Trick Or Treat

I like Halloween. It’s fun. Or maybe it’s scary. Or maybe its just a cool holiday where you can do what you want. No rules. As a kid I loved running around my neighborhood at night and coming back with a bag full of candy. I have a friend who’s a grandma and her son’s collect “Daddy Tax” on all the candy brought in the house by her grandkids. Smart guys. My parents never did that. It was a kid’s holiday. Now it seems like adults like to get in on the action too and every business, small and large. Everyone seems to have a different take on this holiday. I’m not sure anyone really knows its purpose anymore or even that it matters whether it has a purpose. As Jews we either just “do it” (cause everyone else is), sort of do it (hand out candy and wish we were doing it) or ignore it (shut off the lights and be known as “those people who don’t do Halloween”). 

That about sums it up.

From a Jewish perspective, there are a few things inherently wrong with this holiday: 1) It's origins are just way far away from our mission d'etre. We do one G-d. Not a bunch of creepy, freaky ones. 2) We are NOT supposed to scare people. We can stone them to death (calm down, not anymore). We’re just not supposed to scare them. 2) We don’t do ghosts and creepy things. Not happening. No witchcraft. No wizardry and No goblins. It’s in the Torah. Big fat NO.

We try to tell our kids that they get candy on Succoth (the holiday where we hang out in hut and go hut hopping), but it doesn’t really help during Halloween. So what’s the big deal with running around collecting candy? Probably not much except your kids may grow up to be a goblin or something.

Here are the upsides though. People are generally happy and not all that scary. People love to dress up. There is a lot of candy on sale. But best of all, I get to dump all the junk I don’t want in my house into my neighbor’s houses including the stuff I picked up from the 4^th of July parade. The kids don’t mind and I find it refreshing. I like to think of it as cleaning house. I can’t think of a better reason to celebrate. Got to go. My husband just texted me: “Do you have the candy to hand out tonight?” Seems like someone is planning to get scared... or just be scary (even though he is adamantly opposed to this holiday). He doesn't really have to even dress up. His black clothing makes most people think we celebrate this holiday year round.