3 Reasons Why Halloween is Stupid – Part 2

Charting Course ^ | 10/17/14 | Steve Berman

[lifeofgrace]

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.

In Part 1, I briefly discussed the origins of Halloween and debunked a few myths about the holiday.  In this Part 2, I’ll get into how Halloween ruins kids and why you shouldn’t observe it. 

Modern Halloween is nothing like the holiday that (even the former, corrupt) Catholic church envisioned, and certainly not in keeping with orthodox Christian values of today’s Catholics and other denominations.  In fact, this leads me to three reasons why you shouldn’t (unless you’re a druid or a member of one other group) celebrate Halloween.

1.  Halloween is a religious holiday but not about Christianity.

The other group that loves Halloween is the Church of Satan.  They love it because it celebrates dead things, dark things, scary things, and above all, self-indulgent things.  This is what Satanists say on their website.

Satanists embrace what this holiday has become, and do not feel the need to be tied to ancient practices. This night, we smile at the amateur explorers of their own inner darkness, for we know that they enjoy their brief dip into the pool of the “shadow world.” We encourage their tenebrous fantasies, the candied indulgence, and the wide-ranging evocation of our aesthetics (while tolerating some of the chintzy versions), even if it is but once a year. For the rest of the time, when those not of our meta-tribe shake their heads in wonder at us, we can point out that they may find some understanding by examining their own All Hallows Eve doings, but we generally find it simpler to just say: “Think of the Addams Family and you'll begin to see what we're about.”

I don’t want to celebrate anything dead, dying, dark or scary.  I don’t want my children celebrating those things.  I don’t care what you think about God and Jesus Christ, or miracles, angels, or Heaven.  We are here on this Earth full of living things, powered by a warm sun which provides 100% of the light on this planet, and we communicate and exist here among LIVING things.  We bury dead things, because they rot, deliquesce, and stink.

I’d just as soon have my kids line up roadkill on the highway and munch candy while cars flattened the dead animals into skid marks than celebrate Halloween.

Satanists stand in opposition to God and everything God stands for.  They hold selfishness as the highest virtue.  Anything Satanists celebrate is something I automatically, by definition, stand against.  If you are a Christian, there’s only one reason you would celebrate Halloween, and that’s the bliss of ignorance.  Now you have no excuse.

Oh, what’s a little Satan-worship, it never hurt anyone, you say?  These demons and dark, scary things aren’t real, you say.  Satanists think they are real.  Whether you’re an atheist, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, or Hindu, when you celebrate Halloween, you’re celebrating their holiday.  If it weren’t for the trick-or-treat, dress-up, and candy, you wouldn’t be going to Mass to celebrate All Hallows Day or All Souls Day, so what’s left?  Samhain and the “shadow world”, and you’re participating in its worship.

2.  Halloween ruins children.

I could write ten thousand words on this topic.  I promise I’ll be brief.

Halloween is anti-family, teaches greed and exploitation.  And it’s over-commercialized to boot.

You don’t see movies made about busy executives struggling to get home for Halloween (in fact it’s not one of the top air travel days).  You don’t see college students loading their cars to make the drive to grandma’s house for the traditional Halloween feast.  They’re more likely buying beer and ordering pizza (it is the top beer sales and pizza delivery day).  Halloween is a day when we seek out the worst influences in our lives and encourage mayhem.  When we get older, we stock up on candy, turn on the porch light, and await the parade of children while we hand out treats and pretend to be scared by little ghouls.

There’s no family connection when the tradition consists of dressing up, walking house-to-house, and demanding candy.  This is no Thanksgiving.  Or Christmas.  Or Easter, Labor Day, July 4, or Memorial Day.

Halloween is all about taking, getting, and spending money.  There’s no way to turn “trick or treat!” into a polite request.  I wouldn’t have my kids dress up as zombies on July 4th and go door to door saying “may I please have some candy, if you don’t mind, or I’ll toilet-paper your yard.”  The implied threat of a “trick” is simply brutish.  This is how the kids are supposed to have fun on Halloween.  Getting without earning, and taking without giving are values more in line with Satanists than Christians.  I’d rather have my kids do without the candy than get it trick or treating.

Have you noticed the costumes little girls (and teenagers) are wearing lately?  If holidays are a lens magnifying our society, then Halloween’s microscope reveals a pretty filthy concoction.  We live in a time when former child stars like Miley Cyrus sell sex like candy.  I know of a few parents who actually decided to bring their young children to a Miley Cyrus concert, somehow believing it would be appropriate.  The show is more like a stripper performance in a seedy red-light district:  X-rated.  And they don’t give refunds.

Halloween costumes have become little X-rated versions of their older strippers-masquerading-as-singers.  You don’t have a be a Christian or have Christian values to hate this trend.  Dr. Jennifer W. Shewmaker blogged

These girls are taking cues from our pornified culture that tells them that to present themselves as sexual objects gives them power. They dress, move, and act like women they’ve seen in sexy movies.

But these are real life girls who will be sitting next to these boys in the classroom tomorrow. These are girls who will be taking tests, writing papers, answering academic questions tomorrow. These are girls who know these boys, it’s not a fantasy or a daydream.

These are girls who have bought into the belief that their social power comes from their sex appeal. They have bought into the belief that to make themselves into the object of male desire is a fun and exciting thing. But what they, and many women and girls, don’t know is that when this idea becomes a reality, it is far from empowering.

Letting kids wear whatever they want is a really, really bad idea.  Dressing up as a little puppy or a cowboy is cute, but dressing up as a stripper is not.  If my kids want to dress up, they can do it anytime they want, but I won’t celebrate one night of forced costumery.  If your kids don’t want to dress up on Halloween, don’t force them.  Rent a good family movie, microwave some popcorn, and curl up on the couch with them.  Better yet, turn out the porch lights so you don’t have strangers coming to your door asking why your kids aren’t out there displaying themselves like strumpets.

Retailers love Halloween.  It’s the run-up to Christmas shopping these days.  Used to be, you wouldn’t see any Christmas decorations until Thanksgiving.  Those days are long gone:  now Halloween is the starting line for the big Christmas shopping rush.  Retailers would start Christmas at Labor Day if they could get away with it (they can’t because of back-to-school shopping).  It’s bad enough that Christmas, Easter, and every other holiday on the calendar has become a reason for a sale or commercialization, TV specials, gift-giving, and spending money.  Halloween has little other purpose than retailers to find ways for you to hand over your cash to buy a new costume every year.  God forbid that little Johnny wears the same thing twice, or you make your own homemade costume (that’s so ghetto dad!).

Even taken with a grain of salt and a healthy dose of charm, Halloween has become too commercialized.  When a holiday has no other reason than to take my money, and encourage my kids to take without giving anything back, I must abstain.  If you feel addicted to this greed-fest, a little knowledge will help you step away.

In Part 3, I’ll conclude with some notes on what Halloween is really about, and a bonus reason to avoid it.

[lifeofgrace]

I got a lot of good feedback on Part 1 of "3 Reasons Why Halloween is Stupid". I'll address the general theme: Halloween is fun, therefore being against Halloween is being against fun. The conclusion: if I am against Halloween fun, then I must be against all kinds of fun and therefore no fun to be around.

There's a logical leap there that's too big to jump to that conclusion.

To be clear: Halloween is fun. I never said it wasn't. So is gambling, sex with strangers, getting drunk (not necessarily being drunk), telling filthy jokes, swearing every other word, and lighting bags of dog poop on your worst enemy's doorstep then ringing the doorbell.

There are all kinds of fun, and each kind of fun has consequences. Fun has a price. Halloween celebrates darkness, death, fear, and mayhem. Those things might be fun to some, and in our culture which has been so inoculated to these values they seem harmless.

Every 'R' rated movie features all the kinds of fun I listed above, and though we might find them abhorrent when we put ourselves in the picture, we accept them perfectly well when others are doing it on the big screen. Our kids grow up baptized in this stuff, so Halloween seems like quaint good old fashioned fun in comparison.

If you separate yourself from the 'R' (and even 'PG13') rated culture, it takes a while for the garbage to wash off, and even longer for the smell to go away. But once there, you see how far we've slipped into the mound of filth every day.

Halloween is fun, alright, but if you take a step back and look at what values we're teaching our kids, you'll see how ruinous our path is. The only option is to turn around. I love fun. I love good clean fun. The beach, the sun, picnics in the mountains, going to the mall, even going to movies. But most movies are too debased for me to sit through. You might say that's because I'm a fun-hating prude, but I say it's because I've had a chance to wash the stink off me for a while, and if you don't realize it, you may be so surrounded by that stench that you can't even smell it anymore.

Halloween ruins children. It's not the only thing that ruins children, and in fact it's pretty minor compared with the tidal wave of filth in which most of us wallow. Sometimes it's more effective to look at the quaint little bad habits than the life-controlling ones, because it's easier to break those little bad habits, and so it is with Halloween.

[lowbridge]

Bump

[beef]

Are there not more pressing things to worry about?

[elcid1970]

Agree 100%. It’s bad for children & now having achieved the stature of a Federal holiday, Halloween is turning adults into immature adolescents.

Those of us who experienced the loss of loved ones at an early tragic age don’t see any humor in graveyards & images of death.

[lifeofgrace]

Are there not more pressing things to worry about?

Your might tell your doctor that when he notices a strange new mole on you, that you say has been there for years. You may tell him about your current aches and pains, and complain about lack of energy.

You think your pains are more pressing, but the doctor wants to remove the mole and study it, because it could indicate the root of a cancer far more progressed than what you see on the surface or feel in your body.

[lifeofgrace]

having achieved the stature of a Federal holiday, Halloween is turning adults into immature adolescents

Halloween is not a recognized Federal holiday. It has the same unofficial status as Flag Day, May Day, April Fools Day, and Groundhog Day.

[tet68]

So, no porch light for you eh?

Actually Halloween is great, deer hunters get to buy
candy cheap after the 31st.

[Mich Patriot]

I’m no expert on Halloween, but my limited understanding is that it was originally a celebration of harvest, and the death stuff came in because fall also signals the coming of winter, also symbolic with things dying (whereas spring is symbolic of rebirth/life). Now it has evolved into tradition that, IMHO, brings communities together for not just candy giveaway, but other events as well. I think you’re WAY overboard on the devil worship stuff and need focus on the positives of the season. Halloween ruins children? Give me a break.

Much of your focus seems to be on inappropriate movies, which is really a different topic. You have some fair points there, but parents can control which movies their kids see, at least up to a certain age. Beyond that there’s a thing called freedom of choice that I’m quite fond of.

Lastly, I used to hand out beers to the neighborhood dads (or moms if they were inclined) on halloween night, which they’d stick in their pockets for later. It became a tradition such that certain folks never missed my house. I guess I’m going to hell.

[Sacajaweau]

My dad and I would have candy wars....seeing who could get the best deal after any holiday.

No losers in this contest!! Dad and I were pretty crafty!!

[fruser1]

I’m more worried about the paganism presented through environmentalism than halloween. Environmentalism has direct negative impact on my life. Halloween, I could care less if folks participate or not or for what reason.

[Timber Rattler]

Give me a break.

[yldstrk]

I agree that Halloween is stupid and I refuse to decorate. My life is gouhlish enough without that.

That said, the kids love dressing up. I think it is stupid for adults to have Halloween parties and God protect us from all the demons loose on Halloween. Anyone remember All Saints Day? November 1.

[all the best]

Halloween is all about fear, death, horror, decay. No need to even get into its history. Just look around you. It is a festival of darkness and death. No coincidence that it is the highlight of the year for homosexuals.

[Boundless]

> It ruins children and coats the poison with candy.

The candy IS poison.

It’s adding injury to insult. You can read any of several sugar researchers (Lusting, Richard J. Johnson) on the metabolism of glucose and fructose, and how the migration of refined sugar resulted in the global spread of needless ailments, of which diabetes and dental decay are only the most obvious. Everyone needs to dial their consumption of products with added sugar to zero.

And candy has actually gotten worse in the last 40 years, due to the rise of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Fructose builds fat pretty much directly. Glucose just spikes blood sugar, which is a separate problem.

But but at the thread topic, I’m wondering if people are going to lose their appetites for playing at scary when we’re in an era of intensified actually scary.

[elcid1970]

I was being just a teensy bit sarcastic about Halloween’s official status. It’s not Federal, it is just starting to look that way, like Cinco de Mayo.

Riddle me this: how much is spent nationwide on Halloween paraphernalia? No comparisons to Christmas, please.

;^)

[miss marmelstein]

I can’t bear adults dressing up on Halloween. I first knew Al Gore was a jackass when it became known that he threw a fete every year - once dressing up as Frankenstein or The Mummy or some such nonsense. Such immaturity.

But I do love seeing the kids in their costumes running through the streets. When my father was a kid they had something called “slamming gates” - I don’t recall the particular ritual involved with that. The kids also carried around stockings filled with flour which they would hit people with. This was NYC in the 20s and 30s.

[yldstrk]

That’s hilarious

[IronJack]

Do you seriously believe that every first-grader dressed up as Darth Vader and carrying around a plastic pumpkin has lent his soul to the Prince of Lies for the evening?

Seriously?

That might be what would be going through YOUR head, but I highly doubt there’s much on the kids’ minds except carmeled apples, Pixie Stix, and Heath Bars.

I doubt Satan is any more afoot on All Hallows Eve than the saints for whom the festival is named.

[ObozoMustGo2012]

My God, dude... lighten the f-— up!
Seriously, I can’t wait to read your 2 part expose on the evils of Christmas and how it promotes greed, selfishness and feelings of entitlement among children.../sarc

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Halloween was always my favorite holiday. It was better than Christmas. So sue me.