Sunday, October 31, 2010

Beggin' Pagans

 I love Halloween.
No, not because I'm into Santeria, Voodoo or (intentionally) Paganism - I just like to give out the "Big Candy" to kids.
I like to play tricks on my little cousins to scare them.
As a kid, we always knew the 'good house'.
Mine was not one, my parents gave out those little fun size candies.
I know my Halloween practices scream 'classism' - but too bad.
I live in a fairly good neighborhood.
Most houses are built and inherited while few are bought and sold.
Most neighbors give out bags of candy - not just handfuls of nasty candy corn, Dum-Dums, Tootsie Rolls or Mary Janes.

I give out three classes of bags;
Neighborhood Kids - 2 large candy bars and/or bags of Skittles, 6 fun size bars and 6 small (Nerds, Skittles and/or Starburst)
Kids I Know - 4 large candy bars and/or bags of Skittles, 10 fun size bars and 10 small
Adults and 'The Caravan' (Kids from other neighborhoods who travel across town to Trick-or-Treat in our neighborhood) - 1 large candy bar and six small.
Is this classist? Sure.
Is it fair? Yep, everyone gets more than they expected so they leave happy.

But how can I tell the difference?
Kids from my neighborhood are all Black and come out early.
Kids from other neighborhoods come later and are from all races.
Times must be hard.
When I was a kid, we thought we had to stay in the "White Neighborhood" to get the best candy.
Now, I have just as many white kids walking my all Black neighborhood as I do Blacks or Asians or Hispanics.


Twenty-three.
This year I had twenty-three adults show up at the crib begging for candy.
(After 12 - it's not Trick-or-Treating, it's begging.)
I'm not talking about high school kids making a late run to scoop up the leftovers - I'm talking about thirty, forty and fifty years olds holding out WalMart bags begging for candy.

3 comments:

brohammas said...

Seriously!? I thought the full sized candy bar houses were just urban legend. We all dreamed of actually getting past the guard to that on eexclusive neighborhood that we just knew gave out the real stuff.
If only there was a black neighborhood within 1,000 miles of us... thats where we should have been all along.


P.S. Quack, quack, quack (you can't ignore me. MAybe I couldn't see your reply over my #5 ranking)

DF said...

23 Old ass Beggars came to get candy from the Man who gives BIG! LMBAO

I don't think it's classicist as the people you know are being rewarded, the people who are kids are given more than they expect and the people who are beggars know to come back to you next year to beg again.

You must raid Smart & Final to get the big bars ready to roll huh? Either way times are hard as most of your middle class have fallen to the lower and they are out there slumming like the rest of us.

KonWomyn said...

Wow, that's really generous Black J! But OTOH how many bad sugar habits have you fed?

Don't take this personally Black J, but I think Halloween's a twisted concept - children begging for sweets is legitimised as is adults giving sugar by the truckload. Considering what the lethal amounts of sugar and fat in candy bars, it doesn't sit well with me.

I also find it funny that this commercial holiday legitimises dressing up as corpses. Not that I have anything against Festivals of the Dead in other cultures, but I just think it's an oxymoron that this is practised in contemporary Western culture.

It's bad enough kids go round begging for sweets - but adults too c'mon now, get real! Hope you politely said no and shut the door.

...peace