Lament for Halloween*

You've got to be my age or older, and you have to have been born in a small town to know what I'm talking about, but it went like this. Young, unmarried males would get themselves decked out in dark clothes, wander around town in gangs, and pull all kinds of pranks. When I was a boy, we'd wake up on November 1 to find all sorts of junk out in the streets--even farm implements, far from home.

Once upon a time--if I remember the stories--outhouses would be tipped or else moved artfully, so that those who used them would find themselves in an unfriendly morass when they went out to attend what had to be attended to. The myth I remember best is of the cagey homeowner who got ahead of the game and moved his outhouse aside before the bedlam began, so the pranksters suddenly found themselves knee deep in horror.

Teachers often caught it, their houses egged or tomato-ed. I remember soaping windows, lots of them--houses and cars. Later, come daylight, toilet paper streamers waved lazily from front-yard trees.

The whole madness could get out of control--fires set hither and yon, and all kinds of junk hauled out into the streets. When I was a kid, we'd "can cars," a hilarious little prank created by garbage can covers tied to fishing line strung across town streets. Some driver would snag the line and haul banging covers around until he realized he was the one making all the blasted noise.

When I was kid roaming gangs would do what they could to upset ordinary life on Halloween, some of it in fun, some not. It was all part of the evening, a ritual night of upside-down madness, good boys turned delinquent. On that night all bets were off, madness reigned.

There were trick-or-treaters, too, of course, but they were well off the streets by the time the bedlam began. And they meant it--trick or treat.

Today, sweet costumed kids go out duly chaperoned at dusk and still say "trick or treat," even though no one gets their windows soaped or garbage dumped. Maybe the last vestige of all true Halloween madness was smashed pumpkins; no more candle-lit jack-o-lanterns smiling from front porches.

Halloween has been domesticated, which is nice, I'm sure, from the town fathers' point of view, even though, years ago, the town fathers were the guys skulking around in black. Old Halloween, delightfully sinful, is gone. The night belongs to store-bought costumes and a miniature Snickers bars.

Here where I live, church groups run a sweet program that gathers kids in from and rewards their righteousness with candy in a celebration that, once upon time, at least according to some, was thought to be demonic--and, in a delinquent kind of way, was.

I for one can't help being a little wistful. Halloween is sanitized.

Once upon a time October 31 was a naughty Fat Tuesday, a night of lawlessness, pranks and punishments and dirty tricks, during which the law and the church--the authorities in small towns--went equally powerless. But then, with the dawn, once again, righteousness held sway. Halloween once meant tipped outhouses, broken eggs and smashed tomatoes, a hay wagon dragged mysteriously onto Main Street.

Today, the holiday belongs to Wal-Mart.

Woe and woe and woe.