Posted on 10/16/2014 11:34:54 AM PDT by lifeofgrace
Halloween is my least favorite time of year. Every year, I get tired of telling people why I don’t observe Halloween, why my kids don’t dress up and go trick-or-treating, and why our porch light is dark on October 31st. I am then accused of being a grinch, or a humbug, or a kid hater, or some religious nut, or a prude. I am none of these things. I simply see no useful reason why there’s a holiday called Halloween, or why anyone should celebrate it.
Halloween is a celebration of fear, secrecy, darkness, death, and mayhem. It ruins children and coats the poison with candy. Halloween is a holiday for the ignorant, a day set aside to honor a lack of knowledge, by people who don’t care enough to gain it. Halloween is a feast of stupid self-indulgence. There’s nothing positive I can say about that day, no matter how much fun it may be to dress up, join a bunch of other people, walk door to door demanding candy, then go home and gorge yourself on it while watching horror movies.
Before you shoot the messenger, let me clear up a few things.
I grew up with Halloween like most American children. We went out trick-or-treating every year. I remember wearing some kind of costume and knocking on doors, asking for candy. It was a somewhat simpler time—the late 60’s and the 70’s. We didn’t worry so much about gang violence or child abductions. We went out carrying little orange plastic pails decorated like jack-o-lanterns, dressed in store-bought Bugs Bunny or Hong Kong Phooey costumes, or a homemade ghost or vampire with plastic fangs. We feasted on Pez, Bubblicious, M&M’s, and the coveted Reese’s Cups until we were sugar-buzzed and sick to our stomachs.
I was never abused as a child, or scared witless by some stranger. I have no fear of clowns or costumes. My biggest fear as a kid was X-rays; I could never watch the title sequence of the Six Million Dollar Man because there was an X-ray of a skull in it. That just freaked me out. I’ve never recovered—to this day I can’t watch House without getting nightmares. You don’t see too many kids walking around on Halloween dressed up as X-rays so I think that’s safe.
I am also not a dentist or the child of one (I couldn’t handle being regularly bitten by children anyway). I have no bias against sugary treats. My kids can chow down on candy as much as any privileged American children. I’m also not against dressing up in costumes.
About now is when you ask me “so why do you hate Halloween if none of those things bother you?” Obviously I’m not ruined and I celebrated Halloween, you say. I’m not ruined because I possess some truth of what Halloween really is.
This would be the point where you think I’m going to tell you that Satanists bounce out of the woods, kidnap your children and perform blood sacrifice on them before killing them and burning their bodies. No, those would be insane murderers, and if there were any chance of it happening on Halloween, the authorities would be all over it. Let me debunk the typical myths. Strangers don’t poison candy, put razor blades in apples, or abduct children on Halloween. The biggest safety hazard during trick-or-treat is being hit by a car. If you do it during the daylight, that cuts the risk significantly.
There. Now we can be reasonable and throw out all the nutty stories and stick to facts.
You may know a bit about the origins of Halloween. Back before much of recorded history, in what historians call “antiquity”, the Celtics and druids celebrated a Pagan holiday called Samhain (SOW-in), as the end of summer, halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. They believed that the shortening of the days, and the advent of cold weather (it’s northern Europe, nasty climate and all) signified the dying of the world each year, and that evil spirits would walk the earth looking to possess or consume the living. They would dance around bonfires and dress up in various costumes to “entertain the spirits”, to avoid being possessed.
But that’s not the Halloween we celebrate today. It’s short for All Hallows Eve, which is the day before All Hallows Day. A bonus question: isn’t there another day called All Souls Day? Yes, there is, and if you knew that, you’re probably Roman Catholic. Here’s the progression: All Saints Day is a Catholic Feast day commemorating the saints who have entered Heaven. It’s followed by All Souls Day, which commends us to pray for souls who are being purified in purgatory or have entered Heaven to commune with us who are still living on the Earth.
In short, Catholics believe that we can pray for the dead and the dead will pray for us.
Over time, as Catholicism moved into northern Europe, they started evangelizing the Celtics and druids. Pope Gregory IV moved the traditional May celebrations of All Hallows Day and All Souls Day to November 1-2, to coincide with Samhain. You see, Bibles were rare back then, and it was simply much easier to give the heathens a new holiday to celebrate than the actually teach them Biblical truth. In those days the Catholic Church in 846 A.D. was not a particularly Bible-focused organization—it was more like the Cosa Nostra than the Sisters of Mercy.
The two holidays merged: the Catholic belief in communion with the dead, and the pagan belief in evil spirits, and gave birth to Halloween. Today, modern druids (the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids) celebrate Samhain much as the ancients did. If you’re one of these, you have my blessing to carry on…you’re wrong about many things, but at least you’re not a hypocrite.
In Part 2 we’ll review how Halloween ruins kids and celebrates ignorance and death.
I don’t get candy corn or cotton candy. Just eat raw sugar.
Now chocolate of course is one of the basic food groups.
Yup, gotta watch out for those Catholic Groundhogs, they’re bad news.
Seems like every year I have to refute this.
The earliest martyrologies we have show that the Celtic Christians indeed celebrated All Saints Day in Spring (I believe April actually). Later martyrologies show it was moved to the Roman date, which was Nov. 1.
But the author got the reason totally wrong.
The reason the Romans celebrated on Nov. 1st is because on that day a church was dedicated in Rome to "All the Saints". It was pretty typical then, as indeed it still is, to celebrate the anniversary of the dedication of a church.
Believe me when I tell you a Roman in the 700s or 800s wouldn't have cared one flying fig about an obscure holiday celebrated by Celtic pagans at the boundaries of the known world.
I dunno. Clown Poop?
It’s fun. Don’t worry about Pt. 2.
But it’s fun.
Last year I got a bunch of treats and no one came to our door. This year I will still buy some but the number will be low.....one can only consume so much in the aftermath. :)
Halloween was instructive to me... taught me to engage adults in a conversation. In particular, when we were visiting grandparents in Wilmington Delaware and my uncle took us around the neighborhood (duplexes and row homes with front porches) This was early 1960’s and there were many older couples there. We knocked on the door, we were invited into the living room and asked about our costumes and coaxed to sing a song or otherwise entertain the people there.
That was a lot of work to get the candy!
Some of the best parties I’ve been to are Halloween Parties,,, never a bad one...
Part one was irritating and boring enough. This guy needs to get the fudgesickle stick surgically removed from his anus and take a couple shots of Bushmills and loosen up a little. :-)
I have the no costume folks too. I’m the bad women who gives candy only to those in costume (and to older kids who are chaperoning the younger ones).
I’ll open early 5 or 6 o’clock, once the pre-teens are through (about 7), I turn off the porch light.
In Italy up until recently, there was a) no Christmas tree, b) no yule log, and c) no Santa, and d) not really much gift giving? Halloween wasn't even heard of there.
These things you are finding fault with actually came from mostly Protestant countries--but for many many hundreds of years before that and really most everywhere in the world, the essence of Christmas and Easter and All Hallows was *going to Church* and having a great big celebration afterwards.
You can't just cherry pick these tiny insignificant aspects of a modern holiday--which up until recently weren't even widespread--and claim that is evidence of pagan associations. That's just insane. Especially since we know for a fact that Christians were celebrating Christmas and Easter when they were still a persecuted minority.
Remember what Tertullian famously said as he scoffed paganism: "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" Who harshly denounced pagan celebrations? Even HE celebrated Easter.
Nah! The best Halloweens were during the 50's, when Halloween decorating was encouraged, Halloween parties were still allowed in schools, and you didn't have to worry about getting bad things in the candy you collected. Because you went to the same neighborhoods every year, you knew the best houses to go to, and the type of candy you'd get. Halloween for kids back then was a safe and fun experience. It was one of the best times of the year...next to Christmas.
I’ll sit here eating my candy corn and carmel apples waiting for part II.
That can be said for several of our holidays.
We need to shake up our holiday calendar--get rid of Halloween and the above-mentioned holidays, give greater emphasis to Martin Luther King Day, and make Cesar Chavez day (March 31), Cinco de Mayo (May 5) and John F. Kennedy's birthday (May 29) national holidays.
FWIW, a humbug is a public hoax, or one who perpetrates public hoaxes.
P.T. Barnum was known as the "Prince of the Humbugs".
When Ebenezer Scrooge said, "Bah! Humbug!" about Christmas, he was calling it a hoax.
Gee whiz, I just can’t wait for part II. (snicker)
When the kids come to my door shouting "trick or treat," I always ask them what trick would they do if I didn't treat them. That usually stops them, because they've never thought of doing some kind of trick. I treat them anyway.
Now wouldn't that freak out all the leftists on college campi across the country to have some students stroll into class dressed like Columbus?
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