Category Archives: Holiday food

Thanksgiving – Glazed Over

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You guys are going to think I’m obsessed with Charlie Brown, since my last holiday post was about It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Well last night my mom and I watched A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and it got me thinking. Yeah I don’t know why I’m having so many philosophical thoughts about Charlie Brown.

A good portion of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is the whole gang talking about the first Thanksgiving. I started thinking about how when I was younger I was told the whole history of Thanksgiving every year – or so I thought. We were all told about the Pilgrims and the Native Americans and how they “helped” each other and then they had a big feast  to give thanks to the good harvest they had that year. When I got to high school, they finally pulled the veil and told us the real history, about how many of the Native Americans were to die later from the Columbian Exchange, the Pilgrims stole their food, and made many of the Native Americans slaves.

Now Thanksgiving is a myth told again and again to children. They often have Thanksgiving pageants where the children tell the “story of Thanksgiving” in song and dance. There are decorations with happy Pilgrims and Native Americans, and of course happy looking Turkey often wearing Pilgrim hats.

The idea of Thanksgiving is a nice thought. It’s one of the most secular holidays, and it’s celebrated by all kinds of people in America. Maybe the idea of Thanksgiving could be rerouted to the celebration of friends and family and actually giving thanks to all the good in life, instead of the history of the first Thanksgiving.

Halloween Candy

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I’ve always gone Trick-Or-Treating. This isn’t my first year not going completely (I dressed up but didn’t go once when I was really sick. Another time we had a huge storm and Halloween was delayed in my town, so I went later.), but it still feels weird.

So I figured this would be an appropriate time to discuss Halloween candy. I was watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown last night (because what else do college students do on Fridays?) when I noticed something about the way kids went trick-or-treating in 1966. Besides giving out rocks (poor Charlie Brown) they received cookies, apples, popcorn balls, and cakes with the typical candy treats. Now-a-days, giving out baked goods and non-prepackaged foods is unheard of, even receiving a Rice Krispy Treat or package of Oreos is a little weird. It’s considered unsafe to eat things made by other people for Halloween. Parents are even advised to check every single package for small holes that could indicate something injected into the candy, and for knives and pieces of glass thrown into bags. And some areas hold “trunk-a-treating,” where families decorate their cars in parking lots and hand out candy. Sometimes it’s only kids from a certain neighborhood or the schools set it up. I asked my mom about this change, and she thinks parents are definitely a lot more paranoid about it than they were when It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown was released (she was born a few years before.) While she said she definitely went through my candy and threw out anything that looked suspicious, her trick-or-treating experience was more like the movie.

Halloween wasn’t always about the candy. According to an article in the Smithsonian magazine, trick-or-treating wasn’t popular until the 1950s and 60s. The documentary we watched in psychology said snacking became popular around this time. The food industry started advertising for Halloween, somehow turning it into a holiday all about treats in just a few decades. With even more heavy advertising, everything handed out became candy. No homemade goods, toys, or small amounts of money. More candy means more sugar.

This year, it is projected Americans will spend $6.9 billion for this Halloween. 4 billion of that is spent on candy, and 4% of all candy consumed in one year is consumed on Halloween. Kids LOVE that Halloween candy, as demonstrated in Jimmy Kimmel’s Youtube challenge, ‘I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Halloween Candy‘ (but who can blame them, trick-or-treating in my neighborhood was A LOT of walking.) There are now other options for parents who don’t want to give their kids this candy. Dentists have candy buy-backs and some organizations have donations, such as Operation Gratitude. I know I participated in Trick-Or-Treat for Unicef in elementary school, in which I carried around a box and asked for quarters, but I still got candy. Parents could have their children opt out of the candy and only ask for donations, but that’s not very likely. While watching on of my favorite TV shows, Shark Tank, the other day, I learned parents are making up Tooth Fairy like characters for Halloween. Switch Witch is a story book and stuffed animal that’s like Elf on the Shelf or Mensch on the Bench and hangs out around the house for a month. Kids still get the fun of trick-or-treating, but all of their candy is given to the Switch Witch, who brings them a present the next morning. I personally think it’s a genius idea, but the sharks didn’t agree.

In America, Halloween is the second most profitable holiday, second only to Christmas. Halloween spending has definitely gotten higher since the 1960s, and the way we celebrate has changed drastically, especially for kids. I guess we’re not as willing to wait for the Great Pumpkin anymore.