Andrew S. Bledsoe

"Trunk-or-treat" is one of the absolute worst tragedies to befall our culture. Do not, under any circumstances, bring your children to a "trunk-or-treat". The practice, by which a group of parents organize to give out Halloween candy from the trunks of their vehicles in close proximity is sometimes regarded as a safer alternative to trick-or-treating, while other parents see it as an easier alternative to walking the neighborhood with their children. God forbid! I cannot stress this enough: this is anathema to everything good about Halloween, America, Europe, Western civilization, and the entire history thereof. This, like so much of our modern culture, is a crushing force that seeks to steamroll everything into a safe, amorphous, corporate-approved blob that lacks any semblance of truth, beauty, history, identity, or tradition. We know that Halloween was historically an old Celtic pagan fire festival to mark the start of winter (forgive the oversimplification, it's just Twitter). In Scotland, Ireland, Britain et. al., from where so many of our good old traditions hail, one could expect masked youngsters impersonating mischievous spirits to throw one's plough or cart into a nasty soggy ditch or lead your horse into a neighbor’s field. There was no appeasing these mischievous ghouls back then! It was chaos! Luckily today, since about 1920 when "guising" was introduced by Irish and Scottish immigrants in Massachusetts, we can bribe the goblins with some sweets and send them on their way. And that's just it; it's a night when children have a sense of agency and control! We adults are at their joyfully mischievous mercy! If you do not pay the sweet tithe to the fairies and ghouls, your home may well fall victim to a nasty trick (toilet paper, anyone?). This is how it should be! Halloween should not be some staid and sanitized safe little polite jaunt about the park from car trunk to car trunk; it should be a night where children run rampant, threatening to egg houses and burn the village down to the very stones if their ravenous hunger is not appeased! That is good and just and right! Please, for the sake of tradition, history, and beauty, send your children trick-or-treating from house to house. Have them knock on doors. Encourage mischief and risk and joy. They only get a brief window when this is possible. They only get one childhood.