I Don't Do Trick or Treat

**I posted this in 2011, and it's still wildly relevant today. 

**Not enough Halloween fun to go around that we have to borrow some other country's crap?

None of the people I knew growing up had to do trick or treat. We were so decidedly quasi-ghetto that my Halloweens were trips to the cemetery where we would make balls out of candle wax drippings. I know its primitive, and it sure as hell hurt, but it kept us entertained until it hurt some more. Then we'd whine our grown ups to take us home. We'd whine with wonderful industry if we happened to be in the cemetery on a Saturday afternoon because we can't afford to miss Noli de Castro hosting the all too creepy Magandang Gabi Bayan Halloween special.

Them 80's were a fucking good time to do Halloween. Halloween's mostly a laid back affair where we'd get high on mostly primitive shit that in no remote way resembled what other countries did on that same day. We're mostly cool with our wax balls and our scary TV shows. But we were largely original with our celebration, basic but original, and we kept to our own like what our parents did. Fast forward to twenty years later, and the whole celebration started getting different. Its not the transgendered kind of different, nor is it the receding hairline kind of different. It's more of the irrelevant kind of different because our kids are doing Trick or Treat now.

Now let me give you the reassuring claim that when I'm wrong, then I'm most definitely certainly wrong, and I think Filipino kids dressing up to do trick or treat is so wrong its borderline stupid. I admit I'm all in for the aesthetics. Cute is cute, no contest, but its the whole idea that bugs me. What kind of rice are we eating these days that gave us the idea its okay for our Filipino kids to go Trick or Treating? Are we becoming so Americanized that we have to dress up our kids for candies like what they're doing? Do we even know why we're doing it? Have we finally run out of third-world things to do on Halloween? Or for the rest of the year for that matter? Because if we are, then there's no reason why we should stop with Halloween. We might as well do Thanksgiving, and we'll do it not for any cultural significance, most definitely not for the Indians, not for shit, but for the poultry. And why shouldn't we? We're already dressing our kids up like little brown devils to ask for candy, we might as well go overtime with all this cultural social climbing and do Thanksgiving. Halloween for the candy, Thanksgiving for the turkey. But we should learn how to stuff that Andok's chicken this early on.

All in all, this trick or treating business among our kids, our Filipino kids, has got to be a singularly conceited affair that makes no sense in this third world country. Truth is, we all probably grew up in the same dark ages where our Halloweens were identified with candle wax balls and ghost stories on TV. But I never grew this unnecessary inclination to dress up my nieces or nephews as ghosts, goblins, hookers, or sperm bank tellers just for treats. I wouldn't know how to make sense of it all. Kids are terribly inquisitive little devils by default, and I know one of them will ask me WHY THE HELL am I wasting good money on cheap-ass costumes that make gay dipshits of them.

I really wouldn't know what to say to that. I'll just teach them how to make the baddest candle wax ball instead.