Happy Halloween
As a kid growing up in Fort Lauderdale in the 1960s, I loved Halloween. My costumes were usually not much, and one time an older kid broke an egg on head, and I ran home crying to my mother. I did not love that part. In those days, kids as young as five or six years old could trick-or-treat without parental chaperons. In our neighborhood, there were no walls or fences between houses. We often “cut through” neighbors’ yards. I didn’t have to go far to collect a couple of pounds of candy in my brown paper grocery sack. I had a blast at home, sorting it and trading with my sisters when our tastes differed.
My daughters grew up in Southern California at the end of the Twentieth Century. Halloween had exploded as a commercial enterprise, but we all loved it. They dressed up and Dad took them out in the neighborhood to trick-or-treat while Mom stayed home to pass out candy. Everyone loved seeing all the young children in their costumes. It built a real feeling of community. In our cul-de-sac, we set up tables so the block parents could visit and the trick-or-treaters could pick up candy from several houses in one stop.
There was always a sort of buzz in the culture that we did not take seriously. Watch out for razor blades in apples! I never encountered an apple given as a treat at Halloween. Watch out for poison! Watch out for drugs! Don’t eat anything homemade, you don’t know what’s in it! Some churches seemed to oppose Halloween on the grounds that it was devil worship.
One year, in an effort to educate my girls culturally, I took them to a Friday night service at our local synagogue, which was Conservative. We did not attend much, but I wanted them to see what it was like, since I had grown up going every week. It happened to be the Friday before Halloween, and there was a guest rabbi giving the sermon. To my consternation, he came out roundly against celebrating Halloween, on the grounds that it was a Christian holiday! Well, every Jew has their own opinion, and somehow we mostly get along. I told my kids that Halloween as we practiced it is a secular holiday. The point is to meet and extend hospitality to neighbors and strangers alike, and just have a good time during the harvest season.
Like most American traditions, Halloween has super-sized. There is huge peer pressure to provide commercially sold candy, and to outdo one’s neighbors in both treats given and elaborate home decorations and multimedia experiences. The buzz this year, 2022, is that candy is so expensive, like everything, due to inflation. Parents still worry about drugs in the treats, but less so about all the sugar. Our current cul-de-sac has a potluck, so the children don’t have to climb the stairs in front of each house, and so we can visit our block-mates.
Personally, I got lazy this year and bought candy in a store. I didn’t try to find treats kids would like that I might eat myself. All of what I bought is mostly sugar. I didn’t get chocolate, because Halloween chocolate all has milk in it. Still, I survived many Halloweens before going to a whole food, plant-based lifestyle. If I had young kids today, I would let them eat a piece or two of Halloween candy each day until Thanksgiving. Otherwise, I know it would become “forbidden fruit” and they would sneak it anyway, and maybe obsess over it.
I hope none of the candy I bought will be left over.
