Please don't ruin Halloween.

Halloween is almost upon us.

Like a horde of bats upon a mosquito infested swamp.

A glorious time! A time to celebrate the grotesque, the macabre, and the sluttyness of the female costume, while small children make cocaine-esque lines with pixie stix and slip into a diabetic coma.

Yes... let the sugar flow through you...

As a child, Halloween was a magical time. Dressing up in a fantastical costume, parading from house to house to knock on strange doors and receive candy! The idea is just so absurd, so mind-blowingly awesome! Why would anyone change such a perfect concept?

But the changes have been coming, slowly at first, yet they seem to have gained momentum. And now, with a fresh crop of overly concerned and protective parents beginning to usher their offspring through their formative years, many of the things that made Halloween so great are in danger of being wiped completely out.

So now I'm asking, begging even...

Parents, when you make that special fall trip to the pumpkin patch, (or Wal-Mart's $5 bin), to bring home that delightful orange gourd, don't paint it up like a garish whore.

Admit it, this ^ is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of jack o' lanterns, not that^.
(And is it just me, or does that painted pumpkin look like a nutsack?)

No, you carve that shit into a jagged face while your children roll up their sleeves to scoop out it's stringy guts. The youngest can pick out the seeds to bake for later. This will get them used to the idea of gutting a carcass when the apocalypse comes and we must all begin hunting possum and feral cats to survive.

That's right, reach right down in there and rip out it's stringy heart.

Also, teach your children respect by respecting the calendar. Too many localities have taken up the practice of moving Halloween trick or treating to whatever day suits them. Halloween is on a weekday this year? Too damn bad. No you cannot move it to the Saturday before!
LIFE DOES NOT ACCOMMODATE! You deal with it as it comes!

I first encountered this disturbing practice while living in rural northwest Georgia.
Halloween fell on a Wednesday that year, so the town elders, already drunk with power from banning alcohol and over-regulating dance halls, decided that trick or treating should be conducted on the last Saturday of the month.

Your satanic calendar means nothing to me!

I wasn't home that weekend, (because I'm still in my twenties and obligated to get my Halloween party on), but on October 31st our house lights were on and a large bowl of candy sat ready by the door in anticipation of the hordes of children who would surely be stopping by.
Know how many trick or treaters I had?

One.

One small girl vaguely resembling a vampire knocked on my door around 8:00pm.

I dumped the entire bowl into her bag.

While we're at it here, can we also please agree that the abomination of Trunk or Treating must be destroyed? Or at the very least, be only an additional accompaniment to real trick or treating but not the whole thing?

Also, you're promoting the idea that good things come out of the car trunks of strangers.
Does no one see how disturbing and weird that is?

Part of the fun of Halloween was exploring your neighborhood after dark, transformed as it was by ghostly decorations and jack o' lanterns. Innocently waving hello to other groups of kids while plotting to ambush them later with silly string...

Heh heh...

It was different, fun, and exciting!

Now kids are just trudging along in a parking lot at 2:00pm, mindlessly holding out their pillow cases as various moms deposit fun sized tootsie rolls into their bags.

What has become of us?

Such an activity is only about one step up from going to the grocery store and buying a bag of Kit Kats, which is something that clinically depressed people do.

Yay.

The value of trick or treating in a neighborhood cannot be discounted. It's like a mock-up of the hunting and gathering skills we'll eventually need to survive the crushing rule of our ape overlords. And as kids get older, they begin to understand the benefits of strategy. Working together as a group to pool their resources and knowledge about which houses give out the full sized Snickers and which give out religious pamphlets.

But seriously parents, please, please, please help bring back Halloween as our parents remembered it. Quit wringing your hands and fretting about the "danger". Let your kids have this one night. Get out there with them and ring some door bells, carve some pumpkins, and make some memories.

Happy Halloween, everyone!