Dear Editor:
After reading the Reporter article, “Spooky Sights for Halloween” (Oct. 18) I took a walk to those “uptown blocks that decorate to the hilt”, and came across a pair of tourists taking pictures of the macabre scenes. Since I speak a few dozen Asian languages fluently (this one was Tung-Tai), I understood what they were saying. They finally decided that what they were seeing—rotting corpses crawling out of graves, skeletons and bones everywhere—was a neighborhood “Death Cult”.
I walk around Hoboken every day, and can report that most of the town has resisted the cult, content to put a pumpkin on the stoop or some reminder, such as a straw man, of the end of the growing season, a seasonal “death”. But nothing to remind little kids prematurely that “Golden lads and girls all must/As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”
Halloween used to be a way to keep dentists in business by giving out candy to trick-or-treating kids. But now, thanks to the trend that started in Greenwich Village some years ago, with costumes and parades and hoopla, Halloween has become another big business, like Xmas, which requires (to the delight of merchants) a shopping trip or two.
T. Weed