Relax, Halloween can be wholesome and fun!

Today is one of those days that can bring people together and also rip them apart. I personally find Halloween to be a great tradition in our country that provides kids an opportunity to have fun and live a little beyond their norm. I have very fond memories of Halloween and the various characters I was through the years. I do think that my favorite of all time was when my brothers and I were the California Raisins complete with insturments. Our mom went to great lengths to provide us with creative and cheap costumes that were outside of the traditional vein. The most memorable Halloween of all time though took place in the early nineties and will live in infamy among all those who were living in the Upper Midwest at the time. We received the snow storm of the century that night and the entire tri-state area (SD, ND, and MN) was blanket with feet of snow. Schools were canceled for the next day and kids could not have been happier. What is better than spending a night collecting free candy and causing mischief than having the next day off of school! I will never forget hiking through knee deep snow at the high school to get to another group of houses. I was about halfway through one of the practice fields when I decided to hunker down for a break and eat some of the booty I had already obtained from gracious residents of Yankton, SD. Everyone's costumes that year were transformed into Arctic Explorers or Eskimos.

One of the best things about Halloween for me was having two older brothers. We would always get home from trick-or-treating and dump all of our candy out on the floor. I liked to separate all of my candy into groups (candy bars, sugar candy, suckers, garbage). After dividing my wares into piles the trading would begin. The bartering and swapping would last for what seemed like an hour before we finally were told that we needed to go to bed. In addition to dividing and swapping, there was the inevitable toll that we had to pay to our parents. They would always request a few pieces here and there and it was never those nasty black and orange wrapped candy that everyone hated. It had to be the Crunch bars or the Milky Ways. Well I am in that position now where I need to, "make sure the candy is safe" before my kids can eat too much of it. I would hate for them to get sick!

Whatever you believe about the origins and background of Halloween needs to be placed into a little wholesome perspective. It does not matter what the tradition, event, or holiday is there will be people who will openly criticize and critique the quality of it for all people. We have gone from having Halloween and Christmas parties to "Fall Fests" and "Winter Celebrations." Halloween, in large part, is not about the demonic and ghostly traditions that radicals would like to make it out to be. It is about friends and family spending some quality time together. It is about letting loose with your kids and getting dressed up for one day of the year where you can be goofy. The vast majority of our population is afraid to get on a stage and act out a role in a play, but will dress up for one night to "play" someone they are not the other 364 days of the year. Where is the harm in that? Where is the harm in my buddy getting dressed up as an old lady and going to a party where no one knows who he is for the entire night? People need to simply calm down, relax, and enjoy the wholesome fun that can be had on this last day of October. If it makes you feel better to call it something other than Halloween you go right ahead, but that does not change the fun that you can have on a crazy night like tonight.