Trick-or-treating—setting off on Halloween night in costume and ringing doorbells to demand treats—has been a tradition in the US and other parts of the world for more than a century.
And while philosophy professor Agnes Callard allows her kids to take part in it, she thinks the fun has to end right there, without indulging yourself in the fruits of your efforts.
A few days ago, Callard tweeted that her 9-year-old child was thrilled to find she hadn’t thrown away their candy overnight, as she normally does. This year, the mom apparently forgot.
But after she shared her take on Halloween candy, Callard started receiving accusations of abuse, and even got compared to the infamous Bean Dad, a man who “invested” 6 hours into teaching his 9-year-old to open a can.
Halloween has come and gone and some of those who went trick-or-treating are still enjoying its rewards
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But one mom told Twitter she doesn’t allow her kids to hold onto the candy
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Her thoughts immediately went viral
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Out of all her takes she shared online, Callard didn’t expect this one would be met with such backlash. “In fact, I have tweeted about this before and no one cared,” she told Bored Panda.
And so far, she has not changed her mind. “Judging from the responses, other parents tend to adopt measures such as: confiscating the candy and then doling it out bit by bit over a long period; allowing children to select a few pieces and then throwing the rest away; having children trade it for toys; giving it away to children’s friends; eating it themselves, etc. Few, if any, parents have endorsed allowing children to gorge themselves on candy at will for as long as the candy lasts,” she explained. “This suggests that the norm is for parents to take away their children’s Halloween candy in one way or another, though most parents prefer to be less explicit or direct about what they are doing than I am.”
Some of her opponents say that if she feels this way about Halloween candy, the mom shouldn’t allow her kids to go trick-or-treating in the first place. But Callard isn’t impressed by this line of thinking. “That seems like a poor argument for a number of reasons, but I don’t think self-defense is warranted here,” she said, urging everyone interested to read her essay in The New York Times called If I Get Canceled, Let Them Eat Me Alive.
“At first my kids wanted to go onto Twitter to defend me (I guess they had not read my NYT oped), and it was hard to restrain them from doing so,” Callard added. “So when, last night, my 14-year-old son, having taken some time to reflect on the mania of the mob, came out with the ‘I wonder how many times I’ve been part of this sort of thing and not realized it?’ I was a very proud parent,” the mom added.
And have started a heated discussion
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Being a philosophy professor, Callard gave BuzzFeed what the publisher called a mini-lecture about the whole ordeal, and we think you’ll be interested to see it too.
“There seems to be a need to build a kind of narrative around this candy thing; it’s somehow important to people to be able to read this as a sign in a larger story, or a clue as to some deeper fact about me, even when this requires substantial interpretive creativity. The emotions that sustain this reaction, which are sometimes ecstatic, depend on the public development of this story. So I understand the reaction to my tweet as an attempt to retell my story, to cast me as a different person in light of the anger generated by the tweet. In a way, it’s almost a protective behavior: once that anger is felt, and once the crowd has committed to it, it has to be justified. Or else the community’s moral sensibilities are called into question.”
Some even shared real-life encounters with her
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