NOVEMBER 3RD, 1987: The fears of Halloween are not all associated with ghosts, ghouls and the supernatural, as this column from California by Declan Kiberd in 1987 explained.
‘DEAR PARENT”, read the letter which my five-year-old daughter brought home from school on Halloween. “We at Cottage Hospital share your concern for protecting the welfare of your child during the festivities. In the past we have offered to X-ray Halloween treats free of charge. Although the X-ray procedures do detect any metal objects in the candy, they are unable to detect any other adulteration such as glass, wood, thorns or chemicals. For the above reasons, we have decided to discontinue the X-raying of candy.”
I gasped in disbelief, and not for the first time that day. Earlier, two children, dressed as witches, but arriving on their broomsticks in broad daylight, had politely spurned our offer of homemade biscuits for their party. They had been instructed by their teachers to accept only factory-wrapped sweets and cakes. And they couldn’t take fruit either, since (as one precocious six-year-old solemnly told me), “They can have toxins put in them.” In the end, we offered money, and then rushed round to the comer shop to stock up on synthetic sweets for those juvenile ghosts who might yet call as darkness fell. Not many did.
In the old days, US children called this ritual “trick or treat”; and they threatened miserly adults with jocular penalties (like drenching from a bucket of water) if they failed to produce the requisite apples and nuts. But nowadays, it seems it is the children who run the risk of being tricked by sadistic or disturbed grown-ups.
The Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara advised all parents to “check all candies, discarding any from unknown manufacturers and to throw out all homemade offerings”. Moreover, it urged parents to accompany children on their rounds or, better still, to host their own home party. The expensive and vast array of adult-size costumes ($65 for a witch’s outfit, $75 for a luminous skeleton) testified to the large number of local parents willing to heed this admonition.
To the visitor, all this might seem like paranoia, but a rapid examination of the missing children posters at every supermarket noticeboard proves that such parental concern is well founded. Every month, numbers of children go missing, never to be heard of again.
The results are strange and sad. Children do not play spontaneous or informal games on the suburban streets. There is no hopscotch, no skipping, no touch-football. Instead, all games must be prearranged by phone calls between families.
Even a close neighbour will phone to check that it is in order for a child to bring over building blocks on a visit. Doubtless, such calls are made out of tactful consideration of other people’s privacy, but they indicate that the street outside the home is not seen as a suitable meeting place.
And no wonder. None of the streets in our leafy suburb has either footpaths or lighting. Many of the road surfaces are cracked, in stark contrast to the splendid private driveways which lead off them. Far from being a communal zone, the street in California is a raw, unloved strip of concrete, useful only for conveying persons from A to B, from one private experience to another – and always by car.
Whenever our family has tried walking for leisure through the neighbourhood, we are almost invariably stopped by friendly motorists, concerned that we may be in some kind of difficulty and in need of help. Clearly, streets are designed only for joggers or fast cars.
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