[The occasion for posting this really old piece is learning of yet another frustration that dear Miss Lutheran is having with the Evangicals. She apparently sends her little boy to a grade school run by these lunatics, and they, presumably thinking that Hallowe'en is a satanic festivity, have made its celebration strengstens verboten. The School will have a Harvest Party instead. Yeah, I am sure first and second graders love dressing up as stalks of wheat. Ah, geez. This is just one reason (among many) why I would never be an Evangelical. This is also a reason why I don't consider myself a "traditionalist" Catholic anymore. "Trads" have a very strong tendency to frown upon any hint of fun. In fact, the piece below I originally wrote in response to anal retentive, Puritanical objections made by my fellow "trad" Catholics. These nuts don't want you even reading Shakespeare because patent blasphemies like "'Slid" will put you on the primrose path to the Mass in the Vernacular, and then it's only a matter of time before you will be leading the gay lifestyle in San Francisco and clamoring for priestesses who have burned their bras. The only fun these neo-Cromwellians seem to permit is making fun of Vatican II or ejaculating while anticipating the return of the Inquisition.
Anyway, this Evangelical School will let the kids dress up for the Harvest Party, but they may not dress as ghosts or even as superheroes like Batman or Spiderman. I hope some precocious kid piously asks if he may dress up as a New Testament Character and then comes to the party as the Gerasene Demoniac. Evangelicals are idiots.
Oh, for those who care, I am still deathly ill. Maybe I'll die before the first Presidential Debate. That would be a blessing.--Sebonde]
Must everything be kindlewood for a religious war? Well, yes. Sigh. Hallowe'en is fun. Why? It's fun to dress up as Dracula and affect a really thick Transylvanian accent. That should be reason enough to justify it. But, in this hyper-ideological age, fun unfortunately is not reason to do anything. Double sigh.
Okay, so let's be serious. There are two objections to the celebration of Hallowe'en (I insist upon the apostrophe, by the way) by Christians: 1) that, whatever its history may be, Hallowe'en has been taken over by the Satanists, Wiccans, and neo-Pagans and is, therefore, not an appropriate festivity for Christians and 2) that Hallowe'en has simply become a clever capitalist trick to rot our Children's teeth with really bad candy.
I answer that the Hallowe'en that is now being celebrated by the Darkside Wackos does not bear any resemblance to our Hallowe'en. Our Hallowe'en is based on the principle that because evil does not like to be mocked, we should by all means mock it. When a little five-year-old girl dresses up like a witch by putting on a conical made out of cardboard and smearing her face with green paint, she is being gloriously silly. The real witches hate this because to them witchcraft is a deadly serious business. They also hate it when this little girl goes around citing incantations with a high-pitched cackle of complete gibberish. How dare this little ignorant girl reduce our traditional spells to childish nonsense! This makes the real witches burn with indignation, and this is precisely why the little girl should have fun in her little witch costume.
Now, the Darkside Wackos that celebrate Hallowe'en are not silly. They are deadly serious. The Wiccans who dress up as Witches actually think by doing so they become Witches. So, they got to get the dress right. A cardboard conical hat? What, are you kidding? That would be too tacky! Yuck! No, they got to have the real thing. I have no clue as to what real witches wear these days. Robes made out of bat fur? A Necklace of the eyes of Newt? I don't know, but whatever it is (maybe whatever the Wiccan industry declares to be the Maleficarum fashion these days), they gotta have because, as we all know, clothes make the witch, eh? Also, these guys aren't satisfied with fake blood. No, no, no. They must have real blood. And so, of course, no rubber knives. I think you get the point. Of course, everyone will grant this distinction, but it will be objected that the distinction is not all that distinct for does not dressing up a witch bespeak a desire actually to be one? And, too, since everyone is dressed up as a witch, how is one to tell a good, silly witch from a deadly serious, fashion-conscious witch. In answer to the first objection, an actor who believes he is really King Lear is ripe for the Funny Farm.
Kids, it is true, have an over-active imagination, which could put them irretrievably into Neverland. Perhaps. I think this danger is exaggerated. Kids are also some of the best Thomists around, meaning they see things as they are. As long as the costumes are as cheesy as those in Doctor Who, kids won't be in any danger of blurring the distinction between fantasy and reality. I would suggest that it is precisely because kids know how to distinguish between reality and fantasy so well that they have such glorious imaginations. The ones who blur this distinction are a pretty dull lot. Take for example those who spend one third of their lives watching television (or those who swoon during a speech by Barack Obama).
As to the objection that it is hard to distinguish the good Hallowe'en from the bad, I think I have answered this, at least implicitly. Good Hallowe'en is silly and cheesy. Bad Hallowe'en is solemn and boring. I think this difference is intelligible enough. If you are at a Hallowe'en Party where instead of bobbing for apples, you have to hold hands in a circle and pray for the favor of a Celtic Goddess, you can safely assume you are at a bad Hallowe'en Party. If you are at a Party where the blood tastes like ketchup and you can see the zippers on the gorillas, you are amid silliness and, therefore, safe.
As to the objection that Hallowe'en has become another clever capitalist trick, so has, unfortunately enough, Christmas. Abusus non tollit usum
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