In the nearly twenty seasons that my wife and I have lured a parade of diminutive ghosts and goblins to our door with the telltale porchlight and a jack-o-lantern or two — not counting the smallish number of years that we were flat broke and could barely afford dinner, much less candy… or the time we simply forgot, and so shuttered the windows and hid inside in the dark — never before have I heard:
Hey! Nice pumpkins!
Let’s be clear… we talking about carved gourds here, okay?
Tonight I heard it from *all* the folks who were walkin’ their little ones down the candy gauntlet. All of them. Every. Single. One.
Even some of the kids thought they were pretty cool. The three-foot-high guy dressed up in a Tron costume — I suspect a parent who’s a major geek… what’s a kid that age know from Tron? — even spelled ‘em out…
V-O-T-E. Vote!
C-H-A-N-G-E. Change!
Hey… Candy!
That’s right, buddy. Keep things in perspective.
It begs the question, though: is it wrong to wedge a political message in between the cracks of a seasonal celebration? Is it crass to politicize an otherwise strictly non-partisan festival?
Maybe… but not this year.
This year there’s too much at stake. Too much at risk. And too little time to *not* get the message out there, to let folks know where you stand, and that you think it’s time for a change.
