Sean's Blog: Halloween -Hello?
Posted on: 1st November, 2011
Halloween – Hello?
This Halloween evening, in a 5 minute drive to pick one of my boys from a game of badminton, I must have seen over 30 groups of kids and parents trick and treating. I understand the fun the children are having - dressing up, eating sweets and the adventure of being out in the dark.
It’s the parents I don’t get.
The rest of the year they tell their kids not to take sweets from strangers, and then this one night encourage them to do so.
Then there is the trick and treating – knock on the door, ask for sweets and if none are given, egg the house or play a trick. Even if they don’t carry out their threat, would parents encourage this attitude normally?
Then there is dressing up – witches, ghouls, zombies, and devils. Celebrating death and darkness seems the stuff of the nightmares parents then wish their kids didn’t have the rest of the year.
Halloween is now the UK’s third highest spending festival as sales top £300m. Add the hidden cost of old folk frightened by knocks of the door, and it being one of the busiest nights for the police and ambulance services, why make such a deal of Halloween?
What blinds parents to the down side?
