November 4, 2013

Time to end Halloween.

Really this is the last straw. No, not Michelle Obama saying "Kids Will One Day Trick-or-Treat for Vegetables."

This lady, thinking she's got "the spirit of Halloween":
The woman who answered the door was wearing an apron covered in blood and had a mask covering her mouth and was waving a fake knife. She had a table out and on it were things like hearts and intestines and mince....

The woman reportedly grabbed one of the girl’s hands and gave her one of the hearts, and the children thought it was a fake heart. After placing the lamb’s heart – which was wrapped in a plastic bag – into the children’s hands, the woman picked up a fake knife and chased after the group.
Now, seriously, why isn't that the spirit of Halloween? How are people supposed to know how to do a night of transgressiveness that's scary and creepy, but just the right way?

I never want to read another story about a little kid that went as a KKK guy, when it's just completely normal to go as Satan. He didn't get on the right wavelength of EVIL. You can be Attila the Hun but not Hitler. You're supposed to understand that. When you are 7.

Come on, time to quit altogether. Why are we handing out candy? Why are we answering the door at night to strangers? Why are we sending kids around to the houses of strangers? Why are we publicizing children's costumes mistakes? It no longer makes any sense as anything other than a party time for adults. End Halloween.

44 comments:

MadisonMan said...

What's not healthy about chocolate, Michelle?

David Davenport said...

The woman who answered the door was wearing an apron covered in blood and had a mask covering her mouth and was waving a fake knife.

She's just expressing herself.

Self expression and cultural diversity are America's strengths.

You repressive, fuddy duddy people just want to put things back in the closet and turn the USA back to the 1950's.

Bob Boyd said...

Boo humbug!

Sorun said...

Michelle Obama saying "Kids Will One Day Trick-or-Treat for Vegetables."

All we need is a famine and it could be true.

Curious George said...

Gays love Halloween. So is the desire to end it qualify as a hate crime?

Joe said...

Adults have ruined Halloween. One one end, you have the paranoid adults and at the other, adults like this who take it to extremes.

El Camino Real said...

If the Democrats stay in power, our kids will be begging for cracked corn. Regularly.

lemondog said...

End Halloween.

Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue.

It can never end until there is a new administration.

Trick or trick.....

Heh.heh.heh.

test said...

Other reports quote her as saying:

Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at all when I first moved here that that sort of thing is frowned upon... you know, cause I've lived in a lot of places, and I tell you, people do that all the time.

traditionalguy said...

Halloween was always a taste of lawlessness.

The Kids threatened the adult homeowners who pretended to be afraid of them and paid a candy tax.

That worked until the kids were 8 or 9. Then it became a national celebration of lawless adults.

Inducing fear in kids as a joke is child abuse, and everybody knows that...but it's a lawless zone, so just do whatever thou wilt..

Strelnikov said...

Michelle Obama envisions a future America so poor that kids will have to go door to door begging for food.

Her husband will arrange that future for you.

John Stodder said...

I have hated Halloween since I was about 19. When it was an innocent holiday for kids only, it was marginally acceptable although the promotion of overconsumption of candy was basically a wicked thing to do. But now it's mainly a holiday that encourages people to do stupid things they might regret -- and it's still a big candy pusher. Fuck it.

Sigivald said...

I think she does have the spirit down pretty well.

Note: After placing the lamb’s heart – which was wrapped in a plastic bag – into the children’s hands, the woman picked up a fake knife and chased after the group.

No actual safety issue to speak of, either.

(Also, people should stop caring about First Ladies.

They have no actual power except that one gives them by believing they have any.

So if we'd all just stop pretending they're important, they might learn to sod off back to not pretending they're our lords and masters, as in the good old days before the idea that the First Lady was important.

I'm tempted to blame the Kennedy family.)

Levi Starks said...

She gave them a Halloween to remember.
I'd say they got their money's worth.

Anonymous said...

I'm with Althouse. End Halloween.

This year I gave out sweet potatoes, stuffed with marshmallows.

Rocketeer said...

Impressive. I would actually strap myself in a metal tube with a horde of insensitive people, then be pooped out of it on the other end to be able to see that. Much better, of course, if it was in my own neighborhood to begin with.

Freeman Hunt said...

Here, Halloween has mostly morphed into dress up day. There's very little scary, only the most tame "scary" possible. The best costume I saw was that of an older girl who had made a wearable kayak and was carrying an oar.

Paul said...

Michelle has a fat butt and they eat out with hamburgers, but she sure knows how others are supposed to live.

That's being a progressive. Do what I say, not what I do.

Hope for change in 2014.

Sam L. said...

I notice there is no location given.

I'd never heard of headlinejournal.com, and have no idea of the validity and reliability of their stories.

I'm going with urban myth.

rhhardin said...

Creamed corn is always welcome.

david7134 said...

David,
I am afraid you are wrong. We want to turn the clock back about 100 years. At least past 1913 when the progressive had their first big spasm and took away all our rights.

Big Mike said...

@Inga, at least you are consistent.

Anonymous said...

Yeah Big Mike, you should've seen those little devils chomping into them and licking their fingers after. Mmmmm good!




;) Trick.

Meade said...

"End Halloween."

Oh great. Watch us get our windows soaped next year.

Damn Hitler and KKK… always ruining everyone's fun.

Larry J said...

Halloween is my wife's birthday. It suits her. She's a spooky little woman.

And Michelle Obama can kiss my ass.

ken in tx said...

This year, I went to the first Halloween Party I ever went to. It was in East Atlanta. It was in an elaborate walled residence, with ponds with swans and other exotic animals throughout, plus automated effects and sounds. It was impressive. Unlimited drinks and food. The lady who was invited, and who I tagged along with, didn't want to stay. So, I left.

BTW, Titus would have been very comfortable there, despite his hatred for the South.

Kelly said...

Kids these days. When I was a youngster I would have been terrified if that happened to me, and I would have loved it. I also participated in corning, soaping, toilet papering and general vandalism. I don't really see that a lot anymore.

Last year some kids half heartedly toilet papered my car. It was a lame, shameful attempt. You could see they put little to no thought into it. I only had to drive the car forward a few feet before the toilet paper dislodged and floated off. They were probably busy texting to do a proper job.

Meade said...

Kelly, you do realize, don't you, that there is no statute of limitations on corning?

You just might want to retain counsel.

Cedarford said...

Halloween is an ancient holiday, going back to pagan fall festivals celebrating good crop bounty and then the Christians adapting it to an All Hallowed Saints fall festival. A holiday unique in that it was focused on starting after the sun went down with bonfires and torches doing the lighting. (besides feasting, it was also about sex and having people and lifestock gestate so spring arrivals happened and night was conducive to that!)

The spooky stuff came back to mainly a religious excuse for partying and feasting ..after the US Civil War...Really interesting is that postcard art from the 1880s onwards shows a remarkable persistence of motifs...witches, jack-o-lanterns, black cats, bats, spider webs, all at night. Bobbing for apples, costumes, kids in costumes. It's a great cultural persistance, and is less changed than say, Christmas since the 1880s.
Trick or treating (though like all Halloween stuff, with ancient traditions of a-souling and wassailing, did not become popular until the 1890s in Ireland and Scotlant as "guising and getting a treat".
The record in America is absent of trick or treating being part of Halloween until the mid-1930s..It only became a nationwide thing and part of the popular culture after WWII.

David said...

First of all, this was England, so some leeway is warranted. (Read the articles, David Davenport.)

It would have been much better had the heart still shown a faint beat, but apart from that detail she got it exactly right.

"Wanna see something really scary?"

Chomp!

Known Unknown said...

I'm glad Althouse doesn't have younger children. Their lives would be miserable.

NO TRAVELING!
NO SHORTS!
NO HALLOWEEN!

Unless of course she's doing the usual contrarian posts she deems clever. I'm not smart enough to tell the difference now.

joethefatman said...

Beg-o-ween. Teach kids that demanding something for free from someone else is ok. And if they don't get what they want, trick.


Sounds vaguely familiar somehow.

jr565 said...

If you went trick or treating and got vegetables that would be an example of a house that got the dog poo on the lawn treatment.

Will Cate said...

Quite agree, Ann, it is a big damn waste of time and money, especially since it has become an adult quasi-"holiday" like St. Patty's Day -- i.e. just another excuse to get drunk and act stupid.

After our kids grew up, we stopped participating in it completely.

AlanKH said...

Mushroom is a vegetable. Let's trick-or-treat for mushroom pizza!

BarrySanders20 said...

Inga said:

This year I gave out sweet potatoes, stuffed with marshmallows.


And in related news, on November 1, Inga found dozens of marshmallow-stuffed sweet potatoes on her front lawn.

Our across-the-street neighbor in Berkeley Heights, NJ gave out apples one Halloween circa 1974. The next day we discovered that kids donated back dozens of the "treats" before they left the property. It was the kids way of saying "How do you like them apples?" even though we were too young to know that phrase yet.

JoyD said...

Ugh, thanks for that photo ambush.

David Davenport said...

Secretly, Ann Althouse wishes she had Kate Moss' costume and make-up:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2483738/Nicole-Scherzinger-Kate-Moss-embrace-Jonathan-Ross-Halloween-party.html>

It's a matter of artistic self expression, don't you know. We all agree that art is good stuff.

Kelly said...

Meade, luckily my mom worked for the police department. So on the several occasions we were caught, we were let off.

David Davenport said...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2483738/Nicole-Scherzinger-Kate-Moss-embrace-Jonathan-Ross-Halloween-party.html>And this little piggy got a kiss from Kate Moss! Nicole Scherzinger enjoys a supermodel embrace at the Halloween party of the year

David Davenport said...

Sorry, but the Daily M. seems to have some way of locking out those links. Anyone interested in the pix can go to dailymail.co.uk and then search on "Kate Moss and Halloween."

The DM is a guilty pleasure.

Trashhauler said...

I believe the History Channel did a story about the devastation that kids had committed in cities on All Hallows' Eve in the 1920s and 30s. Much destruction and mayhem.

In reaction, so the story goes, communities began to encourage harmless fun things for the kids to do - including dressing up in costumes and begging for treats. Apparently, this was preferable to random fires, broken windows, gunfire and massive arrests.

Trashhauler said...

My mother recounts a story about her most embarrassing Halloween back before trick or treating was prevalent. As part of a gang of fun-loving kids, she helped push over several outhouses until she fell into one. She later thought trick or treating to be a great idea.

jeff said...

There has always been some asshole wanting to end Halloween. Nothing new here. If you dont like it, turn off the porch light that one night a year that kids come ring your bell. Easy enough to opt out of it.