Caramel Apple Pie Recipe
4 days ago
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
TNT
Trunk o Treat - I would like some feed back on this one. Trick o Treating has gone on for who knows how long. I am sure someone will look it up and let me know in comments. Here we go kids hang on. So this year’s trunk o treat left me with some mixed feelings. Usually, I am all for the lazy way to trick o treat. Go to a parking lot and BAM! 30 min later the kid is loaded up and good to go. Last night as I sat pondering what I was doing on the tailgate of our lovely Durango I realized that this had become a tradition that may be sending a mixed message. First of all trunk o treating is usually for the Mormon families. Although, everyone is invited, and if nonmembers show up they will not be asked to leave. However, I didn't invite a nonmember. I wasn't assigned to pass out flyers. Thus, this could portray exclusion to the community. Second, there are those that do not have the ability to attend a trunk o treat event. I am speaking of the elderly, sick and disabled; those who may really enjoy, and look forward to the kids coming around each year. Now our trunk o treating was the day before Halloween, and I'm sure the intent was to provide kids the opportunity to trick o treat traditionally. However, why not just eliminate the trunk o treat and go back to the traditional way? Why do we need to have a separate night for trunk o treating? Was it for safety? I do recall a few years ago a scare that people were poisoning candy. I am sure we have all heard of the razorblade in the apple. After careful review of my son's candy I noticed it was all in a sealed package and store bought. So do we really need to substitute trick o treating?
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2 comments:
Truley a delemia!
From K.
Halloween, I have to admit, is not my favorite holiday. If it was removed from the calendar all together, I would raise no objection. After all, we don’t get work off for it anyway.
That said, Halloween does have a few redeeming qualities. As a dad I probably enjoyed Halloween more this year then ever before. I enjoyed going house to house with my little girl.
Every U.S. holiday has a certain amount of tradition associated with it. For Easter we have an Easter egg hunt, at Christmas we read the nativity, on the 4th of July its fireworks, for valentines confessions of affection, etc. In this context tradition serves two useful functions. First, it provides a default set of celebratory activities for individuals and families. By keeping with the cultural traditions people can feel like they have “celebrated” and done the day of observance its justice; thus enabling individuals to give an acceptable response when asked on the following work day “how was your holiday.”
Cultural traditions create holiday value for individuals by adding to the romance associated with the respective holiday. Just as a full-page, color advertisement for a particularly good brand of wine conjures up images of rows of sun-ripened morsel being picked and loaded into large vats by third generation family labors, a holiday with its attendant traditions has a certain amount of romanticism.
Our friends across the pond have, in addition to historic and event specific holidays, bank holidays. Now, I am not opposed to bank holidays. On the contrary, I find it admirable that a whole country can shut down commerce for entire day by simply declaring the day a
"bank holiday." Doing so displays an admirable level of candor and assertiveness. Imagine, however, if all of our holidays were replaced with bank holidays. Lets say for the purpose of maintaining an indiscriminate and unoffensive society that all of our current holidays (such as the many religious based holidays) were changed to bank holidays and the dates evenly distributed throughout the year. I think even a non-religious, unpatriotic, single person, without father or mother, that couldn’t care less about ocean blue in 1492 or the courage of Dr. King would still admit that something has been lost by our conversion to indiscriminate bank holidays. Accordingly, we should be careful about supporting society wide changes to traditional holiday celebration.
Second, tradition serves a useful communal organization function. Imagine the work that would be required of not only individuals but communities if holidays celebration activities had to be cut from whole cloth for each holiday each year. Imagine trying to get all of your neighbors to hang lights from the eaves of their roof for Memorial Day. The communal organization function of holiday tradition goes so far as to allow for the legal sale of dangerous explosives during a short window of time surrounding our nation’s birthday. Its as if these explosive devices, which apparently require regulation due to their inherent danger, become less dangerous between June 20th and July 5th. Yes, holiday tradition facilitates, mountains of mums, stands of fireworks, buckets of candy, freezers of turkeys and cakes of fruit.
In the name of holiday tradition then, let us not allow the trick-or-treat experience of our youth give way to the innovation of trunk R treat. Traditional trick-or-treat has several virtues that trunk R treat will never have. In addition to those enumerated by this blogs author, trick-or-treat gives parent and child the opportunity to explore the neighborhood in a systematic fashion one door at a time. Parent and child grow closer as a parent shepherds the child along providing protection from neighborhood dogs and particularly frightening lawn decorations. Youth learn a modicum of work ethic as they traverse each side walk and threaten home occupants with the age old "trick or treat." Mothers build relationships as they compliment each other on the cuteness or cleverness of children’s costumes and fathers on appearance of their landscape or recent home improvement project. On Halloween every individual that has a porch light and a plastic pumpkin of penny candy has also got a visitor.
So I am for traditional trick-or-treat. And to all my trunk decorating friends, my I offer you a box of wine produce from the best mechanically picked, herbicide treated, and genetically engineered grapes that Arizona has to offer.
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