Essays

How times have changed. When I was a kid at Halloween, boys dressed up like rotting zombies, hid their identities with masks made of deli meats, carried such intimidating objects as claw hammers and broadaxes, and demanded quality-brand candy with the dead-eyed seriousness of mafia hitmen. If you failed to give them what they wanted, they didn’t just scrawl obscenities on your windows with bars of soap. They smashed a window and threw half a dozen live rats into the house so there would be no further confusion about the legitimacy of their request.

Most candyless curmudgeons weren’t moved by a bag of dog poop left on the front porch and set on fire, but they got the message when four pit bulls, having been fed laxatives, were chained to their porch furniture.

In those days, Halloween was about fun. FUN! Halloween night was filled with amusing and unforgettable capers that created memories and bonds that ensured an enduring community spirit. If you pulled off a sufficiently terrifying prank, you could inspire a feud between families that would enliven their interaction for generations.

Back then, girls dressed as vicious satanic-cult members in knitted slime gowns and spike-toed boots or as Beaver Cleaver’s mom carrying the Beave’s severed head. Others dressed as famous female murderers from history and literature. “Whether or not you can guess who I’m supposed to be, if you don’t give me a treat, I’ll repeat the crime that made me famous, right here, right now.” It was all in fun, of course, until it wasn’t. The girls were somewhat more colorful and insistent than boys were when they encountered citizens who just didn’t “get” the true meaning of the holiday. More cognizant of healthy nutrition than the boys were, they presented a list of desired items they preferred to candy; this list included quality costume jewelry, gold coins, bearer bonds, and the names of neighbors who kept valuable collections of any kind in their homes.

When I survey the customs and traditions of Halloween these days, I am dismayed to see how completely Americans have forgotten what the holiday is all about. Girls dress as Disney movie princesses. Boys wear the tights and capes of their favorite superheroes. They costume themselves as sweet “Furrys” of all kinds. In my day, boys and girls both understood that the purpose of the costume was to terrify and intimidate the people of their community not merely so they would be given large quantities of candy or heirloom Sterling silver, but also to leave the adults with the suspicion that the youth of the day were dangerous predators who should be treated warily and with respect during the rest of the year.

I am told that, these days, at some Halloween parties, young people still bob for apples, but the game is no longer played with waterboard-the-loser sessions. What?!? Why would anyone do anything as stupid as bobbing for apples if you couldn’t torture the poor fool who was the last to get one?

The glorious tradition of smashing pumpkins has inspired some goodie-two-shoes young people to form emergency clinics where they repair your broken jack-o’-lantern for free and even reshape its scary snarl into a goofy smile. What the hell has happened to America’s youth?!? Yes, yes, yes, as little kids, my generation sat out in a field at night, like Charlie Brown, waiting for the Great Pumpkin, but if he had arrived, we were armed with baseball bats to greet him. These days, the little kids sit in the field and sing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” wearing orange berets with green pumpkin stems, waving signs that say “Lord Gourd Almighty,” and they want to rename the United States “Gourdland.”

I’m so fed up with what’s happened to this once-exciting holiday that I am not going trick-or-treating this Halloween. I’m going to stay home and reread my new novel, The Forest of Lost Souls. It might sound like shameless self-promotion—and of course it is—when I say you’ll enjoy it more than a lot of free off-brand candy and surprise encounters with packs of pit bulls that have broken loose of their chains and are suffering laxative overload.