For a holiday that doesn’t include presents or days off from school, why is Halloween so popular?

And is it better than it used to be, or worse?

If you were a kid at any time during the ‘70s, the contrast between Halloween now and Halloween then is pretty clear.

(Besides the fact that now you’re the parent.)

For starters, you didn’t buy a costume back then, you made one. You thought of something cool, that nobody else would come up with, and then you spent the two or three weeks leading up to October 31st badgering your mother to help you make it.

“Pretty please?”

Sometimes your creation went over well, sometimes it didn’t:

KID #1: What are you?
KID #2: I’m Floyd, the Hillbilly Sheriff.
KID #1: Oh.

Now everybody just goes to Target or one of those pop-up Halloween stores and picks out one of the pre-packaged outfits from Star Wars, Hannah Montana, Harry Potter, X-Men, G.I. Joe, Transformers, iCarly or Micky Mouse Clubhouse, or for those who want something less commercial, a costume from the unbranded collection:

KID #1: Who are you?
KID #2: I’m a generic pirate. Argh. How about you?
KID #1: I’m a generic ghost. Boo.

Not that homogenization is all bad: at least nobody gets their feelings hurt because their costume sucks.

And for grown-ups who can’t tell Boba Fett from Voldemort, it’s convenient that asking “And what are you supposed to be?” once means you’ll be able to correctly identify 80% of whoever comes up to your door the rest of the night.

There were plenty of other differences as well:

• Schools actually had Halloween parties during school hours.
• If a kid was going as, say, a soldier or a cowboy, he’d bring a toy gun without worrying about a zero-tolerance expulsion.
• For costumes in general, nobody thought twice about being culturally insensitive. (And sometimes it seemed like that was the whole point.)
• Kids went trick or treating by themselves, late into the night, without flashlights, beacons, cell phones, GPS or an adult guardian.
• Nobody gave out healthy snacks (or felt guilt that they didn’t).

Maybe it’s just that everything seemed to move at a slower pace back then, with fewer complications and less to worry about — the biggest fear a parent faced was an apple with a razorblade inside, not an Amber Alert.

(Or an H1N1 outbreak after a crowded Halloween party.)

Contrast that with today, where there seem to be so many risks and potential red flags, it’s amazing we even let our kids participate in a tradition where they walk around in the dark collecting candy we haven’t screened from neighbors we haven’t met.

Then again, if the whole point of Halloween is to be scared, now definitely beats then, and probably will until our kids are grown.

(Which is exactly what our parents said in the ’70s.)