"Stranger Danger and the Decline of Halloween"

[Just_A_Guy]

Interesting Wall Street Journal column, here.

From the article:

Think of how Halloween used to be the one day of the year when gaggles of kids took to the streets by themselves—at night even. Big fun! Low cost! But once the party moved inside, to keep kids safe from the nonexistent poisoners, in came all the nonsense. The battery-operated caskets. The hired witch. The Costco veggie trays and plastic everything else. Halloween went from hobo holiday to $6 billion extravaganza.

[prisonchaplain]

An unintended side benefit of this is that churches are now seen as the safe places for kids on Halloween. The sad part is that we're so afraid of our neighbors.

[MorningStar]

So much fun has been taken out of Halloween. My kids don't even get to dress up at school. That was the most exciting day of the year for me - when we had our party and got to see everyone's creative costumes. Now our school has "United Nations Day". You get to wear clothes to show your heritage. Yay.

[JudoMinja]

People still go trick-or-treating. Just not without parents with them. And kids get to wear costumes to school tomorrow where I'm working. I guess it really depends on your location for how limited the Halloween activities are.

[ADoyle90815]

In my area, people still go trick-or-treating and they will be going this Sunday as that's the actual date of Halloween. Parents even take their children to different neighborhoods, so as much as half of the kids aren't even from the neighborhood. Even the parents who live in the neighborhood walk with their children.

As far as schools go, I don't know if they still allow kids to wear costumes, as the public school district has required uniforms for many years. My guess is that they aren't allowed to wear costumes because of the uniform policy.

[Jenamarie]

I remember wearing costumes to school, then after I moved into middle school they stopped allowing it in the grade schools because there would be sooooo many kids crying that day because either a) their families couldn't afford to get them a costume, b) their nice costume got ruined on the playground or in class (which would also sometimes bring the wrath of the parents upon the school), or c) someone wore a *really* scarey one and scared the littler kids.

A funny memory from my own school days about that. If you're familiar with the "Miss Nelson is Missing" children's book series, you know there's the teacher's alter-ego "Miss Viola Swamp" who is the "substitute teacher" who teaches the kids whenever Miss Nelson feels like she's loosing control of her class. My 2nd grade teacher "faked sick" during Halloween, then stepped outside and came back a few minutes later as "our new substitute teacher"... Miss Swamp! About half the class (myself included) went hiding under their desks in tears! Miss Swamp was real!!! My poor teacher spent the rest of that day getting us all calmed down. (out of costume )

[Blackmarch]

An unintended side benefit of this is that churches are now seen as the safe places for kids on Halloween. The sad part is that we're so afraid of our neighbors.

Well spoken.

[Mahonri]

Take a guess at who Gladys Knight went "Trick or Treating" with one time....

[Captain_Curmudgeon]

The author of the WSJ article has an interesting web-site, FreeRangeKids.

[talisyn]

I love free-range kids. They taste so much better. J/K, it's a great website

I let my daughter and nephews out of the car at one end of a block and they go all around the street, then back in the car. But that's because it's usually freezing and cold kids don't share the wealth as much as warm kids.

[miztrniceguy]

I was surprised at how few kids came to our door. Much less than last year. My wife says it is because we live in the bible belt.