“Trick or treat?” That’s the rhetorical question that follows the knock on your door on Halloween eve. Upon opening the door you see giggling, anxious children, eagerly holding out their bags, waiting for you to drop in candy, fruit, or other goodies.
Many adults as well as children enjoy the annual celebration that gives imaginative children the opportunity to fantasize that they are the characters of their dreams – or nightmares – by dressing up in appropriate costumes and going door-to-door trick or treating or attending parties. Some child-at-heart adults join in the fun and put on costumes, too.
While numerous religious factions have no problem with Halloween, some groups ascribe negative significance to the day, because of its association with the occult, ghosts, goblins and all things scary. Tell me, what is scarier than every day living?
Let’s start with Halloween. It provides the perfect opportunity for home invasions by masked villians. But that can occur on any day at any time, can’t it? Scan newspapers, turn on the TV broadcasts or surf the Internet. Any normal person could be easily overwhelmed by the continuous stories of war and civil unrest, natural disasters, and hideous crimes. Horrific tales about fathers or mothers killing their family; pedophiles kidnapping children and keeping them as sex slaves; evil, cold-blooded people murdering for money or sometimes just for the thrill of the kill — what’s scarier than that?
Years ago, when I was a young Baby Boomer one of the worst things that could happen on Halloween was that some older kids would snatch your bag of goodies, or a wicked scoundrel would insert harmful or foreign objects into the treats. Now, evil doings – any day and every day — are a thousand times worse; and for those who feel that Halloween only represents evil or Satanism, then every day is Halloween. Trick or treat?