Book: Aging Beyond Belief by Don Ardell

If you plan to age, prepare yourself — it's later than you think. The challenge of aging well should be taken seriously, but not grimly! Whatever your age, it's never too soon, or too late, to learn and apply the fine art of aging well, really well. Discover what aspects of aging can't be changed and improve the rest that can. Mold your own realities with REAL wellness, Ardell-style.

The 69 tips — one for each year of the author's life — are thought-provoking, challenging, eye-opening, manageable and fun to read. And all provide practical guidance for intelligently designing your own life-style evolution.
Learn more

Don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.
Read Don's blog!

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

A Wellness Perspective on Halloween

Thursday October 31, 2002

Well, tonight's the night, the time when little kids dress up in varied garb and walk around the neighborhood gathering free candy. It's also the night when big kids, AKA "adults," dress up and go to parties where they gather a few laughs and maybe some libations and tasty treats. Sounds like innocent fun, and it is, for the most part. Taken at this level, Halloween is harmless enough and conducive to good times and memories for young and not young, alike. Alas, Halloween night is not quite what it was when most of us were little, and it's not at all how it was when today's seniors were kids.

Are you aware of the history of Halloween, how it got going and why some groups are not at all happy about it? It's a long story, with more sub-plots than you probably care to know with all sorts of weird religious overtones. I know because I've been reading up on it. This is one holiday that has spawned a thousand urban legends.

Some people don't want you OR your kids to celebrate or even acknowledge Halloween, except as some kind of festival suitable only for Satan and secular humanists. Well, Druids, witches and assorted neo-pagans are often mentioned, as well, by religious fanatics who want to control your choices along with Republican politics. In any event, this kind of contemporary tension over Halloween surely contrasts to the 40's and 50's when I would dress up as a cowboy, a fireman, my daddy or something else not requiring a costume costing more than a dollar at the Five and Dime Store. Yes, as one eligible for senior citizen discounts, I can't recall the adults of my youth being much concerned about such things as child kidnappings, blood drinking orgies, animal mutilation, poisoned M&Ms or booby-trapped grocery bags that some groups are obsessing about this year. They worried about whether we would eat so much candy that we'd be too sick to go to school in the morning. In fact, as a child, I did not even have to worry about getting stiffed with fruit or, even worse, being given a guilt-trip about collecting nickels for UNICEF instead of candies for me. Ah, the good old days.

If I were a kid again just for tonight, I think I'd dress up to look like a member of one of the groups Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell deemed responsible for 9/11 -- you know, a feminist, a gay, a lesbian, a pagan or a member of the A.C.L.U.-- and go trick or treating wherever those whackos live! Wouldn't that give a good scare to these two pathetic, demon-obsessed, xenophobes?

Oh well, Halloween can and should be a happy time, so let's not give much thought to the weirdos and instead dress up or down, as we please, use common sense, be cautious with the kiddies and have a good time. Just make sure that all the kids who are brought into your house for treats pass through your home metal and explosives detector.

Look on the bright side. Happy Halloween.

Domain: purpose
Subdomain: play

Search other reports in the Don Ardell report archive.

	Custom Search