Hollow Not Halo

That was not such a long break, was it? Anyway, I am back! And in case you are wondering, blogging slipped a little bit from the top of my pirorities list; my wife's trip to India overtook it. Anyway, now that she has reached India safely, I have blogging back at the top of my list. As promised to you earlier, this time I am going to share my thoughts on Halloween.

For the uninitiated, Halloween is celebrated every year on Oct 31. Children of all ages (even 75+ yr olds) across the U.S. dress up in "spooky" costumes and go from door to door tricking and treating. Dressed as Spidermen, Potters and witches, they go around their neighborhoods knocking on doors asking their neighbors to choose between treating them and getting tricked. Of course, almost every neighbor chooses to treat the visitors, not because the visitors know any tricks but because no one wants to be labelled the stingiest guy on the block.

This Halloween, the average American consumer would have spent $43.57 on Halloween-related purchases. Of this, a third would have been spent on candy and a third on costumes. The country as a whole would have spent approximately $3.12 billion dollars. Sugar levels would have gone up adding more children to the ever-growing population of diabetics and waistlines would have become larger adding to a booming obese population. While large quantities of candy would have entered the guts of people, large quantities would also have ended up in trashes, discarded by anxious parents and jaded kids. And, a lot of clothes and fancy outfits would have ended up in the dumpsters the very next day.

I don't mean to be a spoil-sport and I don't say that people should stop having fun or treating themselves. But, it's a shame that half of the world's 6.4bn people subsist on less than $1 a day when 295mn people spent an average of $10 each for fun and festivities on a single day. It's a shame that a nation spent $3.12bn for a single day of fun when the World Food Programme had a shortfall of $0.26bn (as of Oct 11,2004) and could not meet the critical needs of half a million people. It's a shame that people spent $15 on a stupid Spidey or Harry costume when a chronically hungry child could be fed for half a school year.

We don't have to be saints (the Pope has already beatified a record number of them). But, we should not be selfish wastrels, either. Let's show some restraint when we splurge on unhealthy and wasteful treats; let's stop to think of the needs of the millions starving in the rest of the world before we spend the next buck.

Heal the World!