Mark's Notebook

Holy Halloween

Our church has a "Harvest Festival" in their gym tonight. It's a way to keep the kids safe and free from exposure to "witches" and other evil influences.

Actually, I don't like the idea of kids bugging their neighbors and "haunting" the streets after dark. When I was a child, we lived on a dead-end street that intersected one other street. We were allowed to trick-or-treat only on those two streets, and when we were very small, only with our parents. All our friends lived on those streets, and all their parents and all the other adults knew us well. Many of our neighbors took photos of everyone who came to their door.

But now as a society maybe we don't know our neighbors so well. Things are very different in our heterogeneous neighborhood in 2004 than they were on two semi-rural streets in 1964. I don't worry about any bad things happening. But I do worry that it is almost in a way impolite to impose our children on neighbors that don't really know them well. Perhaps it's my natural reticence that makes me feel this way.

Since I can't very easily answer the doorbell because of my limited mobility, I wanted to go to church, watch the kids I know from the vantage point of a chair to the side. (I suppose with my walker, I could do a lion-tamer or updated Quasimodo imitation. Lame. Ha ha.)

But Mary doesn't like to drive on Halloween when kids are roaming dimly-lit streets, and it's hard to argue with her. (Especially since she has the car keys.) It seems that those who have rung our doorbell have been polite youngsters. I can hear, but from the computer I cannot see. In past years it has been feast or famine. One year Mary emptied the candy bowl while I had to work. Another year we had only a couple teenagers. Last year, we had only one adult neighbor visit! Mary was appalled that an adult would go trick-or-treating. But perhaps Mary didn't understand her "heterogeneous" accent when she said it was just an excuse to meet her neighbors. I thought this was a good thing ... trying to correct all the obvious problems with Halloween.

Let's get to know our neighbors. Protecting our children is a supreme value among all factions of our society. And loving one's neighbor is a value that goes back at least as far as Leviticus 19:18.

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Last updated Tuesday 13 May 2008