Back when I was growing up in the 1960s, Halloween was a fun time for kids.

Now it’s bizarre and dangerous.

When we dressed up like a ghost, we just cut a few eye holes in an old sheet and draped it over our heads. Occasionally, someone would have their mom use makeup so they could dress like a zombie.

These days, kids and their parents seem to go overboard with occult costumes. The zombie outfits these days are really spooky.

When I went trick-or-treating, I walked with a couple friends going door to door in our neighborhood. We didn’t have any adults with us (unless the kids were really little). Older brothers and sisters accompanied elementary students begrudgingly.

It was safe. We knew our neighbors. We were welcomed at the door with a smile and a treat.

Now, parents must go with all ages to go door to door. And they really should stick to places where they know people. And you have to check the candy their receive. Some hospitals will x-ray candy make sure their aren’t any razor blades inside or that it has been tampered with.

In the 1960s, some people handed out homemade treats, including popcorn balls, cookies and even caramel apples. A wonderful elderly lady down our street had caramel apples every year but she ran out in about 30 minutes.

And some handed out unpackaged candy. Every kid could find a handful of candy corn at the bottom of their bag at the end of the night.

Now, people who are concerned about health and safety hand out prepackaged candy. And believe it or not, some people hand out “healthy snacks” like crackers instead of candy. The worst I ever got as a kid was a small package of raisins (which I ate and enjoyed).

When our kids were little, we took them to a handful of selected doors in our neighborhood. Then we took them to the Farm Shopping Center where the merchants handed out candy. You were pretty assured that the candy at the Farm was safe.

The Farm Shopping Center still hands out candy on Halloween.

Sometimes, Halloween ended with pounds of candy. We helped them eat the chocolate candy (much to their chagrin). Hard candy, like suckers and Jolly Ranchers, was hard to get rid of. At one point, I offered to buy the worst candy from the kids and then I took it to my work.

Now, we always get a couple of bags of candy to hand out on Halloween. Sometimes we get a good number of trick-or-treaters and sometimes we get hardly any. The trick is to buy candy that you like, like M&Ms, Kit Kats or Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, and then if you have some left over, it’s a treat for you. But you don’t want to go overboard because they are all loaded with sugar. We have been dieting and one of the things we try to do is avoid processed sugar.

When I walk around Wal-Mart or Wal-Greens, I am overwhelmed at how much candy they sell and how much sugar content there is. It’s no wonder that we are all overweight when temptation is so universal.

Some churches have alternative activities on Halloween for kids in their congregations and as a gift to neighborhood children. They seem to be a lot of fun and very safe.

A troubling aspect of Halloween these days is that is has become the “national holiday” for homosexuality. In the 60s, men would dress up like women as a joke. It was funny. Now, men seriously dress up like women because they want to be like women or want to try to become women. (They can’t become women. Their DNA is unchangeable but that doesn’t stop them from trying.)

This has accelerated the movement to blur the distinction between men and women and that’s not good. Men and women are not the same. God made us uniquely different and we should be encouraging people – especially kids – to embrace their genuine gender.

Television back in the 1960s didn’t have much on during Halloween. Now, whole networks play the worst of the worst movies with zombies, ax murderers, space aliens, werewolves and all kinds of occult dramas. Computer imaging lets these productions get more and more graphic.

Who wants to fill their brain with these kinds of images? If you wonder why we have so many mass killings, maybe it is because we are showing all these horrible movies to impressionable young people. Just a thought.

I know some Christian folk who ignore Halloween altogether and that’s OK. We decided to make it a positive experience for our kids rather than deprive them of a chance to have an evening of fun.

Halloween can be fun and safe. I just wish it wasn’t so weird.

Funny sayings…

– I finally realized that people are prisoners of their phones … that’s why they call it a “cell” phone.

– What is the best thing to do when you have a hole in a boat and water is leaking inside? Make another hole to drain the water.

– Did you just fall? No, I was checking to see if gravity still works.

– You don’t have to be crazy to hang out with me … I’ll train you.

– I had an extremely busy day … converting oxygen into carbon dioxide.

– I don’t understand people who say, “I don’t know how to thank you.”

Like they never heard of money.

– Why is Monday so far from Friday and Friday so close to Monday?

– Dear Life: “When I said, ‘can this day get any worse?’, it was a rhetorical question, not a challenge.”

– I hope we’re good friends until we die. Then I hope we can stay ghost friends, walk through walls and scare people.

– Singing in the shower is all fun until you get shampoo in your mouth.

Then it becomes a soap opera.

– A good speech should be like a woman’s skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest. (Winston Churchill).

– If you can’t laugh at your own problems, call me and I’ll laugh at them.

– I’ve made it from the bed to the couch.

There’s no stopping me now.

– I always knew I’d get old. How fast it happened was a bit of a surprise though.

– If Facebook has taught us anything, it’s that a lot of people aren’t quite ready for a spelling bee.

– Sometimes I’m grateful that thoughts don’t appear as bubbles over our heads.

– People say I act like I don’t care. It’s not an act.