UNDERNEWS: SOMETHING REALLY SCARY: HALLOWEEN KILLJOYS
All these policies [regarding Halloween safety] represent the heavily policed and professionalized side of our culture: the elements of American life where families are told to fear their neighbors, submit to surveillance, and trade in traditional pleasures for a homogenized facsimile of fun. The good news is that the fearmongers don't have a monopoly on the holiday, and that kids around the country can still enjoy the costumes, the candy, and the convivial custom of mumming around the block and begging for treats. "Despite our mounting fears and apoplectic media," Free-Range Kids author Lenore Skenazy recently wrote, Halloween "is still the day that many of us, of all ages, go outside. We knock on doors. We meet each other. And all that giving and taking and trick-or-treating is building the very thing that keeps us safe: community." It's not an x-ray machine at the courthouse that protects us, not an iPhone app that tracks sex offenders, not a state-issued pumpkin on a convict's door, not a super-sensitive schoolmarm who insists on calling the holiday the "Fall Festival." Just ordinary people who know their neighbors and want to share a night of fun.
(Emphasis mine)
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