Christine the Curmudgeon

Christine the Curmudgeon say…yes…and no.

My opinion about this whole Halloween thing is very well-known…I blogged about it recently HERE and HERE.  I really, truly can’t stand the whole thing, and a part of me wishes that it would be banned.  What I said about putting up a sign saying that we have the swine flu and can’t hand out candy?  I wasn’t joking.  Yes, we’re going out for the evening, to a pumpkin beer festival at the Cambridge Brewing Company.  But we’d rather not have knocking on the door AT ALL.  First of all, the little thugs will come way earlier than they are supposed to, as Halloween is on a weekend this year.  And second, we don’t like these kids.  Most of them are teen thugs who don’t bother to wear costumes.  They annoy us the other 364 days of the year, why should I hand out freebies to them on this one day?    And third, the knocking disturbs and upsets our cats.

So anyway, I was googling around for sites that talk about banning trick-or-treat.  Most of them said dumb crap, such as this article.  And this one.  I think they’re stupid, because all they do is whine about *the children*, and the hell with anyone else who chooses NOT to participate.

A third article made a lot more sense.  This is the only one I found that brought up the poor economy, and how some people can barely afford to feed themselves, never mind buying candy to hand out to other people’s kids.  Even so, the author does not advocate the banning of trick-or-treat completely.

For us, money is not the issue here.  I wouldn’t go into sticker shock if I went to stores to buy candy, and saw the prices pop up after being run through the POS systems. And, truth be told, we spend a LOT more money going out to get away from the whole thing, then we would if we’d just handed out the candy.

No.  My gripe is that we feel forced to participate in something that we don’t want to be a part of.  People say, “just turn out the lights”, but that doesn’t work for us.  For one thing, why should we be forced to sit in the dark?  For another, we have no control over the porch light, the landladies do, and they have been known to give out candy.  Why, I don’t know, but they do.  And third, even if the light IS out, the kids knock anyway.

And yes, we DO fear retaliation.  That’s part of why we go out, so that our car is not parked behind the house, where the little thugs can vandalize it over not getting a free Snickers bar from us.

But the main thing is that I resent being felt that I HAVE to participate.  The guy who wrote this article is a supreme jerk, just read the last paragraph….give out candy or else.  What a jerk!

I mean…we also choose not to put up a Christmas tree.  But you don’t see the Christmas police coming around to check.  Yeah, Christmas is heavily commercialized and *in your face*, but no one is forced to go along with it, no one is forced to spend money they don’t have, put up decorations if they don’t want to, etc.

Halloween is the ONLY holiday that is so invasive, literally.  No other holiday involves harassing people and begging, at least none that I know of!  And it’s WRONG.

What I would love would be some sort of DO NOT RING/KNOCK registry, as there is with the DO NOT CALL list.  Basically, it would be illegal to knock on someone’s door unless you have legitimate business to do so.  It’s okay if you’re the pizza delivery guy, the UPS guy, or friends coming over, stuff like that.  But trick-or-treaters, people selling stuff, and drunken jerks who lose their wallets and demand to come in and use your phone (yes, I’ve had the latter happen to me!) would be forbidden.  It would be possible to opt out of the *no trick-or-treat* thing, if you just wanted the religious nutjobs and salespeople to stay away.

Anyhoo, for those who opt-in for *no trick-or-treat*, there’d be email and snail-mail addresses to which people can complain about infractions.  If, after any given Halloween, they get a certain percentage of complaints from those on the registry, trick-or-treat is banned next year.  They can bring it back the year after that, but if they still get as many complaints, it get banned for the next TWO years.

This would kind of be self-policing, because if kids knew the consequences of annoying people who do not wish to be annoyed, they would think twice about doing so.  At least I would hope so.

But it’s never ever gonna happen.  So I guess this year, we’ll have the swine flu…until it’s time to leave for the beer festival!

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