The traditional Halloween version involves a basic negotiation, bartering a yummy sweet treat in lieu of the soaping of one’s windows or the TP-ing of one’s trees.  This is done in costume to protect the identity of the perpetrators, (not unlike the original, fake Indian Tea Party), and has become so pervasive and tolerated that it is an anticipated day of merriment and celebration by young and old alike.  It’s simply an exultation of horribly bad behavior, greediness, poor nutrition and the slutty dress version of every vocation or storied fictional or historical character…PARTY!!!

Now, I like the mini Snickers© and Butterfinger© as much as the next guy, and I did grow up in Detroit, (the city that takes Hell Night literally), but is it just me or does it seem like the macabre, Halloween spirit has permanently crept into our day-to-day lives?  There’s the inappropriate eating for sure, and the dress-up, (is that just my neighborhood?), vampires and ghouls everywhere, and lots and lots of begging, (what we used to call going house-to-house on October 31).  The worst of trick or treat, extortion, has become so prevalent as to be acceptable.  Nothing good gets legislated without something bad in the balance.  Coal and oil companies spend millions and millions to demonize the EPA for really wanting to protect the environment against “clean-burning” coal and disastrous drilling which, of course, if they were clean and safe wouldn’t require being protected from.   And most unfortunately, Halloween is the perennial excuse for the relentless, (and somehow perfectly acceptable), bullying of Charlie Brown…good grief!