WHAT’S THE POINT?
Goblins, ghouls and ghosts — today, the children of America become fascinated with the occult, the scary and the chocolaty. What was a pagan festival to honor the dead and remember one’s past family members, has been overtaken by Nestle, Mars and children’s costumes manufacturers.
Halloween precedes All Hallow’s Day, which was created by Pope Boniface IV in the 600s to honor saints and martyrs. The origins go even further back though, thanks to the Celts, who celebrated the last day of their year on Oct. 31, calling it “Samhain.” It was a date that allowed the “curtain” between the realms of the living and the dead to be at its thinnest, and that allowed the spirits to spend the night visiting the world of the living and to find bodies to possess. It is thought that the custom of wearing a costume began here to avoid being recognized by the spirits.
It was the medieval Christians who took the pagan celebration and made it a church-sanctioned holiday — All Hallow’s Day. When the church turned Nov. 2 into All Souls Day to honor the dead, the poor in Europe would go door to door and promise to pray from the dead, in exchange for “soul cakes,” which is the forerunner to trick-or-treating today.
Somewhere along the line, thanks to scary movies, candy marketers and novelty sellers, the purpose of the day was lost and has become a holiday of sugar, faux fear and parental obsession with razor blades in candy bars (Did that actually ever happen to anyone?). The fear of tricks being pulled on homes that had bad candy, or no candy at all, was more the stuff of angry teenage boys who use the day as an excuse to toilet-paper someone’s house, throw eggs and other assorted mischief.
This of course, was in the days long before children took guns to school and con-gressmen diddled with pages. These days, the biggest fear that parents should be aware of is not the highly unlikely situation of their children being in a costume that burns, but rather end up obese and with diabetes.
According to the American Obesity Association web site, the incidence of childhood obesity has more than doubled since 1980. Almost 30 years ago, the incidence of childhood obesity — that is, a body mass index over 30 — was only 7.1 percent of the population of 6-to 11-year-olds. Today, that has increased to 15.3 percent of the same population. One in seven children under the age of 12 are obese.
There are several reasons for this, the cutback on school budgets that has diminished after-school and in-school physical education and athletic programs. The growth of video games, computers and the parental fear of all things outside the home has certainly led to children who have become increasingly sedentary, which is a direct precursor to the increase in weight.
Today’s obese children become tomorrow’s invalids. The obese children today will have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, and that will be the first time in centuries that life expectancy is going down. It is all a direct result of too much indulgence in a chocolaty thing, and not enough in a good thing like getting outside and hitting a ball with a bat, or running in a field with a soccer ball.
When I was a kid, granted that was decades ago and in a totally different world, my mother and father would tell me to go outside and ride a bike, hit a ball or mow the lawn. This was when I was 7, 10 and 14. I can remember getting out of the car four blocks from home, and racing my mom home as she drove and I ran. Yes, I won, and yes, she let me, but at least I was doing something physical.
Parents have good reason to be concerned these days about children’s safety, between guns at school, drugs at school and the insane way that people drive their SUVs these days. I understand that with over 11,250 registered sex offenders in the county of Los Angeles, a parent may be scared to let their children run about freely. Frankly, I was shocked when I went looking on meganslaw.ca.gov at how many there are in the city of Santa Monica.
It is sad that there is still one more thing we have to add to the list. It’s not the razor blades in the candy bars or the pins in the candy apples, but the candy itself has become dangerous. Not because the candy itself is poisoned or toxic, but rather they way in which it is not offset by great physical activity.
There has been a marked uptick in children with ADHD, obesity, pre-diabetes, kidney disease and hypertension. Personally, I think it is not due to some genetic mutation that has occurred in our children, but rather in our society as a whole that has become too sedentary and too scared to go out our front door and see the world. Kids that are called hyperactive today used to be sent out to hit a ball, kick a can or paint a fence. Much of what passes today for ‘ADHD’ and hyperactive is what, in my childhood, was called ‘high spirited.’ Those kids were given a football and told to not come home till it was dark out.
It’s a funny thing, but as a kid we would get home from school, have cookies and go away until the sun set. After an afternoon of creek walking, fence climbing and baseball, we were no longer so ‘high spirited.’
The scariest thing this Halloween is not likely to be any child in a costume, but rather the damage we do to our future by not allowing them to burn off that sugar high.
David Pisarra is a partner in the Santa Monica law firm of Pisarra & Grist. He (310) 664-9969 or at
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 31, 2006. Read the original PDF.