Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Trick or treat
Halloween, as described in The Shadow Year, is somewhat different from what I grew up knowing. Egging houses, steeling candy and Nair bombs are new to me. Halloween was just a time to go around neighbors' houses asking for candy in a costume. No attacks from other kids were even thought of. While it is alot crazier, that poor kid that got hit by a Nair bomb and peed on is probably traumatized. Life sure is different, but I am surprised that 50 years ago was more aggressive than today's Halloween.
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You do hear about some mischief on Halloween, such as eggings and TP'ing. I've never experienced the violence described in the story, but you see these fights everywhere. The fighting and urination may not be linked to Halloween. It might just happen to occur on that night as retaliation for the other attacks.
ReplyDeleteThe only vandalism I ever experienced on Halloween was the rolling of yards with toilet paper. I have to say I also participated in this a few times as well. There also used to be a woman in my town who would dress as a butcher covered in blood and chase trick or treaters with a butchers knife. That was probably the most traumatic experience I ever had on Halloween.
ReplyDeleteThe Shadow Year's Halloween was definitely a different sort of Halloween for me to read about. I've always heard that the night before Halloween was "Mischief Night," an evening of pranks and TP'ing. Though I've never heard of Mischief Night going on in my hometown, I distinctly remember seeing it portrayed on TV, most specifically in an episode of Nickelodeon's Rocket Power.
ReplyDeleteHalloween in The Shadow Year also reminded me of the horror movie, Trick-R-Treat. It's pretty new, but was straight to DVD. It still really creeped me out though.
It was just different because I am from a small town, but I could not relate to the small town in The Shadow Year.
ReplyDeletePlus, why did older kids have to be bums?
Also when speaking of those things happening, I'm talking about as a kid. I understand Halloween gets crazier as people get older. But as far as children's festivities, this was shocking.
ReplyDeleteWow. When I was a kid, Halloween was pretty brutal around our neighborhood...not a bunch of little kids dressed up, but when they did they all went out really early. Actual Halloween night was for the older kids, and a lot of things happened like they did in the book - we threw eggs at cars, and other kids, and people's houses. We threw toilet paper, sure, but it was also pretty common to throw rocks at people's windows. Whenever a cop car came through to make sure nothing bad was going on, it was okay to throw eggs at the cop cars too (well, the cops didn't think it was okay, but all the kids did...).
ReplyDeleteI don't think anybody actually got Nair bombed...or beat up, or anything like that...but then, there weren't a lot of teenagers in my neighborhood when I was still young. So maybe the teens did more of that kind of thing.