Halloween Innocence Lost

---by Micheal

Time marches on. The innocence of childhood becomes irretrievably lost. Take Halloween as an example. It is, today, barely a ghost of its former self. Before the day had been co-opted by cultists and whacko types and marketing hucksters, it had been a fairly innocent kid day.

As school kids, we would cut out pumpkin shapes from orange construction paper, or bats or spiders from black paper. We weren't worshipping any deviant demon or dwelling on death and decay. We were celebrating simple childhood fear. Bats were scary. Spiders were scary. As a kid, even just a dark room was really really scary. Halloween was a day to face the fact that some things in life were scary. Without all the psycho-babble, it was a chance to face those fears (in construction paper form) and not be afraid.

Trick or Treat was not a destructive descent into barbarism or worship Satan. It was a chance to dress up (like actors) in a costume. A pirate, a princess, a bear or in my little brother's case: Tweety Bird. No occult undertones or hidden agenda.

We traveled from house to house in little knots, clustered close together for mutual moral support. No parents chaperoned us. They were home answering the door for the other kids. Being outdoors after dark without our parents was part of the facing-our-fears ritual. We knew every corner of our neighborhood, since we played in it every day. But after dark? It was transformed. The familiar old cowboys-and-indians junipers became mysterious and shadowy. That narrow space between the Wilson's garage and the Biedermeyer's house was a spooky black canyon. Monsters could dwell in there.

Candy was our primary motivator, of course. A bag full of candy was unimaginable wealth back then. So much so, that we'd brave the dark and scary bushes to get it. None of us were worshipping any old Celtic gods, or death or whatever. It was just candy and we were conquering our childish fears to get it. We felt brave.

The neighborhood too, was a community. Most houses had a porch light on, and a jack-o-lantern on the steps to invite trick or treaters. Even the old couple in the dark green house at the end of the street participated. We were always a little afraid of them. They pretended to be scared of us when they answered their door. It was a subtle ritual way of assuring each other that we and they weren't not so bad after all. On that night, the whole neighborhood played the same costumes and candy game. It was great.

Now? New Age variants have seized the day as a soap-box opportunity to flip off Christianity. Blood n'gore-fixated people openly revel in the disgusting, like a dog rolls in road-kill. Young anarchists take it as a night of license to destroy. The truly bad side of humanity oozes to the surface. Adults are frightened.

Towns react to all this real human badness by organizing safe days and safe zones, thoroughly managing all the variables to make sure halloween is "safe". Worried moms take their pirates and princesses to these cordoned off bubbles of safety to trick or treat indoors, in full daylight, or illuminated by the headlights of multiple minivans. No scary bushes. No monster canyons. It's not a construction paper and Tweety Bird halloween anymore.

Instead of bats and spiders, we have abductors, molesters and satanists. We have marketing hype and gore. Instead of an innocent day for kids to face being afraid of spiders or bats, halloween has become just another day to live in real fear -- fear of the world we've made for ourselves.

Time marches on. The old innocence of halloween is lost.