{"id":2645,"date":"2009-10-27T05:03:40","date_gmt":"2009-10-27T13:03:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/?p=2645"},"modified":"2009-10-27T05:03:40","modified_gmt":"2009-10-27T13:03:40","slug":"lcg-on-halloween-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/cog-news\/lcg-on-halloween-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"LCG on Halloween Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/Halloween-Dublin.jpg\" alt=\"Halloween in Ireland\" width=\"250\" height=\"188\" \/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/cogwriter.htm\">COGwriter<\/a><\/p>\n<p>In his latest commentary, LCG&#8217;s Gary Ehman wrote:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3>&#8220;Why is a kid like you out on a night like this?&#8221;<\/h3>\n<div>By Gary F. Ehman | Tuesday, October 27, 2009<\/div>\n<div>The headlines glaringly scream: \u201cSex Offenders See New  Limits for Halloween\u201d; \u201cPlan Ahead and Avoid Halloween Violence\u201d; \u201cHalloween: A  Very Dangerous Day for Children\u201d; \u201cHalloween Costumes Cause Pedestrian  Accidents\u201d; \u201cPolice Warn about Drugged Candy.\u201d<\/div>\n<div><noscript><\/noscript>It\u2019s that time of the year again; pumpkins, witches, goblins, black cats,  bats and vampires swirl around in the heads of children as they plan their  annual assault on the neighborhood to get treats while threatening tricks.Parents nervously give into childish demands, driven by the economics of  retail profiteering, expressed in the seasonal advertising blitz aimed at the  kids who make the demands on the parents. Isn\u2019t this just all a big bunch of  fun? If so, why do we have the glaring, screaming headlines each year?<\/p>\n<p>A study by the University of Michigan states that traffic deaths among  children are more than four times higher on Halloween. \u201cOn Halloween night,  pedestrian fatalities among trick-or-treaters are about 4.5 times the levels of  other nights \u2026 \u2018This increase does not occur in daylight periods and it is  primarily restricted to children 15 and under,\u2019 said John Sullivan of  UMTRI.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>He noted that this is a consequence of the special vulnerability of  pedestrians at night, \u201calong with the greater than usual numbers of children out  on Halloween, increasing the opportunity for an accident.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>More \u201cscary\u201d than this is the report from the <em>New York Times<\/em> prior  to Halloween last year that: \u201cAll across the country this year, local and state  authorities are placing registered [sex] offenders under one-night curfews or  other restrictions out of fear that in only a few days, costumed children asking  for candy will be arriving on their doorsteps\u201d (<em>New York Times<\/em>, Oct.  2006)&#8230;<\/div>\n<p>Parents need to understand that teenage boys are often the target of random  Halloween crimes just as much as girls are. Not surprisingly, boys have a higher  risk, because many parents fear for the safety of girls and don\u2019t allow them out  as late as boys.<\/p>\n<p>In the face of these risks, is it really worth taking a chance in this  violent day and age? Is Halloween just harmless fun for youth and amusing  entertainment for adults?<\/p>\n<p>Not according to Penn State researcher, Cindy Dell Clark, Associate Professor  of Human Development and Family. She says parents need to realize that scaring  children this age isn\u2019t necessarily a way to make them safe from fears of death  and other things frightening.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHalloween is a time when we expose kids to behavior that is not the norm.  Children connect the holiday with death,\u201d said Clark, whose study, titled,  \u201cTricks of Festival: Halloween, Children and Enculturation\u201d was published in the  anthropological journal, <em>Ethos<\/em> (<a title=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2005\/09\/050922020544.htm\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2005\/09\/050922020544.htm\">www.sciencedaily.com\/releases\/2005\/09\/050922020544.htm<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Is there a real story behind Halloween and other holiday traditions that  claim to be Christian? Read our revealing article \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomorrowsworld.org\/cgi-bin\/tw\/tw-mag.cgi?category=Magazine9&amp;item=1103909093\">What  Is Hidden by the Holidays?<\/a>\u201d It will open a new understanding to why you do  the things that you do \u2013 traditionally. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lcg.org\/cgi-bin\/tw\/commentary\/tw-comm.cgi?category=Commentary1&amp;item=1256592613\">http:\/\/www.lcg.org\/cgi-bin\/tw\/commentary\/tw-comm.cgi?category=Commentary1&amp;item=1256592613<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, it is not just physical safety that is the issue.\u00a0 Spiritual safety, which the commentary alluded to, is even a more important issue.<\/p>\n<p><em>To learn more please refer to the following article:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"\/hallo.htm\">Is Halloween Holy Time for Christians? <\/a>This article provides some historical and biblical insight on this question.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>COGwriter In his latest commentary, LCG&#8217;s Gary Ehman wrote: &#8220;Why is a kid like you out on a night like this?&#8221; By Gary F. Ehman | Tuesday, October 27, 2009 The headlines glaringly scream: \u201cSex Offenders See New Limits for Halloween\u201d; \u201cPlan Ahead and Avoid Halloween Violence\u201d; \u201cHalloween: A Very Dangerous Day for Children\u201d; \u201cHalloween [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2645","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cog-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2645","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2645"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2645\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2646,"href":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2645\/revisions\/2646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2645"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2645"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cogwriter.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2645"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}