Halloween. Goodbye, Childhood

Can’t we just leave Halloween alone?

I can’t believe the story I just heard on NPR about a trend called Trunk-or-Treat. Apparently, church groups and organizations are creating these events in the parking lots of their organizations. The idea is that group members pull up in their cars and the children go from car to car and get candy. Sounds like a real authentic good time to me!

As a culture, we have sanitized everything until it is no longer recognizable. Those kids subjected to Trunk-or Treat are building terrific childhood memories to be sure. No doubt they will look fondly back upon all the adventures in the church parking lot. I’m sure you remember the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Scout was returning home from Trunk-or-Treat, dressed as a ham and saved by Boo Radley. Such iconic Americana.

“Sure, the past always seems nostalgic and I hope all of you trunk or treaters have vivid and important memories from the popped-up trunk of a Ford or the more common tailgate on the SUV that we so fondly recall from our childhood.”

Parents, you should be ashamed. You are stripping the magic from childhood and you deserve the EPCOT version of the world you want. A world where anything real is as scarce as diamonds.

As a parent, I always accompanied my kids from door to door, in the dark on Halloween night. We went to the homes of the people we knew…which, by the way, was everyone in our neighborhood.

No one ever got a razorblade in an apple or a drug-infused candy bar. As we sorted through the loot with the kids, looking for tampered wrappers (which we never found), our only complaint was how small the candy bars were compared to when we (my wife and I) were kids. Sure, the past always seems nostalgic and I hope all of you trunk or treaters have vivid and important memories from the popped-up trunk of a Ford or the more common tailgate on the SUV that we so fondly recall from our childhood.

Let’s try to remember the idea of authentic. Once some overprotected and sterilized child gets his finger smashed by accident by the trunk of a car, we will just hand out candy to our own kids in our living rooms and watch any third-rate TV movie on Halloween. Next, we can have the kids talk to Santa on Skype and keep the jolly old pedophiles away from our precious flock.