By Joseph Kim, 2018

It has been 13 years that Osama bin Laden and his combatants ruthlessly decimated the heart of America. And it also has been 13 years that people have persevered to protect their own hearts too.

The night, the dimmest time of a day can also be the most harrowing time of a day in America. Since 2001, Al Qaeda’s abrupt intrusion, Americans started to be terrified by the fact that they were invaded by foreign force, on their land. Moreover, the freedom of guns made them more vulnerable during their daily lives. They began to intensify security systems; not only socially, but also individually. They began to stay at a shelter of home from a night, dark place where lethal weapons can wait to lurk on them.

This tension has existed in a popular festival too. My aunt, who has dwelled in Richmond Beach in Shoreline for 22 years, always lamented pensively whenever the Halloween was imminent. “Street had always been full of many groups of kids who visited houses and exclaimed Trick or Treat. But after 9.11, most of them disappeared suddenly and the street became totally vacant. Now I somehow miss them.” Although there would be an exception, but her remark is not entirely fallacious.

Practically, most of Halloween-advertisements incessantly maintain that the number of trick or treatings is in incremental state; but in an individual statement, it is more likely that the number of kids stays is in a state of declining. For instance, when I once had resided in Bellevue for a year and a half, there were only two kids who visited for a trick or treating in 2013. Furthermore, they came without a costume when my parents just started to prepare for a dinner. Also, from my aunt’s statement about kids’ numbers through 2011~2013, there were total 4 kids who visited, which is pretty not an enormous number in comparing with time before 9.11 when dozens of kids always roamed on a street to shout “Trick or treat!”. Now we can notice that those kids are all congregating in a mall, the place where proffers more cozy, safer circumstance for kids. Most of the financial profits from Halloween that the government boasts are for feast in secure malls, not on a street.

The new era is impending on the Halloween celebration now. The threat of fatal weapons gradually, perniciously generate the old tradition confronts a demise. Mall will be full, street will go empty……now the time of dreary Halloween starts again.