Halloween - The Good, Bad, and the Scary

Kevin Dooley / CC BY 2.0

Children love Halloween; or most likely, they love to dress up and pretend they are super heroes, rock stars, cheerleaders, or monsters. Too bad that Halloween is only once a year, and too bad that Halloween has such an evil reputation as being a day that opens the gateway to Hell. Seeing happy little children dressed as fairies or Darth Vader is not the same Halloween it was two thousand years ago.

Ancient people (and even modern people today) believe in spirits - good ones, and bad ones. When I am seeing a traditional Hmong family in the clinic, they are unusually quiet. They do not want to draw attention to themselves by the evil spirits that lurk around medical offices. Actually, I have seen them myself, cleverly disguised as inspectors renewing one of our many accreditations. The Hmong and many other people in third-world nations do not believe in germs as a cause of disease; they believe that evil spirits are responsible. Since it is becoming more and more difficult treating certain drug-resistant diseases now, I am inclined to start believing it myself.

Two thousand years ago, the Celts, a much admired group by the tattooed crowd, believed that October 31st - the last day of their year - was a day when ghosts came back for a visit, and the dead comingled with the living. The Celts would dress in masks and costumes to scare them away, and leave offerings of food (the "treats") to appease them. However, if you are already dead and just making an annual visit, I don't really understand the point. Come on...they're already dead. What can happen? I wonder if adult Celts ate the primitive Baby Ruths and Milky Ways out of their kid's stash, as is our tradition now? I heard that archeologist have found some wrappers, including one intact 2000 year old Snicker that was missed. It is still edible.

After the Romans invaded Ireland and England, Halloween begin to change. The Romans didn't really like Celts dancing around in goat pants and stuff. Then came the Christians, who put the damper on this annual holiday by making November 1st All Saints Day; thus making October 31st All Hallow's Eve, or as we know and mispronounce it, Halloween. Hallow means "Saint". All Hallow's Eve became a religious holiday. The Celts were not pleased, so they invented Irish dancing and whiskey. I made that last part up, but I love to start Internet rumors.

The good part of Halloween is the fun that children have dressing up. They love going door-to-door getting candy (for their parents). Competing neck and neck with Christmas and their birthday, Halloween is often their favorite. Why do some people hate it?

The bad part of Halloween has got to be those poor choices for costumes. Being in the medical profession and having done my time in the emergency rooms, I don't really care too much for eyeball hanging out, knives stuck in ears (worse than Q-tips!), or blood dripping down from severed limbs. I keep trying to bandage them, or at least put on some gloves to keep from getting fake blood-borne pathogens. That is the scary part for us. For the younger crowd, these costume choices are equally as terrifying. Let the teenagers wear them at parties that only have teenagers, but let's not go door to door scaring the crap out of the little ones (and their parents).

Halloween can bring out the ultimate essence of poor taste, like a transvestite Obama or a Nazi cheerleader. No one, and I repeat, no one, should be wearing costumes that are offensive or in poor taste. The medical assistant who works with my wife is from Moldova, and is offended by anything related to Halloween, even pumpkins. Since my wife loves to decorate her office for Halloween, she is slowly (very slowly) learning to tolerate this American tradition.

Spiderman, Superman, and the Transformers tend to be popular in my office for the boys. The girls still love being ballerinas, divas, or one of the Disney heroines, like Ariel or Pocahontas, although Native Americans or mermaids may be insulted. Witches and ghosts are okay; I am not particularly fond of vampires, although I did like Twilight. I can vividly remember as a child, sleeping in my hot, humid attic room with the window closed, so that Dracula would not come in. I would avoid walking through the woods at night, too. The Wolfman, if you are curious.

A local mega-church goes half-way and has a Harvest Festival. For the safety of the children, they organize an annual "Trunk and Treat." Cars are parked all around the periphery of their large lot; the children go from car to car in their costumes, getting candy and treats from the trunks of their cars. I think this is a great idea and a wonderful compromise. They are prohibited from being witches, vampires, or axe-murderers, as they should.

It is time to re-invent Halloween, not abandon it because a few inflexible people may be offended because of some issues and associations 2000 years ago. Halloween is fun if you set some reasonable perimeters and join in.

Danielle Closs / CC BY-ND 2.0

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Halloween Hazards

All week, my wife has been feverishly sewing two Anakin Skywalker outfits for two of the grandchildren. She has these huge, fleece capes with hoods that scare the crap out of the dogs when she tries them on. The boys are coming for their final fitting today, so that they can use this costume for a few hours on Halloween.

Halloween costumes were much simpler when I was Trick or Treating. We usually were bums, wearing some old clothes. Of course, being a bum is not politically-correct now, since it reflects adversely on the unfortunate homeless.

When our own five kids were young, Alex was usually a bum. He just wore his school clothes. Ben was an Indian (every year!), another now-politically-incorrect reflection of stereotypical Native Americans. Ryan was a Ninja, perhaps insulting our Japanese friends. Kristin was a punk-rocker (we really didn't care if punk-rockers were miffed), and the eldest child, Josh, just wore a cardboard box. Not just any cardboard box; it was one with a drawer that slid out with a sign that said, "Put candy in drawer". It also had a sign that popped up that said, "Thank you." The box was very popular and resulted in lots of candy.

Kids say, "Trick or Treat", but they really don't do the trick part any more. As kids, we preferred to do the tricks, like soaping windows, throwing dried corn kernels against the windows, or pushing over an occasional outhouse. Of course, there was the bag of burning dog poop that the terrified homeowner, who would then stomp on. We only did it a few times. No one really wanted to search for and/or put the poop in the bag. We would grease a few outside doorknobs so that people could not go back in the house. This rarely worked because there was always someone else inside to let 'em back in.

As kids, we loved the candy. Rumors would quickly spread about certain houses that gave out the BIG candy bars, not those one-bite little ones. We would always try to go back several times until they noticed and chased us away. There was always some health nut handing out fruit, especially old apples. Apples! Hell, everyone had an apple tree. What good was an apple, especially one that will get all bruised-up in your paper sack? We used them to throw at each other. When the rumors came out that someone was hiding razor blades in apples, we were happy. No more apples.

My Aunt Norine was always frugal. She made popcorn balls (a lot of work), wrapped them up, and gave them to the kids. They were hard to eat and got caught in our teeth. Knowing she did not hand out anything else, we avoided her house. She ended up being stuck with a lot of popcorn ball that she tried to get us to eat until way after Christmas.

We always had to watch out for the older kids who would steal our candy. They would hide behind bushes or on porches, grab your bag, and run away - hours of hard work shot to Hell. We would try to get them by following the trail of discarded wrappings, and hopefully, throw an apple at them, but in most cases, the crime went unpunished.

Dogs do not like Halloween. They tend to freak out when kids come to the door. If we decided to "trick" one of the houses (like the one's that handed out apples!), there was always the risk of a dog bite. Homeowners would sic their mongrel dogs on us, eventually biting the slowest of my friends.

I grew up in a highly-religious Pennsylvania community of Bible-thumpers. They did not have any problems with Halloween being the "witch's holiday" or related to Satanic worship. The minister at our church would happily give a Milky Way to a devil or witch without fear of eternal damnation. None of us became pagans or devil-worshipers as the result of our Halloween costumes. California 2008 is a different story.

In California, and perhaps other areas, political-correctness is more important than allowing kids to have fun. There are several misguided medical assistants in our pediatric office who are trying to ban Halloween decorations, if you can believe it.

Kids love to dress up in costumes and I am really sorry that it only happens once per year. And, I am really sorry that it offends some people. Get over it. There is nothing wrong with little girls being princesses or fairies for a day, or little boys being Spiderman or Darth Vader. Granted, I don't like seeing kids walking around with fake knives in their eyes. If I wanted to see that, I would work in the ER.

A local church has a "Trunk and Treat" in the parking lot. This is cool. The kids do dress "down" a bit, foregoing the ax murderer and mutilated corpse, but that's okay. This is good, clean, and harmless fun. We really need more of these holidays just for kids. As parents, you have the right to monitor what kind of costumes your kids wear. If you don't want Charles Manson going door-to-door, don't let 'em.

At a medical meeting held on Halloween several years ago, I went as a tube of KY Jelly. I doesn't fit anymore. I don't have to dress up in my office this year, since Halloween falls on my day-off. The older that I have become, the less interested I am in getting into a costume to work a 12-hour clinic shift. I will sometimes wear a pair of devil horns to tick-off a few of the medical assistants, but that is about it. Dr. G can wear his six foot rabbit suit again, but I would find it difficult to be taken seriously dressed as a bunny. Since I have a white beard, I can always go as Santa, but that is sort of jumping holidays in my opinion. I could go as Moses, but that may insult two different religions.

Maybe I will get my wife to let out the old KY suit so it will be easier to slip into...

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