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 31st 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”
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