One of the few episodes of the excellent FREAKS AND GEEKS that I actually caught on TV was their Halloween show. It captures the death of the classic version of the holiday, both for one family and for society at large.
Travel with me, back, back, back, before the giant Spirit stores that pop up in September and vanish November 1 like mushrooms, before the boom industry of pre-packaged Slutty Cinderella and Slutty Ninja and Slutty Napoleon Dynamite costumes.
We're at around 1980 now. You with me?
The show's mom loves Halloween. Dresses up, decorates the house, makes homemade treats for the goblins that ring the doorbell.
This year, though, the younger kid decides he's too old to go trick or treating. The older girl doesn't want to stay home with mom, but wants to hang with her friends. The goblins throw away the treats because their parents fear that they could be poisoned.
The look of sadness and loss on the mom's face is heartbreaking, because not only are her children growing up too fast for her, she can see the end of something fanciful and connecting, mysterious, silly, to be shared with your family.
Flash forward to now, where surely in some neighborhoods the goblins still appear on the front stoop, going home to carefully sort through the candy to avoid the razor blades and syringes and anthrax powder, but not in mine.
The kids trick or treat at school, in the mall, at their parents' offices. Places well lit and clinical and utterly free of that wonderful frisson of being out after dark and talking to strangers! It was scary-but-not-really, because mom or dad was always behind you, curbside, with the flashlight.
This year, we got a grand total of two goblins the whole night, a very shy fairy and her bolder pirate sister, bless her little pillaging heart.
Leftover candy isn't worth it.
3 comments:
We got no trick-or-treaters. Zero. I made sure I was even working in the living room, so that I wouldn't miss any of the hoards sure to descend.
We live in a huge, gated apartment complex, so I understand why outsiders couldn't get in, but there are kids in the complex. I seen them. I suspect that there may have been some party, somewhere at the complex. Why knows, maybe a long time ago the Yuppies who live here decided that they didn't want to be bothered, or the management decided that the residents didn't want to be bothered.
Too bad no one told us.
You live in the wrong places ;-)
Halowe'en has changed, for sure. Hell, I remember going out without Mom and Dad...that'd never happen nowadays.
But we got about 50 kids this year, which is a sizeable increase from last. (My wife keeps track so we buy enough candy each year, bless her mathemetician's heart.) And we live on the busy street, the rest of the neighborhood interior was packed.
Also, once you have your own tyke, the holiday become a bit more magical again. The office weirdo dressed as a Nazgul just doesn't quite have the same magic as a three year old dressed as a spotted pony saying, with a level of excitement that threatens to burst through his little chest, "Look at that house, we gotta go there!"
Wasn't F&G the one where the kid dressed up as the Bionic Woman? So uncomfortably hilarious!
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