Ban Halloween!

How long will it be before a government bent on domination of personal behavior and convinced of the need to protect us from our inability to make good choices for ourselves or our children, ends Halloween as a detriment to public health? How long before the religious implications of the holiday (both Christian and pagan) force this holiday off of school calendars and city observances? How long will the government permit the handing out out high sugar treats to our obese young people as a reward for already tragically bad behavior? 

Far-fetched you say. Well, last year Belleville, IL banned trick or treating for teenagers, apparently to protect residents from these unruly youth. The New York City education department has recently passed a school regulation banning fund raising through bake sales for such sugary treats as cupcakes in order to protect our obese children from the temptation to indulge in such calorically challenging goods. Mayor Bloomberg and his health commissioner Thomas Freiden have separately called for a tax on soda with sugar in it. The Ft Worth Independent School District banned Halloween costumes at football games played that weekend. Dunkard Township in Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh) has in fact banned Trick or Treating completely, choosing instead to hold a party at a local fire station. 

Now for those of you thinking that we don't need to ban the holiday, but only the type of treats passed out, think again. Justify this conclusion based on the concept that popcorn balls, apples, or fruits and vegetables of some kind might substitute for these sweet treats if you can; but keep in mind the X-ray machines operating in hospitals on Halloween to insure a lack of metal in the goody bags. Watch as parents throw away anything that children bring home that is not hermetically enclosed in its original factory-sealed wrapper. 

No, unless we are talking about the limited selection of pre-packed and dried foods (yeah, I got those little boxes of raisins when I was a kid too), there is little to qualify in this regard. Besides, think of the economic impact to candy companies that could well be considered "too big to fail". You know come to think of it, the only advantage that I can see to this holiday in the eyes of an increasingly intrusive progressive government is that it rewards the behavior of public dependency, better known as begging (something that it increasingly appears that they support). 

The only up side to Halloween behavior is that people (well young people anyway) are trained by this holiday to demand a reward for no other reason than looking like something other than themselves under threat of dire consequences if such reward is not delivered. As for those of an opposite political view, the practice of Halloween Trick or Treating might be viewed by those on the political right as a continuing reinforcement of a system of government behavior modification, intent on creating a dependent society. 

While they may have something on the whole government dependency part, I'm not sure that Halloween is as guilty as a national legislature that sees the continuance of its own privilege being dependent on the handing out of 'treats' to the voting public year round (and without the costumes). Either way you look at it however, the behavior of young people dressing in costume and parading around neighborhood streets in search of mischief or chocolate confections one night a year seems doomed. 

No matter which point of view you take on the subject or where you stand in the political spectrum, it seems that whoever is in control will eventually have to ban Halloween as an abhorrent practice. (If the arguments presented here do not convince government to close down this despicable practice, perhaps the picture above certainly should.)