Thursday, November 1, 2007

Whatever Happened to Halloween?

Last night a coworker of mine got me to start thinking... what has the media done to Halloween?

ABC7 ran a story in the afternoon featuring tips on how to keep your child safe while trick-or-treating, not only by making sure you keep a watchful eye on your child (unless you're Britney, you're doing this anyway) and by imposing curfews on convicted sex felons by not allowing them to celebrate the holiday at all.

I'm not saying we shouldn't keep pedophiles from our children, but do we need to be reminded of this? Isn't this a good time for a "no news is good news" mentality? Reporting a story like this is a double edged sword - you're telling the parents that their kids will be safe (yay!), but you're then enlightening them to the fact that there could be a sexual predator ready to steal your little ballerina or power ranger (not yay). This just sucks the unadulterated (no pun intended) fun out of Halloween!

And from razors in the apples... to lead in your teeth! Haven't people learned to just NOT buy anything from China any more? Gee, do you think the company perhaps withheld the recall information until Halloween day on purpose? People don't watch news on holidays (I know I sure don't) and store owners sure as heck didn't have enough time to take these items off the shelves... And it's a well known fact that recalls are voluntary and the products almost always remain in the stores. So now parents have to make sure their kids didn't get poisoned when they should already be making sure they didn't get any new cavities.

Why can't Halloween just be fun anymore? Just dress up! You're a regular person every other day of the year! Can't we let one day exist for a plain ol' good time?

And you know what else I learned? American tradition of Halloween was actually brought to the States by the Irish!

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