Illustration by Arnie Bermudez

When you think about it, in a post-9/11 world, parents would have to be crazy to allow their child, supervised or not, to run around town collecting candy. Are the new neighbors down the street really Raytheon employees transferred here from Los Angeles or are they undercover al-Qaeda agents looking to murder small children with poisoned Butterfingers?

After all, all Americans must be alert, and Halloween should be no exception.

Well, maybe the threat isn't that strong. But one can't deny that Halloween has evolved through the years, and that its personal meaning changes for each of us with our age.

Halloween has some major draw in our American culture. Its roots are in paganism; but today, churches are often the center of Halloween activity. This always seemed ironic to me, the product of a Catholic school education. There was a small opposition group to Halloween at my school, made up of parents and teachers. Still, despite the irony of the school priest dressing up like a warlock, it seemed like a lot of fuss over nothing.

The day has changed. It's now highly commercialized and has become more centered on candy and silly costumes than anything else. Traces of witches and spooky spells on the day represent a parody, not a religious following.

It's annoying when people bitch about the corporate influence in holidays, particularly one as superficial as Halloween. However, there is more hullabaloo in the merchandising world over Halloween than ever before.

But why all this fuss over a day of candy and costumes, particularly among adults? Perhaps Halloween satisfies some urge to act silly for a day. Or maybe it's a nostalgic remembrance.

To be honest, I was pretty scared of Halloween as a child. Those lame haunted houses were scary as hell for me growing up. I loathed the day because there was always this pressure to walk through and get scared out of my mind by witches and ghosts.

My mom tried to ease my fears. One year before Halloween, she invited me to meet the woman who played the part of the head witch each year.

This lady was scary, her performance worthy of an Academy Award. And as nice as she was, I was still terrified of meeting her in character. Of course, this could have been tied to my obsessive fear of circus clowns.

Daniel Scarpinato Columnist

Whatever the case, you can bet that today people of all ages will be celebrating Halloween, and depending on your age, the holiday can take many different forms.

As a child, you're forced to just go through the motions. Get in costume, parade around school, maybe go

trick-or-treating with mom and dad at a local nursing home.

Really, Halloween is most exciting in the pre-teen period. You're young enough to still dress up and trick or treat and old enough to have the limited amount of freedom to gallivant through the neighborhood without parents.

The low point in life for Halloweeners is the high school years. Too old to trick-or-treat, too young to go out and get rip-roarin' drunk.

So teenagers usually resort to terrorizing little trick-or-treaters or sabotaging those lame community haunted houses that I was so terrified of. Incidentally, I still stay clear of haunted houses, although I can stand the one at Disneyland.

Now we're in college, and for the over-20 crowd, Halloween is just another night to go out to the bars or silly themed parties.

And while it might be fun to spend a lot of time deciding what to be, finding the costume and getting all ready, it seems like a lot of work for a few hours of fun.

The best gig is for parents. Remember how your mom and dad would pretend to be checking through the candy for razor blades? Yeah right. They were really scoping out your candy, looking for what they could steal.

Luckily, I'm now over my fear of Halloween. I think. But just to play it safe, I'll be staying home and handing out candy tonight.

Daniel Scarpinato is a journalism and political science senior.

He can be reached at letters@wildcat.arizona.edu.