Expect A Different

Halloween This Year

By Allan Saxe, WBAP Political Analyst

Halloween is right around the corner. Traditionally, it has been a season of fun and enjoyment for children and parents alike. It is the opening door to the holiday season and the coming of cooler weather. Thanksgiving and Christmas are right down the road. Many homes are as decorated for Halloween as for other holidays. Potential ghosts and goblins are preparing their costumes. But this year Halloween, at least for me, has lost some of its luster and enjoyment.
Halloween in normal seasons is full of fun because our lives have been so very predictable and stable. It is fun to be scared when our daily lives are usually so plain. It is the same with taking a scary ride at an amusement park. Many seek out ways to break the daily monotony by riding a roller coaster or careening down a steep embankment. And so it has been with Halloweens past. Our latent fears become temporary enjoyments as children dress in costumes and go out "trick or treating." Halloween is an artificial rendering of our fears, phobias and legends. We have so much fun with it because we control, manipulate and make it harmless. Halloween goes on in the evening hours and it is ended soon after. We control it! It does not control us!

But this year Halloween will not hold the kind of enjoyment for me as in past years. The past months have been too full of fear and fright. And most frightening of all is that daily life, unlike previous years, has become unpredictable. Even during the great wars of past, life here at home was mostly predictable. The wars were fought over there, not here at home. Those at home could still count on a large degree of stability and sameness. The Kamikaze pilots would only aim at military targets, not buildings full of civilians here in the United States. Even when chemical warfare was used in World War I, by Germany, there was never a fear that those on the home front would be in harm's way.

Though Halloween this year may lose some of its spontaneity and enjoyment it should still go on. The children should still dress up and attend parties or go door-to-door showing off their costumes while parents beam and take photos of their youngsters. The terrorism that stalks us should not be allowed to disrupt our daily lives and holiday enjoyments, at least not too much. The fear that haunts most adults in various degrees should not be allowed to trickle down to our children to a large degree.

I still have vivid memories of my own Halloween participation. Growing up in Oklahoma, Halloween long ago was celebrated during two evenings. The first evening was for collecting all the pastries, candies and whatever from neighbors and friends going door-to-door in the neighborhood. I was not too creative and always put on an old sheet and became a ghost. The sheet I draped over me had two large holes carved out for me to see, but the cut-outs did not correspond too well with my eyes.

So I lumbered down the neighborhood with some of my friends asking people to drop stuff into my old paper bag. I remember not getting nearly the same amount of handouts, as my friends. I was not really too cute and could not compete with my fellow Halloween travelers for the neighbor's attention. So I decided one evening to strike out! I was about seven or eight years old.

The second of two Halloween nights years ago in Oklahoma was for "tricking" those who had not provided the "treats" on the previous evening. I singled out one home where I had received nothing, absolutely nothing. However, my friends received some great foodstuffs there and I had been overlooked somehow. I decided to give this home one more chance. I went there, dressed up as a ghost again, and asking for treats. There was no one home or at least that is what it resembled. I spotted an old mail drop that was really a carved out entrance into a front door. I found a garden hose nearby and placed it through the mailbox leading into the home. I turned on the hose and ran! I have been running away from that home ever since. I advise everyone never, ever, to repeat my antics. But for those always seeking for "roots" as to misbehavior, well, I had been mistreated as a child during Halloween. What a hoot!

In a few days let us all celebrate this joyous holiday, safely and sanely. But it will be, I believe, a bit different this year. We have all been frightened too much already.

Allan Saxe serves as political analyst for WBAP News/Talk 820 and writes an opinion column for the Star-Telegram.