An Open Letter to Trick or Treaters and Halloween Lovers of All Ages

www.michaeladelberg.com

 

Once a year, America’s children put on silly plastic masks purchased at Wal-Mart and load up on candy purchased from Kroger’s. The cheap costumes will never serve a useful purpose afterward, and will soon find their way to our overflowing landfills. The candy will further fatten our obese children. Somewhere in America, a predator will do something very bad to an innocent child.

Halloween has some pernicious outcomes. Nonetheless, a good case can be made for it being the best of American holidays. Here are a few reasons:

Smiling Children: With the possible exception of Christmas, Halloween produces more smiles than any day of the year. Children love running house-to-house. They light up when an adult feigns fright at their costume. They love the moment when the candy is dropped into their sack. And these scenes are repeated again and again until our children finally exhaust themselves and return home.

Smiling Parents: Even self-appointed sourpusses like me smile when we see smiling children. My youngest son will soon reach the point where he won’t want Dad Trick-or-Treating with him; I will regret not being with my son on such a happy day. But I will still be able to stay home and shout BOO! at the smaller children that call on my house. It will make me smile each time.

Smiling Neighbors: Particularly in the suburbs, families live atomized lives. It is not unusual to go an entire year without seeing, much less speaking, to the neighbor two houses down. Halloween is that one day of the year when door bells ring, people are truly greeted, and neighbors are reminded that they live in neighborhoods.

Pumpkins: Pumpkins are not among our most beloved foods. But there is something cool about Jack O’ Lanterns lighting up porches. I’m also a sucker for the reliable local newspaper photo of the cute kid standing with the 800 lb. pumpkin. And I’m a big fan of Pumpkin Chunkin’ competitions (in which people build home-made catapults and compete to see whose contraption can throw a pumpkin the farthest).

According to a Harris Poll, Halloween trails only Christmas and “my birthday” as the favorite holiday of Americans. It is interesting, and perhaps a little disappointing, that all three days revolve around getting stuff. But for many, Christmas and birthdays are bittersweet days: days in which our great expectations often go unfulfilled, days in which someone gets drunk and says something terrible, days in which we spend too many hours with people who exhaust our patience.

Halloween, in comparison, is modest and economical. Our expectations are fixed (seeing kids in cute costumes; giving and getting candy) and our expectations are inevitably satisfied (we see kids in cute costumes; we give and get candy). Except during the once-a-generation monster thunderstorm, Halloween never disappoints.

I worry a little about the future of Halloween. I worry about the cranky people—whether overly religious or overly secular—who are attempting to diminish Halloween because of its tenuous links to pagan ritual or childhood obesity. I worry about the localities that choose to over-regulate the day. Each year, we hear those odd news stories about the towns that pass ordinances that ban Trick or Treating, sets rules around permissible masks, or regulate home decorations. Fortunately, these are isolated cases. I don’t have to worry too much--yet.

Aside from worrying, I still have a few weeks to check on the pumpkins in my backyard, hassle my boys about their costumes, and decide which candy to buy for the trick or treaters who will reliably show up on the 31^st. In the grand scheme of things, Halloween is a small and predictable pleasure; those are the best kind.