Ok, so I’m 19. I suppose my age officially makes me too old to trick-or-treat. Regardless, it does not hinder my partaking in the time-honored Halloween tradition-as a “chaperone” that is.
In fact that is exactly what I was on the eerie and ghostly night, last week, of Friday October 31st. I escorted my little crypt-keeper (or brother) in hopes of filling his pillowcase with candy. I grew up in Manhattan where the tradition is to go from floor to floor in your apartment building, knocking for candy. The convenience of a condo-lifestyle, when it comes to Halloween, is unimaginable. Not only do you not have to agonize about whether or not you are going to freeze to death in the dark October cold, you actually benefit from a maximum one minute trek from door to door. This is an astonishing advantage as it ensures that, in the span of two hours of trick-or-treating, you are able to knock on 120 doors and remain snugly warm.
Now, if I were an engineer or a science student I could probably let you know the average haul of candy as a function of the ratio of apartments that hand out treats versus the ones that are stingy. Alas, I’m in arts. We’ll leave it at that.
But the point I am trying to make is that this year, walking around my Toronto neighborhood for two hours with my younger brother, I realized that the spirit of Halloween has been fading. The lack of pumpkins lit on front-door steps (the natural insignia for a candy-stocked house) was apparent, and the number of children on the streets seemed drastically low compared to when I was younger-which was only a decade ago.
In all, we must have come across a maximum of 35 houses with lit pumpkins and only a dozen groups of kids rang our doorbell at home in their quest to fill their half-empty buckets, bags, and pillowcases. Furthermore, most of these “kids” were somewhat “mature.” To my skeptical eye, they seemed a little beyond the dressing-up phase of life, yet still young enough to scam free candy off unsuspecting, generous households.
So where have all the pumpkins gone? Is there no more Halloween spirit? Furthermore, have people become too cheap to buy a $4 pumpkin or too lazy to carve one? And if the price of candy is the issue, may I suggest a quick visit to your local Dollarama, which stocks bags full of quality candy for the bargain basement price of one whole Canadian dollar?
Halloween has played a vital role in North American culture for as long as I remember. It distinguishes Western society from that of Europe and Asia, and although many countries around the world are now trying to insert this festivity into their calendar of celebrations, Halloween distinctively belongs to us! We must not disregard and overlook this timely and unique occasion. Instead, let’s embrace our heritage, our culture, and traditions, and continue carving many more pumpkins for years to come.
