‘Healthy’ Halloween? I say boo
Forget the fake blood and spooky music.
If you really want to scare kids on Monday, heed the advice of a recent Huffington Post story: “8 Healthy Treats You Should Hand Out Instead of Halloween Candy.”
Then watch as the little goblins recoil with horror after you slip pouches of “unpopped popcorn” into their bags. Listen to them shriek and nearly fall backwards down the porch stairs after glimpsing evil “Craisins.”
Other “healthy Halloween” treat ideas shared in recent days sound suspiciously like the snacks crestfallen grade-schoolers now trade with despair: mini-carrots, applesauce, organic gummies, sugar-free fruit leathers.
I mean, why not just hand out quinoa and kale? Why not just dress up as a Whole Foods cashier and wait at the door with a platter of beet skulls and chia ghosts?
People, it’s “trick or treat.” It’s not “trick or superfood.” It’s not “trick or why do
you hate children?” Kernels and dried cranberries are treats only to squirrels.
That kid in the Harley Quinn costume has no interest in your “Cheese Monster,” which, based on a description from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, is basically a Mini Babybel that’s been wax-vandalized and affixed with googly eyes. That’s not a treat. That’s just cruel. Look, I get it. I do. My wife has forced me to get it by scowling on those rare occasions nostalgia compels me to return from the market with Froot Loops or Wagon Wheels. She’d be less angry if I stocked the pantry with crystal meth.
That’s because there is now an insatiable cultural appetite for healthy living. We want our children to be fit. We want them to benefit from all of the diet and nutritional wisdom accrued since we got by as kids on hotdogs and frozen fries.
Which is fine for any day of the year that is not Halloween.
This pagan ritual is already way safer than it used to be when we wandered out in our highly flammable costumes in search of a sugar rush with no flashlights or cellphones.
I could barely see or breathe in my mask. I still have a pinhole scar on my chest from a defective sheriff’s badge that was probably made out of lead.
But the motivation of Tootsie Rolls, Nerds, Hot Tamales and Malted Milk Balls gave us strength. We operated with higher purpose while hunting and gathering Rolo, Mike and Ike, Smarties and Bazooka Joe. You suffered as Spider-Man for the web of exhilaration that came from devouring 38 Kraft Toffees before bedtime.
Those were the rules of engagement: one night, no rules. You braved temperatures that were on average about 15 degrees colder than today for the warmth of empty calories.
For just one night, on Halloween, we should ease up with the uptightness
Word of mouth was fierce during Halloween — “Hey, 136 Dew Lane is giving out full-sized Kit Kats!” — and if celery broomsticks or packs of dry seaweed ever got flagged, the perpetrators would still be scraping eggs off their aluminum siding.
I once saw C-3PO absolutely lose it after getting a box of Sun-Maid Raisins.
Even worse than the health nuts and killjoys are the parents who want to have it both ways this year. I was reading a Canadian Press story on Friday and nearly fell out of my chair after this: “The drive to feed children less sugar has given rise to Switch Witchery. Like the tooth fairy, the Switch Witch is a mystical creature that arrives after children have gone to bed and switches some of their Halloween candy haul for toys and other non-sugary items.”
A mystical creature? No, that sounds more like a real thief. That sounds like deception. That sounds like a crack in the bubble of trust and a future traumatic memory to be explored during therapy: “Doc, I can still see the Coffee Crisps. But when I got up in the morning, there was a cantaloupe and recycled bookmarks.”
Out of love, through best intentions, we’ve already siphoned a lot of unbridled joy out of childhood and replaced it with structure and best practices. The lives my young daughters lead are far more safe and regulated than when I was their age and my front yard was considered as far as I could walk until it got dark.
For just one night, on Halloween, we should ease up with the uptightness.
I’m sure the pumpkin banana bread recipe Kristin Cavallari shared with InStyle a few days ago is indeed “delightfully healthy” and a “wonderful alternative.”
But it can’t compete with the bad stuff on Halloween.
More importantly, the bad stuff shouldn’t be competing with it on Halloween.
So think carefully before dropping salubrious fare in the bags of trickor-treaters. They deserve a onenight reprieve from all this wholesome oversight.
Besides, you don’t even have to worry. The Switch Witches will have the last word. vmenon@thestar.ca