It’s Scary To Think What’s Happened To Halloween
What ever happened to –”the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Today is Halloween, a night where kids used to roam, dressed in costume, through neighborhoods collecting candy. Now, Halloween has become just another fear fest, not because of ghosts and goblins but because society has decreed that there’s an unprecedented level of risk in letting johnny goblin out unsupervised.
Lenore Skenazy of freerangekids.com had this to say:
It’s not just the fact that churches and community centers are throwing parties so that kids don’t go out on their own. It’s not just the fact that Bobtown, Pennsylvania has gone so far as to “cancel” Halloween altogether — for the sake of “safety.” (The authorities there were surprised to find this decision unpopular.) It’s not even that those of us who’d like to hand out homemade cookies know they’ll be instantly tossed in the trash.
No, the truly spooky thing is that Halloween has become a riot of warnings that are way scarier than the holiday itself. The website Halloween-Safety.com recommends that if your child is carrying a fake butcher knife, make sure the tip is “smooth and flexible enough to not cause injury if fallen upon.”
Excuse me? Has anyone ever seen a knife land blade-side up? And then fallen on it? Meantime, schools around the country are sending this note home to parents: “Please, no scary costumes.” In England last year a man was ordered by his landlord to take down his lawn decorations because the zombies were too “realistic.”
In other words: They looked too much like…real zombies?
But read the whole thing it’s good and have a fearless trick or treating night.
