Taking Halloween down a notch
Like a lot of things, what’s now known as spooky season has grown and commercialized over the past few decades. Homemade spiders or orange and black streamers were supplanted first by splat witches and front-lawn graveyards complete with eerie recorded music. Then came the house-high skeletons and inflatable Halloween scenes. Where the decorations used to appear toward the end of October, they now start popping up around Labour Day.
The seasonal creep is probably due partly to increased disposable income (or just the proliferation of dollar stores) and partly to inspiration from social media. The one-upping of neighbours likely also comes into play.
And where creating a delightful experience for young kids going door to door used to be the focus of Halloween, adults and adult ideas of what’s frightening have pretty much taken over. September and October are now dominated by elaborate preparations that have little to do with children trick-or-treating and everything to do with grown-ups demonstrating their extravagant love of haunting and horror.
Decorating a house and yard can bring enjoyment to all who pass by. Case in point: the much-loved Haunt Your Home contest sponsored by Wards Lawyers that raised $30,000 for charities over its five-year lifespan. But in some places, the adults who go all-out buying and arranging decorations seem to have forgotten how unsettling their handiwork may be for children.
There’s no shortage of gore and terror available for viewing at every turn. News coverage brings us mass shootings in the United States and the sickening reality of war zones from Gaza to Haiti to Ukraine. An endless stream of movie sequels aims to out-raunch the last in showcasing some psychopath’s twisted cruelty. But do the bloodiest aspects of our culture really have to seep into a celebration kids look forward to for months?
Restraint isn’t especially fashionable these days, but perhaps just a bit of it is in order. If there are children coming to your door, maybe don’t greet them dressed as Hannibal Lecter. If chainsaw murders, torture victims and raging zombies are essential to your Halloween, maybe they could stay inside rather than out on the lawn or balcony.
A good question to ask might be whether your display, no matter how much it trumpets your love of Halloween, would give a small child spooky thrills or make them avoid your home. In short, if your six-year-old self would have been upset, maybe it’s time to dial things back a little.
If you’re someone who gets into Halloween, great. No one’s trying to squelch your creativity. Pumpkins, witches, ghosts, skeletons, tombstones, bats and spiders? Bring ’em on. But for our kids’ sake, let’s preserve Halloween as a source of sugar-fuelled joy rather than childhood nightmares.
