You know how Halloween used to be a perfectly innocent holiday until psychopaths started poisoning the candy? Scores of kids in the ’70s sick in the hospital because they ate mini Mars bars and Tootsie Rolls? Thousands of apples found with razor blades jammed inside? Remember how Halloween was ruined because of all the candy attacks?
None of that ever happened. It was just an urban legend started by a misguided and misinformed advice columnist who apparently hated Halloween.
For those of us who believe the stories, Halloween has become a strange time of year: we put out jack-o-lanterns and decorations, plan to give out candy, and eye our neighbors suspiciously. Are you going to try and poison my kid? Forget it; let’s take him to the fake trick-or-treat at the mall.
Or worse. The stupidest new “tradition” I’ve heard of is “trick-or-trunk”, where kids visit car trunks in a parking lot for candy. What memories this must inspire in upcoming generations.
What are we afraid of? How many kids have you ever heard of who were poisoned by Halloween candy? None. I can say that because there has never, ever been an incident of a child being poisoned this way.
According to Snopes, the Urban Legend debunking site, it started because a psychotic father killed his own child by poisoning his Pixie Stix with cyanide. (Honestly, as a father, I could barely bring myself to type those words.) It was not a random killing, and there is no evidence that any random killing has ever happened by way of Halloween candy.
That doesn’t stop (well-meaning) scare tactics, like this random warning I found on a “Halloween safety” site:
Check for any holes in candy or candy bars or partially open candies. Throw out baked goods that are homemade, unless you know the origin.
Sorry, but have you ever heard of someone actually finding a Halloween baked good with a hidden payload? You haven’t because — it’s worth repeating — it has never actually happened. Your kid is more likely to get hit by a car (an actual Halloween danger) than to be poisoned by a neighbor.
It was Ann Landers who popularized these ugly ideas. “Ann” (real name Esther Lederer), a harbinger of the era of political correctness and fundamentalism, repeatedly slandered Halloween in her (once popular) advice column:
In recent years, there have been reports of people with twisted minds putting razor blades and poison in taffy apples and Halloween candy.
Thanks, Ann, for trying to ruin what is undoubtedly the single best season and holiday of the year.
Note: we at Area51.Org would like to quietly celebrate this, our 100th post, and enjoy the fact that the 100th post happened on Halloween (without us planning it that way).
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November 3rd, 2007 at 2:33 am |
Although I agree with 97% of this blog post - I completely disagree with the comments in regards to Ann Landers. I grew up at the end of the Ann Landers / Dear Abby era and it was nice to grow up thinking that there were still people who actually gave a damn about how they behaved to neighbors and the public at large. Those two women were of the few that still believed in patience, respect and general caring - too bad more people weren’t raised on these ideals.