Poor kids, adults have laced their Halloween with razors
Wouldn’t it be easier to just get rid of Halloween?
Now, kids, before you egg my house next week, let me just say I feel badly about suggesting a ban on this beloved pagan ritual. But Halloween has changed, my little ghosts and goblins. Halloween is now part of the quoteunquote culture wars. This ghoulish candy extortion is now heralded by weeks of grown-up outrage.
As such, Halloween is diverting precious anger resources away from more deserving targets — the environment, Donald Trump’s lies, rising interest rates, whatever Kanye said or did last night — and draining our capacity for indignation.
How can we lament death and destruction when we’re squabbling about Kendall Jenner’s hair in a Vogue shoot or condemning a renaissance of Mr. T costumes? How can we pity the fools who are causing the world to dangerously regress when some crackpot will inevitably hit up a party this weekend dressed as one of the “suspicious packages” sent to George Soros, the Obamas and the Clintons?
I can tell you right now, Alex Jones will be going out this year as a false-flag operation.
Behold some frightful headlines from recent days: “Amazon under fire for selling Caitlyn Jenner Halloween costume”; “Michigan city bans clowns from Halloween because they’re too scary”; “Please don’t buy this sexy Meghan Markle Halloween costume”; “Parent slams Moana costume as racist”; “Sexy Handmaid’s Tale costume sparks outrage”; “Fury online as joke shop sells Oscar Pistorius Halloween outfit”; “Megyn Kelly apologizes for defending blackface Halloween costumes” and “How not to dress like an
offensive idiot on Halloween.”
How not to dress like an offensive idiot on Halloween? Maybe just don’t dress up at all. I’m not defending or rationalizing the above controversies. But at this point, any Halloween costume risks offending someone, somewhere. If you decide to go as a ham sandwich, is that not an insult to those who don’t eat pork? If you go as fungi, is that not a slight to plants that photosynthesize? Even innocent costumes, like the ones I recall from childhood, are problematic in this age of reflexive outrage.
What right did I ever have to pretend to be Chewbacca? That was Wookie appropriation. How did my friends and I dare chase down an autumnal sugar high while generically misidentifying as cowboys and Indians, cops and robbers, gypsies and hobos, zombies and skeletons, mermaids and pirates, warlocks and witches?
That was clearly disrespectful to the real witches among us, including the ones who recently put a hex on Brett Kavanaugh. In our highly flammable costumes, year after year, we had no idea we were perpetuating social injustice. Instead of “trick or treat,” we should have knocked on the doors of strangers and shouted, “GIVE US SOMETHING SWEET BECAUSE WE ARE IGNORANT!”
So that’s it, kids. It’s time to get rid of Halloween.
If Justin Trudeau is the most searched for costume this year in Canada, that tells you this holiday is already over. You don’t need a costume to be Trudeau. All you need are fancy socks and a selfie-stick. You can go out as Trudeau just by losing trade deals.
But this goes beyond the scandalous costumes that are sucking up cable time.
I’m sorry, but just based on what we now know about diet, no child should be going door to door and soliciting empty calories that could very well lead to obesity and diabetes. It’s insane. And what is this holiday teaching kids about the value of hard work? What, you just ask for something and some idiot with a bowl of candy bars hands it over? That’s not how the real world works.
And given what we know about health and safety, isn’t it time for a global moratorium on the kinds of costumes I wore as a kid, the ones that dangerously restricted my vision and breathing? Let’s get rid of Halloween as a public service.
No child shall ever again endure the sweet misery of walking around in the freezing cold while trying to peep through razor-sharp eyeholes punched into cheap masks. No child shall experience the curbside indignity of gasping for air as his or her cape chokes off oxygen and he or she loses feeling in the lower extremities.
No child shall ever be exposed to the crime against humanity that is Halloween.
This bonbon shakedown has become one big cultural distraction.
It’s time to put Halloween in a gaudy grave with spooky music.