Red, White and Boo!

By RICHARD CORLISS

"It's Hallo-weird this year," says Liane Curtis with a laugh. Curtis, an actress from Los Angeles, has two sons, ages 10 and 12, and admits she is a tad trepidatious about the forthcoming holiday. "I told both my boys to stay away from the malls because Mommy is paranoid. And they are definitely not allowed to dress up like they're preparing for jihad. No ninjas, no turbans, no water guns, no play guns. And with all this crazy stuff in the mail, I'm laying down the law. Nothing powdery! No more Pixy Stix this year!"

Can you blame a mom for getting frazzled? A night that is designed to unleash a kind of controlled anarchy comes this year at a time of national neurosis. Is it possible to reconcile the two? At Halloween, says Jack Santino, a professor of popular culture at Ohio's Bowling Green State University, "we acknowledge the random evil in the world and give it a central place. And it's O.K., because it is playful. It is a safe time to deal with the unsafe." But, Santino says, the eruptions of Sept. 11 make it hard to feel playful. "It's too real; it impinges upon the fantasy. So we negotiate."

In Arkansas, Governor Mike Huckabee has encouraged trick-or-treaters to engage in church or school activities instead because "we can't handle the panic that comes when a parent encounters a broken Pixy Stick in a sack and thinks it is anthrax." And businesses, fully aware that Halloween is the nation's second biggest shopping holiday, are trying to adapt too. Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla., is continuing its 11-year tradition of Halloween Horror Nights but has changed the name of its dance club from the Blood Bath to the Ooze Zone. Other businesses are erring on the side of even greater prudence. General Growth Properties, owner of 145 malls, from the Silver City Galleria in Taunton, Mass., to the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu, plans to cancel its annual trick-or-treating events on Oct. 31.

This ignores the latest twist on a now familiar argument: that unless we dress up in grotesque or silly frocks and ask people for junk food, the terrorists will have won. "Halloween is the only holiday we have left where people open their doors to strangers," says Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, author of Halloween: An American Holiday, an American History. "It's a holiday for kids, and there is no reason to take it away from them."

But some kids and adults have found a way to seize the holiday and make it their own by giving it new definition: They are turning Oct. 31 into July 4. "We are saying that to celebrate Halloween is a patriotic act," says Santino. Fire-fighter and police uniforms are jumping off store shelves as the implements of Halloween make a 180[degree] turn from fangs to flags, ghouls to Rudy Giuliani, orange and black to red, white and blue.

"Right now our factories look like Betsy Ross's flag shop," says Howard Beige, executive vice president of Rubie's Costume, a Queens, N.Y., company, which supplies such giant retailers as K Mart, Wal-Mart and Toys "R" Us. Rubie's had expected kids to demand Harry Potter and SpongeBob Squarepants. But a week after the attacks, the company stocked up on red, white and blue material and set its 1,500 seamstresses working overtime to fashion fire-fighter and soldier costumes for the boys and USA Teen Cheerleader outfits for their sisters.

Costume shops have also made quick changes for the late-fall season. Marge Olszewski at the Mar Ray Costume Shop in Palatine, Ill., has buried the sheik's robes and turbans in the back room, while scrambling to locate George Washington or Abraham Lincoln disguises. Says Patti Rogers, rental-costume manager at Norcostco Atlanta Costumes: "We've had an increase in people looking for Uncle Sam or Statue of Liberty costumes." Norcostco has dropped its traditional store-window motif: coffins.

At Cesar Inc., a Manhattan manufacturer specializing in masks of pols and celebs, the most popular icons are George W. Bush, Laura Bush, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and Bill Clinton. ("Clinton sells every year," says Cesar manager Bruce Braun. "He's going to become the next Nixon.") The sleeper seller this year is the Giuliani, which is getting orders from all over the country. "It's unheard of," Braun says. "Usually, no city wants to wear somebody else's mayor."

The real Giuliani had to consult with security experts before approving this year's Village Halloween Parade, a glitzy, 28-year New York tradition. The theme this year is "Phoenix," a call to the city to rebuild itself. Instead of the usual dancing skeletons, the parade will be led by a 16-ft. phoenix rising out of the ashes of a New York skyline (without the World Trade Center towers) and carried by 10 handlers singing New York, New York.

The holiday's approach has put new dilemmas before parents--not just how much candy to let the kids eat but also what to do if a kid dressed in a haz-mat suit comes to the door. Do you have to explain to your kids what the garb is for? And what if a "terrorist" shows up for trick or treat? "I'd just not open it," says Ann Corrao, a Gwinnett County, Ga., real estate agent and mother of two. "Maybe I'll put up a sign, NO OSAMAS WELCOME!" She's also considering letting her kids go trick-or-treating, then gathering up the candy and throwing it out. "They've got braces anyway, so I wouldn't have to tell them it's because I'm worried about anthrax."

So Americans will dance on the grave of their anxieties by going carefully or patriotically or gaudily into that dark night. They will dress as their new and old heroes, looking for blessings in disguise. Or they will support the U.S. by their decision to put on something hideous and partee! In pretending this is a Halloween like any other, they will find the strength to face this Halloween like no other. Perhaps this will give some kind of release--fake fear, real catharsis--to a lot of people for whom the scariest day of the year is now not Oct. 31 but Sept. 11.

--Reported by Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Desa Philadelphia/New York, Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and other bureaus

With reporting by Leslie Everton Brice/Atlanta, Desa Philadelphia/New York, Jeffrey Ressner/Los Angeles and other bureaus