It’s Friday, my sister-in law and her daughter are here to visit. The “CIA Leak” Grand Jury is preparing to announce possible indictments, the “Oil for Food” mess gets deeper, Miers is out of the running, and to top it off…last night the news reported they are looking for a man who exposed himself to three young girls. They were walking home from the Elementary School my son goes to and also walks home from. So my head is fried. I think I’ll give my fevered little brain a rest, kick back and enjoy the kids; maybe we’ll carve the pumpkins tonight. So, no news is good news today. Today you get some holiday thoughts to start your weekend.
Halloween is my favorite holiday, bar none. Those out there who decry Halloween as a satanic holiday can kiss my “Great Pumpkin”.
52 weeks a year Sunday is devoted to worship, plus Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving. I have absolutely no problem with that. But it chaps me that those that scream the loudest, seem to be totally ignorant to the fact that Halloween has both Celtic pagan and Christian roots.
In fact the very name Halloween is a shortened form of All Hallows Even, or Holy Evening, a Christian holiday celebrating Saints. Moved from its original date of celebration by then Pope Gregory IV. A day set aside to celebrate the dead, or more accurately, the lives of the dead.
Sure, it’s been commercialized and sanitized. But it still maintains traditions with our distant past and beliefs of our ancestors. Not a bad thing in my opinion. “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
Besides, is it such a bad thing to take one day a year to reflect on the darker, macabre side of our lives, or to make mockery our common fear of things that go bump in the night? Certainly we benefit from the way the holiday fires up our imaginations.
On Halloween we can be anything and we take a moment to wonder. A moment to wonder about things. Things that may or may not be. Things and concepts larger than us and larger than life. That split second of wonder is about as close to being a kid again as many of us will ever get. Taking that away should be criminal.
So I think celebrating Halloween is just fine. Each year I line the pockets of farmers who grow pumpkins and companies that produce Vampire Teeth and all manner of plastic decorations which glow-in-the-dark.
I adorn my home these items and my children adorn themselves in the attire of those they admire. This year’s evil, satanic costumes are Batman and Elmo. I then escort them out into a world temporarily laid bare for all to see. The good, bad and ugly.
They aren't’t too afraid, I am there with them and the lure of peanut butter cups is a highly motivating incentive.
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