Behind the costumes and treats of Halloween lurk many dangers for children, writes Róisín Ingle
In Scotland recently an irate Methodist minister took his children out of school when teachers organised a "wear to scare" fundraising event.
The pupils had been encouraged to dress up in scary costumes for fun but Reverend Andrew Renshaw protested that using the word "scare" to describe any event at school was no laughing matter.
"Causing panic or fear to children is completely wrong and I don't want my children to be involved in anything like that," he said. Rev Renshaw urged other parents to do the same because he reasoned, "Halloween puts children at risk."
Rev Renshaw is not alone in believing Halloween can be bad for your health. In Derry last week a doctor and a priest banded together to call for the city's annual Halloween festival, the biggest on this island, to be scrapped if underage drinking during the festival was not addressed.
Fr Michael Canny and local GP Dr Anne Doherty wrote to the Derry mayor, Helen Quigley, to outline their concerns. Now on the Derry City Council's website there is a call for "carnival care" and an alcohol-free zone has been introduced.
Even Halloween costumes have been castigated. Last week a US state educator, Mark Manno, highlighted accidents caused by "unsafe costumes".
He warned parents to "check to see that costumes are made of flame-resistant materials and that hems are three-four inches off the ground. To make sure children will be visible after dark, choose brightly coloured costumes and use reflective tape."
While it would be easy as pumpkin pie to dismiss these commentators as killjoys they will just as easily respond to accusations of politically correct molly coddling with hard evidence of parental hypocrisy.
After all, Halloween is a holiday where we encourage children to knock on the doors of strangers in the dark asking for treats; the rest of the year we tell them not to talk to strangers especially ones proffering sweets.
Tonight, with their parents' permission, our young people will be in close proximity to both bonfires and fireworks, many of them held illegally; the rest of the year we tell them not to play with fire.
During Halloween we allow our little darlings to consume sacks full of sweets loaded with E numbers; the rest of the time we wring our hands about the nutritional quality of everything from breakfast cereal to supermarket-sourced chicken breasts.
And as the trick or treaters get dressed tonight, they'll put on masks and costumes that impair their vision when the usual entreaty from parents is "watch where you're going".
The only surprise when it comes to this fresh spate of Halloween concerns is that they haven't come sooner. The Government is stamping down hard on illegal fireworks and, meanwhile, the ethics of deliberately trying to scare children is being debated like never before.
Joel Best, professor of sociology at the University of Delaware, Ohio, knows well how Halloween paranoia can shift perceptions of the spooky holiday.
"Halloween paranoia in the US really started in the 1960s with fears that hippies were lacing trick or treat candy with drugs. It went on from there to people thinking maniacs were putting razor blades or poison in apples," he says.
"I've examined the statistics though and from 1950 there is not one incident of a child being harmed in this way. "When people start to express fears for the future they tend to do it through their children," he says.
Best says that Halloween in the US, the second-biggest festival after Christmas, has become more of an adults event with super-stores stocking exclusively grown-up costumes.
"We're becoming increasingly fearful of letting our children loose at Halloween, the idea that it's a children's holiday is slowly disappearing," he says.
Philip Mudge of the National Parents Council says it would be a shame if the same kind of paranoia - parents checking their children's sweet booty for dangerous substances - started to happen here.
"The last thing you want to do is wrap your children in cotton wool. There is a risk inherent in everything, riding a bike or crossing the road. As parents we have to help children to balance that risk," he says.
In Mudge's village of Caherconlish outside Limerick the annual Halloween community party was to be held last night.
"We are going to have a Tunnel of Doom with all sorts of scary stuff in it. I am hoping loads of children take part. They know they are in a safe place and if any little children get scared by a mask you take it off and explain it's not real," he says.
"The good in having a community wide Halloween celebration far outweighs any potential risk. It's all about common sense."