Wednesday, November 01, 2006
Say Bye-bye, Kids: The Death of Halloween
"Halloween is dead," Kat/Keena said over dinner with me and Micmac at the ATC Foodcourt on the night of Halloween.
Even for kids enjoying their sembreaks right now (we students of Pisay are unfortunately not among them), Halloween is indeed dead, and with it went the simple joys of childhood.
We live in an age where kids have XBoxes instead of jumpropes, Gameboys instead of board games. No kid 5 years or older really bothers to play with the neighbors' kids on the street anymore. I hate to sound like an old fart, but it's a sad realization, since my own simple childhood was quite a happy one, even without all the gadgets and gizmos available today. I enjoyed having little tea parties with the neighbors and playing patintero. Okay, yeah, we sometimes went to Kuya Bobby's house to play
Mortal Kombat, but those visits were few and far between.
I hadn't learned of bad words until I was in the fourth grade, and in those days people would gasp if you ever said any of those. These days, I hear of Junior Prep students in my old school flipping people the bird and screaming obscenities. It almost broke my heart to hear that my 7-year-old cousin screams words like "Bitch!" and "Asshole!" in school.
Halloween, of all the holidays and events, was the lynchpin, the very essence of childhood. As a kid, I always looked forward to dressing up as a sorceress or an angel and going house to house in Ayala Alabang Village with friends to get candy. Every house seemed to have people outside with giant vats of candy to give away; the really rich ones gave away KitKat or Barbie Dolls. No kidding!
Eventually, and I never even thought that this would happen, the Halloween spirit started to fade away. While trick-or-treating with friends in the sixth grade, we noticed that only about two houses per block were giving away candy, as opposed to previous years where every house had candy to give away. I remember thinking at the time, "Does this mean Halloween is dying out?"
This year, the President announced that October 31 is not a holiday. Sign of the times, I thought. Nobody cares about Halloween anymore. It served as the final nail in the coffin of the blissful childhood we once experienced yesteryear.
Sure, children in costumes still go around for candy. While flipping through a back issue of
Pulp magazine and having lunch at Hot Shots, I saw little ghouls and fairies trotting around Glorietta's stores for free candy. This still doesn't disprove my point. Kids today are just doing it for the free candy, before they go back home and devote their time to the latest video game. Years ago, we children enjoyed so much more than that.
It saddens me to think that the children of this generation will never get to experience the simple joys of a childhood unfettered with profanities, violence, internet, and frivolous things. Don't get me wrong, technology is great. However, it has robbed today's young ones of their innocence, and no number of iPods, XBoxes, PlayStations, or GameBoys will ever bring that back.
