Tonight I’ll once again be responsible for shepherding my wide-eyed children through a world of grim reapers, chocolate bars and firecrackers. Halloween has always been one of my favourite days of the year, but looking at what we’re teaching our kids and each other I start to think something’s gone wrong.

Hey kids, have some horror

At some point tonight, my kids will be scared. Not the fun roller-coaster kind of shrieking, but full-on terrified. Older kids caked in blood, over-zealous vampire adults, creepy organ music, ghosts flying down from clever front-yard decorations… the myriad inventions to strike horror into their little minds is truly impressive.

But my vampire neighbor won’t have to deal with the nightmares that will wake up my little ones for the next month. One night will seemingly undo a full year of careful monitoring of their exposure to television and age-appropriate media.

Remember those home-made costumes?

My wife and I were up until midnight last night sewing a phoenix costume with felt plumage, old African cloth wings and feathers, and a shiny bauble necklace along the shoulders just to make it a bit more regal. Our younger one woke up thrilled to find his shiny purple king’s cape and felted crown.

With three hours of creative, fun handiwork we’ve entered and fed our children’s imagination world. These are fun costumes that will be part of their dress-up play for years, leading to new made-up worlds that don’t involve violence or fear.

We’ve also modeled a hands-on, creative style fun and participation. They’re learning that people don’t have to rely on some costume company to create an expression of their imaginations. We each have vast worlds within us waiting to burst forth, not be contained by some off-the-shelf convention.

Hey kids, add some sugar to that

By the end of the night, our kids will already have eaten more candy than they ought to in an entire year. Their teeth, bodies, stomachs, energy-levels go wildly out of whack, and we’ll spend the next few weeks battling over how much sugar they can eat before school.

I’m all for giving out treats, but why does something that is bad for them have to be a treat? And why do we choose to reinforce that message that chocolate bars and suckers are a treat? Each time I hand out a peanut butter cup I’m contributing to the corporate brainwashing that this packaged sugar rush is a treat. Instead of my $75 outlay for candy, I should charge Cadbury for advertising.

If you kids come to our house this year, they’ll have a choice of bouncy balls, pencils, tattoos, and glittering things. Not the home-baked or home-made wonders I’d truly like, but your dentist and nutritionist won’t be cursing me tomorrow and it’s atleast a message that a treat doesn’t have to be chocolate-coated.

It’s no treat for the Colombian Cocoa Farmers

Where does all that candy come from anyways? There’s not enough room here to fully rant about exploitation of developing nation farmers, but suffice to say that less than .1% of the money you forked out for tonight’s “treats” will make it to the pockets of the people who toiled to produce it.

If we must give out candy, why not pay a fair price and buy Fair Trade chocolate? Again, we have an opportunity to model responsible purchasing instead of showing them that we support a system that unfairly treats the people doing the real work to produce those “treats.”

A truly happy Halloween

By all means let’s go out and be crazy and creative and treat each other. Being ethical and healthy doesn’t mean being boring. Here are some ideas:

1. Create costumes that are fun and feed their imaginations, not terrorize them.
2. Model creativity by making costumes instead of just buying them.
3. Hand out treats that send a positive message – healthy, fair trade, toys, even home-made goodies for neighbor kids whose parents trust you.

That’s all from me. How do you handle Halloween?

. . . . . . .

Photo by Uriel 1998.