We Need More Halloweens

Circumstances beyond our control can be good for us

Halloween is an interesting sort of spot-check of your neighborhood. You see people you never see. You remember that there are actually children, who you rarely see out in the neighborhood except in the morning as they walk to school or board a bus. Of course sometimes you’ll see families out walking, or kids playing in yards, but it seems like you see fewer than you’d expect for the numbers that Halloween reminds you there are.

There’s a lot of perception stuff here, like “Why is this neighborhood so empty?” or “Why does nobody have kids anymore?”, when the reality is that these quiet, family-friendly communities can make family life invisible and turn it inward in many ways.

One of the things I find interesting is how the open spaces and detached houses seem to make it easier for trick-or-treating to unfold. Not large-lot homes, but detached homes (or, I suppose no reason they would be different, townhouses), with entrances opening onto the street. So on the one hand, suburbia seems to turn us inward, but on the other hand, something public and social like Halloween seems to thrive here. What does that tell you? Does it mean there’s an “urbanist” energy lying dormant in these places? Is that something we can unlock without the excuse of candy and a touch of mischief?

That’s a question I think about a lot—how we sort of seem to need circumstances to get us to do things. And the more these circumstances are decided for us, the easier it is. I was just having this conversation with my parents, about the old days when you had three TV channels, no tape recorders, etc. Life felt slower because you didn’t just have everything on demand. And you shared the TV schedule, for example, with everyone else. You either watched the Christmas special last night or you didn’t. You couldn’t see it till next year.

You can see that as deprivation, or you can see it as a shared schedule, a shared circumstance, that creates the context for social interaction. A shared sense of waiting, of urgency. When you think about it, a great deal of life, or at least a great deal more events, were scheduled for us all collectively in those days. Holidays are one of the few things that still is.

Today you can stream or watch on a DVD almost anything, any time. But if you miss Halloween or Christmas, you miss it. You can’t really pick your own day to “do” a holiday, because part of what makes it what it is is that everyone shares it.