Remember the Halloween candy scare of the 1970’s and ’80’s?
Rumors were flying about Halloween sadists who put razor blades in apples and booby-trapped pieces of candy. Parents checked our candy bags. Schools and churches opened their doors so we could trick-or-treat ’safely.’ Even hospitals volunteered to x-ray candy bags.
In 1985 an ABC News poll found 60% of parents worried that their children would be victimized. And to this day many parents warn their children not to eat any snacks that aren’t store-bought and in a firmly sealed package.
Then researchers discovered something shocking about this whole candy-tampering scare.
It was an urban myth.
In 1985, two researchers, Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi, studied every reported Halloween incident in the previous 27 years - and they did not find one case of a stranger causing harm on Halloween by tampering with candy.
They did, however, find two bizarre instances of horrid relatives poisoning their own children. Apparently this proves, to the best of our social science knowledge, that it’s perfectly OK to take candy from strangers - it’s your own family you have to worry about…
Five hundred years ago, Michel de Montaigne said: "My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”
Rumors were flying about Halloween sadists who put razor blades in apples and booby-trapped pieces of candy. Parents checked our candy bags. Schools and churches opened their doors so we could trick-or-treat ’safely.’ Even hospitals volunteered to x-ray candy bags.
In 1985 an ABC News poll found 60% of parents worried that their children would be victimized. And to this day many parents warn their children not to eat any snacks that aren’t store-bought and in a firmly sealed package.
Then researchers discovered something shocking about this whole candy-tampering scare.
It was an urban myth.
In 1985, two researchers, Joel Best and Gerald Horiuchi, studied every reported Halloween incident in the previous 27 years - and they did not find one case of a stranger causing harm on Halloween by tampering with candy.
They did, however, find two bizarre instances of horrid relatives poisoning their own children. Apparently this proves, to the best of our social science knowledge, that it’s perfectly OK to take candy from strangers - it’s your own family you have to worry about…
Five hundred years ago, Michel de Montaigne said: "My life has been filled with terrible misfortune; most of which never happened.”
While Halloween is a time of legitimized and playful fear, studies tell us that 85% of the things we worry about will never happen. And when that bad thing does happen, 80% of us find we cope with it much better than we imagined.
This Sunday, All Saints Sunday, we touch on humanity's biggest fear, death. This is the day we put fear and death into perspective by reminding ourselves that even our worst fear is handled by Jesus.
We are reminded that Jesus had a lot to say about worry - mostly that he would handle it.
All Saints invites us to renew our perspective on fear and death by reminding us that neither of them have the last word.
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience.
This Halloween, don't be scared, take the candy, God is greater than our fears.
