HALLOWEEN: How it began and precautions.                                         

Halloween or Hallowe'en (a contraction of Hallows' Evening),^[also known as Allhalloween All Hallows' Eve or All Saints' Eve, is a celebration observed in a number of countries on the 31^st of October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It begins the three-day observance of Allhallowtide which is  the time in  the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed souls.

Until today, I didn’t know that this is why Halloween is celebrated in so many countries. I have always believed that it is the night when we got dressed up in weird costumes and threaten home -owners for candy. Well it is really is the night we as kids got dressed up.  That includes a great many adults also who are going to Halloween parties.

Halloween is really the  kid’s celebration. It is the one day each year when children were granted permission to stay up late, dress as their favorite superhero or princess or monster and eat unlimited amounts of free treats. Lots of candy: trick-or-treaters receive an average of 90.9 pieces, according to the American Dental Association.                

Speaking of candy, this is the night when creepy homeowners put pins, needles, glass shards and razor blades in the candy they hand out to unsuspecting kids and their parents.

Did you hear about the little girl who bit into a candy bar and died because a stranger had tainted it with poison? Maybe in the story you heard, a little boy bit into an apple and cut his mouth on a razor blade. The stories of evil strangers tainting Halloween candy and apples with poison, glass, pins, needles and razor blades have prevailed for several decades. But are they true? What about the infamous razor blade in an apple? The problem with widespread rumors is that many pranksters will do what they can to make the rumours seem real. For example, in 1968, the stage legislature in New Jersey passed a law mandating prison terms for anyone caught tampering apples with dangerous items. On Halloween of that year, thirteen apples with razor blades were found in five counties. But when following up on the reported cases, officials found that virtually all the reports were hoaxes devised by kids or their parents.

Although there have been a few reports of candy tampering over the years, nearly all of them have been debunked as hoaxes or pranks. Until 2000, in the United States, there hadn't been a single proven incident in which a child was injured by Halloween candy from a stranger. However, one Halloween, James Joseph Smith of Minneapolis was charged with one count of putting dangerous items in apples with intent to cause death, harm or illness after he put needles into candy bars and handed them out. One child was pricked with a needle when he bit into a candy bar, but neither he nor any other children were seriously injured. The idea of tainted candy from a stranger may have started with a 1964 incident involving a New York homemaker named Helen Pfeil. Irritated at the idea of handing out free candy to older kids, Pfeil gave out packages of steel wool pads, dog biscuits and poison ant buttons. Although she made it clear that her "goodies" were inedible, Pfeil was charged with endangering children.

There have been at least two confirmed deaths linked to tainted Halloween candy, but strangers didn't cause them. In a 1970 case, family members sprinkled a 5-year-old child's candy with heroin to hide the fact that he'd gotten into his uncle's drug stash. In the other case, which occurred in 1974, a man named Ronald Clark O'Bryan of Houston, Texas, laced his son's candy with cyanide and the child died. The motive was a big insurance policy that O'Bryan had taken out on his son. To make the poisoning appear random, O'Bryan also poisoned his daughter's candy and the candy of three other children. None of them ate it, however. He was eventually convicted of murder and was executed by lethal injection.

In my opinion, anyone who tampers with candy should be sent to prison. And if the tampered candy is given to children on Halloween, the offender should be ordered to move out of the area permanently.

Although these were isolated incidents, the idea of candy tampering spread through cities and suburban neighborhoods, making parents fearful about the contents of their children's Halloween baskets. The candy-tampering scare reached its height in 1982, when seven people in the Chicago area died after taking tainted cyanide-laced Tylenol capsules. About 40 communities actually went so far as to ban trick-or-treating. That year, the candy industry set up a telephone hotline to collect police reports of candy tampering, but it hadn't received a single verified report of a child being seriously hurt by tainted candy from a stranger.

Despite the lack of evidence, parents still sometimes panic over candy that looks strange. Usually the appearance is due to variations in the manufacturing process or in storage. Chocolate can appear gray when the candy has been exposed to too much heat or moisture

Although the odds of someone actually tampering with Halloween candy are slim-to-none, most experts recommend that parents check their kids' Halloween haul before letting them eat it I recommend that they eat candy bought by their  parents before they go out to trick and treat. That way, they won’t eat the candy given to them until they are at their homes.  Although you don't need to have their candy x-rayed at the local hospital or airport (and many of them offer the service), you should throw out any candy that's unwrapped, homemade (unless you know the person who made it) or has a torn wrapper, just to be on the safe side.

As a parent, you can write the address number of each house that hands out candy and mention the kind of candy that was given to your children. If the candy was tampered with, the police will know where the tampered candy came from. 

Although pumpkins remain essential, Halloween decorations have become more elaborate now that adults have taken over Halloween. One in two Americans and Canadians expect to decorate their home or front yard. It used to be that you bought a pumpkin, carved it and put it on the stoop. Now, you see cobwebs on the trees, witches and tombstones in the yard, and gigantic spiders. The commercial side of Halloween has really fueled the popularity of Halloween. Our house has a large plastic pumpkin that lights up. We place it at our front window so that the kids know our house is a place to get their treats. That means that I have to sit in the foyer with the front door that is open waiting for the ghosts, witches and spider men etc. 

When I was fourteen years old, I was living with an old man and his wife. They dressed me up as a girl and when I went to the Halloween party, none of the kids who I knew recognized me. Two days later while at school, one of the kids said to me, “Danny. Did you see that ugly girl that showed up at the party?’ I told him that I didn’t since I wasn’t at the party. Hey! Of course I was. Hey!  I am not ugly.

At least kids are still able to dress up — princess (10%), Batman (5%), and Spider-Man (5%) are the three most popular costumes in 2012, according the as National Retail Federation. A Seattle, Washington, elementary school is just the latest to ban students from wearing Halloween costumes in school on Halloween day.

I love kidding my nine-year-old grandson. During last Halloween, he chose the scariest Halloween mask he could find and when he showed me what he looked like when he put it on, I said to him. “Thank god you are wearing that mask. If you don’t wear it when you are trick or treating, you will frighten every kid on the street.”     

Most parents believe that age 14 is when children need to stop trick-or-treating, I see many of them at age sixteen and seventeen. I began trick and treating when I was six years old,  I liked Halloween more than I liked Christmas. During Halloween, I got candy. At Christmas I got clothes.

This prolonged adolescence has transformed Halloween from a kid-centric holiday into an $8 billion a year industry for kids young and old. In fact, two in three adults feel Halloween is a celebration for them and not just for their kids.

 Ask yourself this rhetorical question, Is shopping for costumes and masks for your kids and boxed of candies for your neighborhood’s kids and waiting at your door for them to come and get the goodies you have for them, constitute a holiday? If that is a holiday, I want Holiday pay.

Dressing up as spooks and monsters, will gobble up $3.2 billion in temporary apparel without even a bloodcurdling scream. Ghoulish decorations will slurp up another $2.7 billion, while candy will drain a mere $2.6 billion from our wallets. .

The statistics are shocking. Children are twice as likely to die on Halloween than any other day of the year as they trick-or-treat while walking on the streets. That's according to a 2012 State Farm analysis of more than 4 million fatalities occurred between 1990 and 2010.in the United States alone. How many of those deaths occurred on Halloween night? More than a quarter of the deaths occurred between 6 p.m. and 7 p.m., State Farm found, with 70% happening in the middle of the street, away from a crosswalk or intersection

Parents should make sure their child's costume has reflective tape, and kids should carry a flashlight or glow stick. Children should not trick-or-treat alone, but in groups with parental supervision. Even then, parents need to be on guard: Excited children can easily sprint ahead and forget to look both ways when crossing the street.

These fatalities are not just among little kids, either. Most of the pedestrian deaths occurred among those between ages 12 and 15, followed by ages 5 to 8. Young people should be cautioned about the distractions of cell phone use and follow other safety guidelines, including the  use of flashlights or glow sticks. So who is responsible for most of those pedestrian deaths? You guessed it. It is drivers who drank or partied too much. And you don't have to "feel" drunk or stoned to be impaired. 

Sadly, young drivers aged 15 to 25 were responsible for the vast  majority of pedestrian deaths of children on Halloween according to the State Farm analysis. Safety experts suggest keeping inexperienced drivers off the road on Halloween.

One in 13 children under the age of 18 in the United States has food allergies. Chances are high that one of those kids will visit your house for a treat. Milk, eggs, peanuts, soy, wheat, tree nuts, fish and shellfish are responsible for 90% of allergic reactions, according to the Food Allergy Research and Education group. Some of those reactions can be deadly. This is the reason I have suggested that the treats given to children shouldn’t be eaten before parents examine the treats first.

Pumpkin carving takes the lead each year over other Halloween injuries, according to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission. Out of an estimated 4,500 Halloween related injuries reported during October and November last year, 41% were related to pumpkin carving. Safety experts suggest putting the sharp kitchen knives aside and using only the small pumpkin carving tools that come in kits, which are designed to minimize injuries. A paring knife will do the job.

Tripping or falling wins second place for most common Halloween injury, says the Consumer Product Safety Commission. Getting tangled in the long legs of ill-fitting costumes is a key reason and costume masks can also be part of the problem.

Many gruesome monster heads are ill-fitting, with poorly cut eye holes that limit vision. Ghostly sheets can both obstruct eyesight and become tripping hazards. Be sure whatever your children wear will allow full range of eyesight and has been altered to prevent tripping before they head out the door. 

Kids like carrying pointed swords, spears and wands that can poke out the eyes of excited children (or adults) who are too close. It would be better for everyone if they don’t carry then on Halloween.

Considering that falls account for nearly a third of all Halloween-related injuries and that pointy object could just as easily end up in your child's eye, or someone else's eye.

Check how the skin of your child to see how it will react to face paint before you slathers your child’s face with it. Applying a small bit of paint on your child’s arm a day or two before could save a lot of scratching, swelling, redness and embarrassment if your child ends up being allergic to the paint.  

Halloween candy can be deadly for your dog or cat. No candy is healthy, but anything that's sugar-free, or contains raisins or chocolate can quickly cause seizures, even organ failure to your pet.

Halloween is fun for kids and their parents as long as great care is undertaken. 

Here is my last word on this subject. “BOOooo”