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Halloween
Until last night I didn't know what I was going to talk about. This week's parsha is Chayei Sarah -- the death and burial of Sarah and Avraham's efforts to find a wife for his son Yitzchak. There's plenty of stuff to talk about there -- funeral customs, marriage customs, business ethics, what to look for in a spouse, more -- but none of it was coming together for me.
So I'm going to talk about Halloween instead. Basically, I don't think Jews should encourage trick-or-treating. (I would make that statement broader, actually, but it's appropriate to focus here.) Consider the values that this activity teaches: that it's ok to demand gifts from your neighbors; that extortion is appropriate; and that vandalism is ok if it doesn't really hurt anyone. Are these really the values we should be teaching kids?
I can hear the objection now: "but it's all in fun, and no one gets hurt". That something is "all in fun" should condone it? I can think of some things that were "all in fun" that were not at all pleasant for people on the receiving end, most from childhood; I'll bet you can too.
Halloween is an interesting contrast to Purim. At Purim, we (sometimes) dress up, and we also do lots of stuff with food. Specifically, we give food to our neighbors. Give, not take. Isn't that a great value to teach? So much of Judaism (and polite society) is built around tzedakah and generosity, and here is an easy way to make that real for kids (and adults).
Now granted, in the neighborhoods where I and most of my friends live, trick-or-treating doesn't have the unpleasant overtones I've described, especially for the younger kids. I haven't been vandalized since moving to Squirrel Hill. And it can be fun to dress up and visit your neighbors. But I think the community parties that started to crop up when I was a kid are a better way of meeting those goals.
I'm not being a Scrooge here; we give out treats at our house (though this year, I don't think either of us will be home in time). I develop blind spots for the college-age "kids" who don't even try to dress up, and just hand over the Reeses' Cups. It's easier that way. And I'm also not saying that Halloween is evil and will ultimately be responsible for the fall of civilization etc, the way some of the rabid right-wingers get about everything from TV to role-playing games. But I think there are better things to teach our kids. If I had kids, I think I would take them out for Chinese food and a movie that night, and get them excited about Purim. Those are much better values to be teaching.
Update: This post should not be taken to mean that I have problems with other trappings of this holiday. I'm all for sugar rushes and gourd-enabled artistic expression. (Translation: I like candy as much as anyone, and I had fun carving pumpkins at Ralph & Lori's on Sunday.)
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I think that, as a holiday, Halloween has lost much of those negative aspects. Think about the values of a secular Christmas, "be good and you'll get presents". Not, "be good because it's the right thing to do", or anything. I think too many people buy into the myth that if you play by all the rules, good things will just come to you. I bought into it and it just isn't so.
So, I agree that Halloween doesn't teach good values, but it's not alone in that respect.
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laura47@ATHENA(white-magic@ATHENA):: [18:08:23] � "gossip center" �
i had a little girl give me a lollipop. her mom: "she's
into giving
That's certainly an interesting twist on the concept....
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For me, the coolest part of Halloween is the whole costume aspect. No other holiday that I celebrate has that aspect, and I would really miss it if I didn't have a costume holiday.
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Certainly true, yes.
I was vandalized a couple times when I lived in Swissvale -- the first time when Halloween fell on a weekend and I was away that weekend. (It should have been pretty obvious that no one was home -- no lights, no car in the driveway, mail in the mailbox... sheesh.)
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How was your talk received?
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"Mischief Night" where I grew up was always the night before Halloween. As a corollary, if you ever need to take a driving test in NJ, Halloween is wide-open because folks don't know whether they'll have a working car that day. My favorite "Mischief Night" story was of the guy who sat on his roof with a garden hose. When people came by to vandalize his family's property, he turned the hose on them, giving them what they deserved.
As for the whole "trick or treat" thing, I never objected to it being voluntary. What I always hated when I was a kid was being forced to wear a yucky costume (my folks weren't very good at coming up costumes) to school. My least favorite one was where I was forced to bob for apples (I soooo do not like sticking my head in a bucket of water). There was one kid whose family was large and too poor for them to justify doing costumes, so he never had one and got ostracized by the teachers for "being anti-social." (Staying home that day wasn't a viable option, as he lived across the street from our school.)
I always saw the "trick or treat" thing as a silly ritual. We'd go door to door collecting candies and money for UNICEF. Then we'd go home and Mom would take all our candy from us and either throw it out, claiming we "had to be protected from pins and razor blades," or eat it herself.
Now that I'm a grownup Halloween is much more fun. I don't have to wear a dorky costume that says "Cinderella" on the front of it to tell people what I am. I can spend as little or as much as I want on my costume both money-wise and time-wise and have something good to show for my effort.
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The message I got from trick-or-treat was rather specific: that on that one day it was part of that holiday's custom for the younger members of the community to dress up in costumes and go around the neighbourhood showing off those costumes and getting treats from participating households. If the porch light wasn't on, that house wasn't playing the game and was to be ignored, not vandalized nor harrassed.
The "trick" part of trick-or-treat felt more like a historical footnote, and it was made clear that if we engaged in petty vandalism, we'd get in trouble for it. It was also pretty clear from the way the stories were told that the tricks of past generations weren't supposed to be any worse than soaping someone's windows or TPing a tree.
We didn't pay much attention to "mischief night", though once in a while we'd find some neighbour's tree "decorated" by some other neighbour -- it was presumed to be "the bad kids" that had done it.
If I'd gotten the message that it was okay to demand stuff from my neighbours, I'd be a whole lot better at asking for help when I need it than I am now. I have trouble asking for help from friends who've said, "If there's anything we can do, please tell us," much less from random neighbours. Of course, I can't speak for anyone else's children regarding what messages they got.
When I got older, handing out the candy -- and decorating the house for Hallowe'en so that visiting trick-or-treaters would have something festive to see instead of just a bare porch -- felt (still feel) like just as much a part of the fun as going trick-or-treating did when I was younger. It wasn't what we had to do to avoid "tricks"; it was a way to participate, and participating meant we got to see all the cute costumes the younger children wore. There was some overlap between the two roles, by the way: I started understanding the spirit of the decorating and handing out candy parts before I outgrew going trick-or-treating myself. I saw the really impressive displays when I knocked on doors, and I wanted to create something like that. (We never even came close, but I did find little things I could do to the porch some years. But oh, the grandiose plans for mazes and haunted houses that my siblings and I designed even though we never had the resources to implement them!)
So maybe it was just my community's interpretation of the tradition, or my parents', but I didn't get the bad messages from trick-or-treat that you're worried about.
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So it looks to me like at least some of today's kids are not getting the message that we got growing up.