy you hand out as though it were unsolicited mail from the Unabomber.

Comment #2153

2010-11-01T12:32:46Z

I love Halloween. Believe it or not, I did not do a lot of trick or treating as a kid. When I was very young, I remember my dad taking us around. Then we moved to a street with only six houses off of a busy road. No trick or treating, but each year a different family hosted a party. Once we were old enough, we could go off with friends, in their neighborhoods.

Before kids, I can remember my Mom getting ready for Halloween on a Sunday afternoon - that wasn't even Halloween! The town had set the trick or treating time to be between 4 and 6 p.m. on the Sunday afternoon before Halloween. What?! I don't think she saw it as a big deal, but I felt it was ruining Halloween for all of the kids.

Last night, we had our usual group of "busy road" refugees over for pizza. Seven kids in total and their parents. Our neighborhood is perfect for trick or treating - no street lights and lots of houses. When you are with a group of friends and you are getting candy, what could be more fun?