THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 31, 1995 TAG: 9510310040
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
HISTORY DOESN'T record whether it was a dark and stormy night that saw the birth of the Halloween greeting card.
Visibility was certainly high enough to allow the glow of the dollar to be seen.
``On Halloween, what could be more fun than dressing up and screaming a lot?
``Undressing and screaming a lot.''
The former All Hallow's Eve - originally a ghost-intensive Celtic harvest festival called Samhain, then a precursor to All Saints' Day - has become slightly off-limits to kids in the Worried-Sick '90s. At the same time, it's gotten to be ever-bigger business with the same grown-ups who buy Mexican beer on Cinco de Mayo.
Just as that day saluting Mexican independence has turned into a major marketing ploy for beer importers, so has Halloween stretched far beyond its child-oriented modern meaning.
Scary stuff:
Costume contests in bars, with prizes rising to $1,000 or more. Never mind that the winners often rent the outfits, head to toe.
Devil's Night, a longstanding Detroit tradition that sees houses and apartment buildings torched for kicks the night before Halloween.
The Portsmouth robbery last October of a 28-year-old by several men wearing Halloween masks at dusk.
Even before all this, it was tough enough to be a kid at Halloween. The threat of unwrapped candy, altered fruit and heedless drivers has led more and more parents to keep their goblins, tramps and Little Mermaids at home, or to escort them to safe gatherings.
Some schools and churches in Norfolk and Virginia Beach have moved away from Halloween and toward harvest themes in their fall festivities.
Likewise spooked by fundamentalist parents who take their devils seriously, other school districts have banned Halloween. Among these are Colorado Springs, Colo.; Aldine, Texas; Bedford, Ohio; and Schaumburg, Ill.
In the name of diversity, The Washington Post reported, Howard County, Md., last year requested that students not dress up as potentially offensive beings such as witches. America the beautiful: religious freedom both for real witches and those who fear them.
The field is effectively left open for more ``mature'' observances along the lines of the hoopla-laden 20th anniversary of ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show.'' In addition to a VH1 broadcast, the flick plays tonight with its usual live cast at the Naro Expanded Cinema in Norfolk. The venue has screened ``Rocky'' on and off for years, although the throwing of toast has long been discouraged.
Kids still have a big claim on the day, of course. The pre-packaged costume industry isn't going away; there's profit in those flame-retardant fabrics. No time to sew a cute-as-a-button costume for baby? Don't sweat it. You can buy that too.
And as surely as adults love to be creeped-out by Stephen King, so does the elementary-school set cherish R.L. Stine.
Just don't remind the schools in Colorado Springs about Edgar Allan Poe. by CNB