Halloween and why we don't bother

An old friend of my mother's from college recently lambasted our family's choice to not celebrate Halloween.

What business it is of his remains a mystery, but I'm never one to shy away from answering the hard questions.

So here's why we've always found something else to do come Oct. 31.

1. It poses a conflict for us from a religious standpoint. As followers of the Bible (yeah, yeah, that pesky old tome responsible for the death of more "fun" than anything else in the world), we take seriously the observation that Christians are the children of light and not of the darkness. Halloween has morphed into the darkest of traditions -- death imagery takes up far more space in the costume aisles of Walmart and the front law decor of my neighbors than do the bats, pumpkins, and smiling witches on broomsticks of yore.

2. It poses a conflict for us from a dental hygiene standpoint. We have crappy dental insurance and usually have to pay out of pocket for our kids to receive good care. Most of the candy they'd get going door to door is junk -- not even the good stuff like Hershey bars -- and I don't want them going into corn syrup/artificial coloring/artificial flavoring overload, nor do I want the cavities from the Skittle or gummy bear that got missed by the dental floss.

3. It poses a conflict for us from a financial standpoint. Why do I want to buy candy for a bunch of kids I don't know and who probably don't even live in my neighborhood?

4. It poses a problem for us from a personal safety standpoint. My husband and I are old enough to remember the infamous case in Pasadena, TX back in the 1970s when a guy who came to be known as the "Man Who Killed Halloween" substituted cyanide power (rat poison) for powdered candy in a Pixie Stix and killed his little boy to inherit a life insurance payout. Ronald O'Bryan was eventually executed for the crime, but not before putting a damper on the holiday that lasted well beyond my highschool years. Now some 35 years later, the internet has given rise to even more ghoulish, depraved and dangerous ideas. Who knows who knows what or wants to try it out on little kids going door to door for candy? It's a risk I'm just not willing to take.

So, my mom's friend thinks we're raising our kids in a bubble, unequipped and uneducated enough to deal with the "real world." Somehow, he transitioned his Halloween gripe into a scathing (albeit ignorant) attack on homeschooling in general, but I won't bore you with that nonsense here.

Suffice to say, for anyone worried about whether my children know a ghost from a vampire, a trick from a treat, a tombstone from a flagstone, let me put your worried minds at ease. They do, and they don't care. And my heart sings to know that this little slice of cultural crap registers as merely a blip on their radar screens right alongside Hannah Montana and High School Musical.

May it always be thus.