Heathen Heart

Leave it to me to find the cloud in the silver lining.
It was a perfect night for it though, wasn’t it: the waxing moon flitting between snatches of tattered cloud; the air crisp and surprisingly warm; the dry pavement decorous with construction-paper leaves.
Or rather it could have been a perfect night, if it had been accompanied by a suitably mischievous celebration.
From a distance there seemed to be all the ingredients: witches and demons, pouting teenagers, an endless array of meticulously carved pumpkins just waiting for dismemberment and, the chief component - complacent well-meaning adults.
But up close it was clear, all the boos were bordering on boring.
No, actually, to be honest, this past Halloween night crossed that border, and was firmly entrenched in the actually boring.
Where once homeowners offered bowls of eyeballs, inflatable pumpkins noisily reigned.
Where once slightly berserk fathers lay breathless in cardboard coffins for minutes - just for a chance to strike fear in a five year old, spray-can cobwebs were all that could be seen.
Of course it might all have been a function –as the scientists say, of the setting.
Has our neighborhood matured to the point where Halloween has lost its potency?
Are we missing one or more of the components that give this special evening its edge?
Yes, yes, and yes again.
It’s not that everyone did not do, play, or dress up, for their part.
It’s that Halloween – at least in my neighborhood, seems to have lost its heathen heart.
About the worst thing I can say about the behavior of the locals on this autumn evening, was that they drove a bit fast. Or perhaps the worse thing I can say is that there is nothing really bad I can say about the spooks in my neighborhood.
Of course Trick or Treating is effected by, among many other things, the day of the week on which it falls.
A Tuesday night Halloween probably tends to be tamer than, say, the same holiday when it falls on a Friday.
But again, I sense that the final effect was more than just the sum of those particular parts. I sense that Halloween has passed a certain cultural milepost, and will never be the same.
Part of the problem is that Halloween has become like Valentine’s Day: an economic obligation with very little connection to the myths and compulsions that were once at the center of all of our holidays.
And few can resist the socio-economic sales pressure.
No matter how life is progressing, how the job is going, or what horrible calamities have occurred around the world and been reported in gloomy, gory, CSI-specific detail, when Valentine’s day arrives, otherwise sane men drag themselves to the convenience store for a box of dark chocolate remorse.
Halloween has become just such an obligation: an unholy day of obligation.
And that’s no fun.
And then there are the treats.
There was a time, in the not too distant past, when the treats were as much of a trick as the tricks are today treats. That is, there was a time, long ago it seems, that when you got home and spilled the contents of your grocery bag on to the kitchen table you could expect the unexpected.
I’m not talking about the urban myths of razor blades in apples, or needles in gum, jellied fingers, candied rats, or anything that melodramatic. I’m simply recalling that neighbors found a wide variety of interesting, sometimes odd ways to define the treats that they were expected to provide.
You might receive a candy apple, or a sweetened popcorn ball, a foil-wrapped brownie, or a slice of cake. Or you might uncover sticks of gum, Turkish Taffy, Mary Janes, even pencils and erasers.
Candy bars were the exception: diamonds in the rough.
This past Halloween night though, the take was decidedly corporate – decidedly uniform, completely predictable, remarkably bland.
Of the 97 treats acquired by a certain eighty-pound eight year old, over 75% came from three mighty corporate confection makers.
These three corporate giants – Hershey, Mars, and Nestles, together have a net worth of 279 billion dollars, or something like that.
These three corporate giants use enough sugar every year to create a Pluto-sized piece of taffy that, properly gummed by a million hyperactive children, could stretch to the Sun and back again.
And what are they doing with all that sticky money? Are they creating Willie Wonka-like fantasies, magical gum drops, building castles out of cotton candy or anything imaginative at all?
Apparently not.
Just more of the same.
28 varieties of Peanut Butter Cup.
17 different ways of packaging M&Ms.
Boring.
Bland.
Predictable.
Like Halloween.
At the bottom of our 8-year olds pillow case, I did manage to find a smattering of Smarties, a handful of Double Bubble, and a single ‘cream soda’ Dum Dum.
The Smarties, it turns out, are manufactured in Canada.
The Double Bubble – whose full brand name is “America’s Original Double Bubble”, is manufactured in Canada
The Dum Dums, what do you know, were actually made in America.
No popcorn balls though, or chocolate chip cookies.
All of the fathers well behaved.
Even the moon just a bit too perfect.
Boo just a prefix.
Boo-ring: horribly, frighteningly, monstrously boring.
Halloween Night in Corporate America.