Maybe next year | Editorial
Published 1:18 pm Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Now that the election has finally passed, and we have hauled the last of election junk mail to the recycle bin, we can move on to other issues of the day — such as the increasingly disheartening trend of the holiday frenzy coming earlier and earlier. But first, some of us must finish up that leftover candy from Halloween.
Such a waste. Candy is a wonderful thing. And Halloween is a wonderful time for children and adults to dress up and be silly or be someone (or something) else. Yet one wonders what else could be done with the dollars spent on candy in a society worried about the effects of obesity.
If one were to take a trip in Professor Peabody’s Wayback Machine, he or she might find a time when many neighborhoods were visited by teenagers on All Hallows Eve holding little orange cardboard boxes stamped with UNICEF, for the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund. The boxes were to collect coins instead of candy on Halloween night to help children in need in other countries. In this author’s hometown, teenagers — told in so many not-too-subtle ways that they were too old to trick or treat — took up the cause. The high school students were divided into teams by grade level and the classes competed to see who could raise the most money. And raise money they did. Neighbors were more than glad to hand out coins rather than disapproval to the teens.
It was great fun. There was and is something very satisfying about holding a package heavy with coin and rustling bills. And a little competition always helps.
As fate would have it, 93-year-old Mary Emma Allison, of Indiana, died just last week. As a young mother with three children she came up with the idea to have children trick or treat to collect money for UNICEF 60 years ago. Since its inception, Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF has raised more than $160 million. The money buys food, clean water, milk, medicine and much else for children in more than 150 countries.
In a nearly perfect world, little kids still visit neighborhoods (like the Lakes) and get tiny bags of Skittles and candy corn. And teens who also need to get out and do a little haunting can do so and be pointed to good works.
A Mercer Island teen did take on Trick or Treat for UNICEF as a culminating project a few years ago. But it seems to have vanished like a ghost. Too bad. Maybe someone else will take up the cause of the little orange boxes once again.
