My wife and I were one of three houses on the corner of our subdivision that were either a) home or b) giving out candy. We decided to sit on the driveway to avoid the lunatic barkings of our active dog, and also to better see the action. Here's what we saw:
The young kids had costumes. The most of the older kids weren't in costume, unless they were dressing like as psycho killers like Wednesday Addams. Parents had their infant children with them getting oodles of candy while they got dragged (at times literally) from house to house. People driving had little to no regard for the kiddies wearing mostly black costumes. One car in particular went back and forth a couple of times at a relatively high rate of speed for a kiddie-filled subdivision. We wondered if he was trying to play bumper-kids.
These observations are for one purpose: Halloween is dying, and maybe its time. Yes there is a cottage industry in costumes, candy, and other scary sell-ables, and yes most kids act excited this time of year, but it has appeared to me over the last few years to be slowly shrinking. Like a half-life.
There seems to be lackluster support in neighborhoods. Admittedly so, people are less and less thrilled about the idea of having strangers go up to their houses. I do see many organizations like churches doing "trunk or treat" in their parking lots, but that's just weird. This is the one time a kid can knock on a stranger's door. Wait... maybe that's a bad thing...
Then there's the sex offender's list.
Then there's the largely apocryphal stories about razor blades and glass in candy. Some are true, but the vast majority are hooey through and through.
Halloween can fade away as far as I'm concerned. We can reminisce about it to our grand kids like ours did about walking to school uphill both ways.
Chip Grefski
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