Children getting mixed messages
With Labour Day out of the way, the tomatoes all planted, it’s time to think about the season for giving. No – not Christmas, but goodness knows that will be here soon enough. It’s Halloween I’m talking about.
I always have trouble with this supposed ‘celebration’. What gives me concern is the disconnect between teaching children not to accept lollies from strangers and not to go on other people’s properties to doing quite the opposite. We encourage small kids to dress up with excitement and wide-eyed innocence and actively go from house to house almost demanding lollies from total strangers. Is it any wonder children get confused when all the lessons we teach them about ‘stranger danger’ are put aside for one excitement-filled evening.
Then we have to start the lessons all over again because the kids are confused because we do the opposite of what we say. For the sake of one night of the year, in their eagerness to get as many lollies as they possibly can from as many strangers as they can, kids rush headlong on to properties with no regard to the consequences. Yes, I know that a lot of parents go with their kids – but a lot don’t.
It’s as if the rules we give them to keep them safe can be put aside for one night of the year and its perfectly all right if they dress up as ghosts and ghouls so they can get as many lollies as possible.
We may as well give them a swig of beer once a year and justify that, or maybe a drag on a cigarette now and again.
It’s only in the last decade we’ve embraced Halloween. It’s been brought in on the back of American sitcoms eagerly taken up by kids with more screen time than play time. The homogenisation of cheap television programmes dumbs down a lot of values.
Perhaps Halloween is just a symptom of that as peer pressure overtakes that of parental pressures as mum and dad – or more than likely just the one struggle to make ends meet so becomes ‘time poor’.
So if you hear a buzzing noise, that’s probably Samuel Parnell, the founder of Labour Day spinning in his grave. We’ve just celebrated his notion of an eighthour workday and eight hours recreation. I wonder how many of us take that to heart as we do Halloween.