"Remember, [Hallowe'en] was the day where children would dress up as something they were not." Well not exactly, it's quite the reverse. Hallowe'en was the day when people would dress up as *the someone they most profoundly were, or yearned deep-down that they could bring into the light of day and make real* -- like the Lord of Misrule and Twelfth Night. On Hallowe'en and holidays like it, they were allowed to liberate their real selves from the bondage of their everyday roles and their orthodox politesse -- from their scripts in the theatre of propriety and ordinary life. However, our fastidious and hypersensitive age has lost touch with the rich, wise past and has turned things on their heads. It is now transforming one of our very few intervals of liberation into a day on which we must intensify the conventions and repressions that we act out during the rest of the year. Today's Hallowe'en is a masquerade all right -- it's a travesty of the "holidays" of yesteryear.