I really like candy and dress-up but dislike what Halloween has become. I can only imagine what it must be like for parents of Toddlers to navigate stores. Some of the displays are disgusting.

Please don't tell me about your cute Nephew who just loves the gory stuff, that will only make me sadder. LOL

I loved Halloween as a kid ( it really was not as gruesome then) and I really, really loved all the candy.

But now I have a problem with handing out candy wholesale to a nation of emerging diabetic Kids.
When you add to that all the bags of candy that were bought "for the Kids" and consumed (by adults who, as a group, are also struggling with their weight) before Halloween it is disheartening.

Door to door taking candy from strangers was always a little odd. Now I'm a curmudgeon and don't like opening my door to whomever rings the bell in a mask and believe me they aren't all little kids at dusk.
I've stopped giving candy on Halloween even when I'm not working that night.

Driving to Parties on Halloween Night is enough fright for me. It's like a super cute obstacle course with horrific imagined consequence for failure.

I still like the harvest aspects of a fall Holiday and dress-up and some candy and such but it seems like all our celebrations have been put on overdrive. I don't have a problem with some human reaction to seeing Summer plants die and the cold darkness gathering for Winter. There is a real sense of morning at Summers passage into Fall. A party can address that and cheer some of the depression that creeps in at that time of year.

Bottom line I'm not for outlawing anything but a little pull back from the gruesome aspects that have gotten way out of hand and a little more common sense about the candy would help a lot.
I don't want to take Halloween away. I'd just like it to be a little better for us.

I'd rather have my Tricks be the Treat.

-Mary Mowder

Yeah Halloween was a great thing until it became second on the list of holidays money is spent on.
Money, is there anything it can't ruin?

Sorry to break it to you , but Halloween has always been for the spooky and gruesome.

You do realize what the origins of Halloween are don't you? It's not a Fall Harvest festival.

Let the kids be kids. Your constant campaign againts kids having candy is sad to me.

Oh, BTW

My children think the Halloween store is pretty entertaining.

You see, I've taught them the difference between fantasy and reality.

Good thing about Halloween and Halloween stores?

They are optional.

That was a real downer. There can be a dark side to everything. Enjoy life.

I see more and more teenagers in hoodies going trick-or-treating. What kind of costume is that? At least make a modicum of effort.

There's a web animation called 'Foamy the Squirrl' Foamy would rant about anything and everything. He did two on Halloween, his biggest complaint was about the kids in the hoodies;

FOAMY; What are you supposed to be.
KID; I'm a hard core rapper. Give me some candy.
FOAMY; Come back with a real costume.

I worked my first real haunted house at 15. It was kind of gory. We had a bubonic plague room and a biological warfare room. We never thought anything of it. I did have to tone down one vignette I designed about 10 years later, but that was it.

Donnie Darko costume?

I have no problem with a celebration of death or of the dead but I don't want to see facsimiles of desiccated human remains as a decoration. A clean scull or a skeleton or ghost ? O.K., but blood shot eyeballs in the skulls shouldn't be part of the public landscape.

Lots of Kids go to the Halloween store to get a costume and there is not enough sensitivity in the arrangement of displays.
There is some separation of the most horrific but it should be possible to avoid really disturbing displays on your way to the Kiddie section and it is not always possible.

Also, I'm not really talking about Halloween stores. I'm talking about other stores and yards etc... Halloween is not really optional. These abattoir like displays can pop up anywhere.

It is hard to teach little kids about fantasy when they don't "get" reality yet.

I don't mind Kids getting candy. It is the amount and constance of candy and cupcakes for about half of October, not just one night. We need to cut it back a notch. We have a national health problem.

I have no problem with a haunted house if people have some warning of age appropriateness.

Mary Mowder

The majority of the younger kids are still princesses and TV show characters in my area.

I know that food police/food Brown shirts are screwing things up, hopefully they don't spread to our holidays.

The bigger problem is having Daylight Savings Time moved back an hour the week before Halloween. This the biggest concern for children.

Teenagers make an effort common when's that going to happen?

Little zombies eating gummy worm candy... that's what its all about!

When we were kids, it wasnt us being horrified by unspeakably spooky yard decorations and stuff that was the concern... No it was the kind people behind the doors handing out the candy, that didn't know what was coming when we would show up! I remember my best buddy at that time got dragged into a house by his arm followed by a door slam. And there I was on the porch hearing the lady practically screaming "I'm holding you right here while I call the police"! Of course that didn't quite work out the way she thought it would, my friend came bursting out cracking up and we ran down the street laughing... What caused her to grab him and pull him inside??? All we were doing was scraping all the candy from the bowls into our giant sized pillow cases! Sheesh, what a grouch!

Re: Candy and food police. The issue in my opinion is not candy, but the sugar (high fructose corn syrup) that is in virtually everything else we eat.

I ran into a convenience store and grabbed a bottle that was very clearly labeled "100% grapefruit juice". Halfway through drinking it I saw that the label said "100%" in very large letters, with very small letters that said "daily allowance of vitamin C", followed again by large letters that said "Grapefruit Juice". It was clearly an intentional deception and got by me, an avid label reader. As soon as food companies stop intentionally misleading the consumer I am all in favor of the food police stepping down.

Re: Horror. I am a huge fan of well executed horror, and the best horror doesn't rely on blood and gore. My late wife and I visited a haunted house produced by The Freakling Brothers ( http://www.freaklingbros.com/ ) and it was scary beyond belief using very little blood and gore. In fact, they incorporated quite a bit of psychology and illusion in the show. It was terrifying.

I saw this trailer on television a few nights ago and it is, in my opinion, an example of something truly chilling with absolutely no gore:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJjkDFFduGA

Once the food police/Brown Shirts have power, they won't step down, they step up for more power.

Go into a restaurant and ask for a Coke. If they have Pepsi instead they will ask if that is okay.

Ask for juice. They will happily bring you corn syrup and food coloring without saying a word.

All I ask for is honesty. Without that how does the consumer make an informed choice?

LOL! Honesty? Try finding apple juice made in the USA. Now there is something FUBAR about that.

? local farms, and one in CT I visit to enjoy the drive.

Getting back to 10/31... the color orange and some black. A minor acknowledgment of the cycle of life through the seasons.

We took our three-and-a-half year old to the Halloween store a few weeks back. Mommy warned him he'd see scary stuff and it was okay if he closed his eyes till we got to the children's costumes. His reply- "That's okay, I can look. I'm very brave." Shortly afterwards, my wife was able to post a video to Facebook of him walking up to Michael Meyers (of the Halloween movie fame) and stepping on his foot to activate the animatronic statue's movement and music.

Yeah, no fear.

Sorry, I guess that's enjoying gore. But we've always told him monsters are just pretend, and the zombies and stuff are just plastic with motors. So he knows it's not real. He did stay away from some of the scarier looking stuff in there. (He's braver than my wife. She hates masks and that sort of stuff.)

Ps- he's dressing up as iron man this year. Except in pre-school, which doesn't allow superheroes or violent costumes. For that, he's going to be Lightning McQueen.

I second the local farms. I have gone to Green Bluff (the huge farming town adjacent to Spokane) countless times and bought fresh apple juice and cider from the farmers. They also do hayrides where you stop to pick your own apples off of the trees.
Lately I've just been making my own apple juice in the juicer though.