Boo, Humbug! By Michael Elliot.

¶ … Boo, Humbug! By Michael Elliot. Specifically it will discuss the writer's idea that Halloween should be a children's holiday, rather than an adult celebration. In his essay "Boo, Humbug!" writer Michael Elliott "hates" Halloween and how it has become so completely commercialized and "run by adults," which is a completely understandable reaction to a holiday that used to be childlike and simple, and now has evolved into a marketing dream come true.

In "Boo, Humbug!" writer Elliot voices some thoughts on Halloween that may have been lingering in many adults' heads for years.

How did this simple holiday suddenly become the second largest to the Christmas holidays? Why do adults feel compelled to decorate their yards like graveyards and spend large amounts on plastic pumpkins, glowing ghosts, and spiders with cottony cobwebs? The writer notes he does not hate the holiday itself, or the kids on their search for treats, rather he hates the commercialism of the holiday, and how it has turned into big business. I must agree with his conclusions.

I remember Halloween fondly as a child, but now, as an adult, I cringe at the decorations, the elaborate costumes, and the crass sense of "money" that now surrounds the celebration. Author Elliot makes his points clear from the beginning of this entertaining and thought-provoking essay. It is clear that he thinks most Halloween expenditures are a waste of money, and he carries this through from one paragraph to the next, citing the chain store "Halloween Express," pet costumes, and it's gaudy decorations in offices and businesses.

He turns the essay to a discussion of adulthood, and how some things should be put away when one grows to maturity, then carries this theme through the end of the essay. His points are well thought out, and his arguments are compelling and interesting. He writes, "We now have to be worried not just about children acting like adults but about adults behaving like children" (Elliot 86). Again, I must agree.

There is nothing wrong with adults maintaining a childlike wonder about their world and their place in it, but never growing up and facing maturity has its own set of problems, as the Michael Jackson trial going on right now clearly indicates. A nearly 50-year-old man who cannot grow up and lives in "Neverland" is nearly as sad as the adults who feel they must regress to childhood with "whoooing" ghosts, witches, and goblins in their front yards for the month of October.

This is not childhood revisited, it is adulthood resisted, and the only people it serves are the merchandisers and merchants who gleefully look forward to the Halloween season as the beginning of an orgy of holiday spending. As author Elliot continues, "In time, infantile societies become degraded, unable to meet the realities that face them" (Elliot 86). Unfortunately, it is quite easy to see our own society degrading as it crawls further into childhood and less onward into adulthood.

We have already seen the degradation of neighborhoods, families, and social life in much of our society, and our self-centered lifestyles geared to earning more money to buy more "Stuff" like designer Halloween decorations can only lead to further degradation and isolation. Elliot uses.