2008 Woodie Awards
The post-ironic death of the Halloween holiday
Justin McElfresh
Issue date: 11/4/05 Section: Opinion
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There are no pirates, no zombies, and no princesses. There is silence. In the absence of porch lights, no ghosts or vampire cheerleaders rendezvous in doorways. It is October 31. It is 7:45 post meridiem.
I am taken aback by the lack of noise, but not surprised. There was time when our generation was inflated with innocence, and the anticipation of a day that commemorated the dead and/or pranks brought on shudders of bliss, but I believe the latter became too sinister and violent. It isn't because of the children; it is because of the waywardness of the people who prey on them that this holiday has become superseded by evil.
I never got razor-fortified chocolate or lysergic acid diethylamide-laced gum, yet the explosion of narcotic confections and criminal deviance in this hallowed of evenings has turned it into a parasitic drag.
Fifteen years ago, although there was a threat, it was a linear foreshadowing to the Machiavellian Sturm und Drang that now plagues us. Police officers never set up a Halloween evening dragnet for molesters when I was nine; but in retrospect, shouldn't they have?
Modern thought would say, "Yes, they should," but back then we still had a belief that, for the most part, a preliminary check before consumption would prevent a consumptive problem - a simple X-ray would preclude a certain shadow attack.
Yet, the ubiquitous declassification of silence has invented a self-sustained suicide of slash-and-burn silhouettes through an evening that is supposed to be about jocularity and fun. This is what I call the post-ironic death of Halloween.
The irony being that the evening set aside before All Saints' Day, a night of revenant displays of grotesqueries, has become a reveille of jeopardies for the adults who once used to revel in its pastimes. Halloween has been bleeding a slow death.
The ghostwritten psychology of this holiday has rendered it a theoretical ghost town. At sundown, circa 5:30ish, there were no adult-escorted children careening sidewalks looking for sugar. Even as the evening progressed, very few people showed up; there were a total of 22 kids that came to our door.
I am taken aback by the lack of noise, but not surprised. There was time when our generation was inflated with innocence, and the anticipation of a day that commemorated the dead and/or pranks brought on shudders of bliss, but I believe the latter became too sinister and violent. It isn't because of the children; it is because of the waywardness of the people who prey on them that this holiday has become superseded by evil.
I never got razor-fortified chocolate or lysergic acid diethylamide-laced gum, yet the explosion of narcotic confections and criminal deviance in this hallowed of evenings has turned it into a parasitic drag.
Fifteen years ago, although there was a threat, it was a linear foreshadowing to the Machiavellian Sturm und Drang that now plagues us. Police officers never set up a Halloween evening dragnet for molesters when I was nine; but in retrospect, shouldn't they have?
Modern thought would say, "Yes, they should," but back then we still had a belief that, for the most part, a preliminary check before consumption would prevent a consumptive problem - a simple X-ray would preclude a certain shadow attack.
Yet, the ubiquitous declassification of silence has invented a self-sustained suicide of slash-and-burn silhouettes through an evening that is supposed to be about jocularity and fun. This is what I call the post-ironic death of Halloween.
The irony being that the evening set aside before All Saints' Day, a night of revenant displays of grotesqueries, has become a reveille of jeopardies for the adults who once used to revel in its pastimes. Halloween has been bleeding a slow death.
The ghostwritten psychology of this holiday has rendered it a theoretical ghost town. At sundown, circa 5:30ish, there were no adult-escorted children careening sidewalks looking for sugar. Even as the evening progressed, very few people showed up; there were a total of 22 kids that came to our door.