HOME DEPOT HAS TAKEN OFF ITS SHELVES THE “SCARY PEEPER CREEPER” HALLOWEEN PROP. THIS IS NOT A VICTORY FOR COMMON SENSE, SAYS COLUMNIST CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD.

Why not ban all decorations, just to be safe

Halloween has never been my thing.

It strikes me as one of those occasions when, collectively, people are given the thumbs up to behave really badly, and cheerfully oblige. It’s like Canada Day, when yobs set off fireworks in dense urban neighbourhoods of Victorian-era row homes which spontaneously combust if you look at them sideways, and St. Patrick’s Day, or as college students ought to call it, groupdrink.

I carve a pumpkin, load up on candy and invite the local kids up on the porch to trick or treat, of course, and this year have even bought a knitted Halloween hat for my bull terrier to wear (he is most fetching), though I have the sinking feeling that even the sound of giggling children and their helicopter parents whirring madly on the sidewalk won’t get him off the couch.

But now, I have a new good reason to abhor the night.

I refer to the complaint from a Markham, Ont., woman about the “Scary Peeper Creeper,” the realistic face of a hooded man that you can stick on the outside of a window (it has suction cups) and give the people in- side a fright.

Breanne Hunt-Wells, a teacher and mother of two, spotted the window decoration in a local Home Depot and then did the very modern thing — she promptly complained to the media (in this instance, CBC, not the Toronto Star Police Service), which then contacted the company, which also did the very modern thing of caving immediately upon the receipt of the lone complaint, and apologizing.

Apparently, spokesperson Emily DiCarlo said the Peeper Creeper “is not in line with our core values.”

Who knew one is “not to stock items that might offend the delicate sensibilities of a single human flower?”

Hunt-Wells then allowed as how Home Depot made the right decision, but added, as such folks tend to do, that the Peeper Creeper should never have been for sale in the first place. Tsk, tsk: The company ought to have known it would offend women.

The Creeper, Hunt-Wells told CBC’s Metro Morning on Monday, “is inappropriate and makes light of a real-life, sinister issue that women face in our society. … I fail to see the humour in it. It makes light of a very serious crime. Voyeurism is a crime in Canada.”

Indeed it is (Section 162 of the Criminal Code, with dif- ferent penalties for merely peeping and peeping while recording and distributing the same), and while the literature is sparse on the link between voyeurism and actual sexual violence, some small studies have found that sexual predators may begin as peeping Toms.

So it’s not nothing, as Hunt-Wells said, not a necessarily benign crime.

But neither does the Peeper Creeper set out to make light of or normalize such behaviour; for God’s sake, it’s a prop, a gag, a joke meant to scare on a night of the year which is supposed to be all about scary and, frankly, bad taste.

I remember at one Halloween party I went to there was a fellow wearing a casket and was dressed as a former Ontario premier who had died not a week before.

The “graveyard ghosts” and “scary clowns” and “rising creepy baby” ($179 per, they rise from the grave, of course) which are still sold at Home Depot, pending of course a single complaint, aren’t designed to suggest that there really are ghosts, that clowns are dangerous and that dead babies escape their coffins.

The chain still sells power tools, axes, hammers and other instruments that frequently are used by people to kill others; my point being, the violent and freakish among us will use banal and even beloved objects, such as props and costumes and hammers, in the pursuit of badness.

We can’t ban it all, and as adults we ought to know the difference between play-acting and stupid fun, and criminal conduct.

Finally, on the matter of offence, Home Depot sells far worse on its website, and by this I mean dreadful Halloween-themed wreaths, which the suburban Wreath People who change up their door decorations (wreaths, cheery flags and banners, seasonal mats) with hideous regularity, will no doubt embrace.

I hate those wreaths. They offend me deeply, reminding me of all the ways in which I fail at domesticity.

Oh, and Home Depot — I’m not complaining to the media; I’m part of the media. I expect swift action and, at the least, a trigger warning.

FOR GOD’S SAKE, IT’S A PROP, A GAG, A JOKE MEANT TO SCARE.