Tomorrow is Halloween, which contrary to what some may believe, ISN'T a pagan holiday. I just thought I might clear that up, because I have my reasons. I still often hear people, particularly right-wing ultra-religious wingnuts, utter that tried-and-true condemnation of an utterly harmless holiday.
Halloween, cynically speaking, is a holiday that keeps the profits up for candy companies. It's also a way for people to scare other people in socially acceptable ways. It also provides needed impetus for people to dress up like Zombies without being thought of as hopelessly eccentric and at war with conventional concepts of reality. But most importantly, it's another in a series of good reasons to get sick drunk at a party. At said party, it is imperative to lock yourself and your latest sexual partner in the one available bathroom of a house where said party is being thrown. This forces everyone to have to relieve their urination situations out on the front lawn. This also encourages you to take silly risks like having sex in a sink. Assuming the sink doesn't give way, flooding the bathroom with water from burst pipes, then all should be well.
When Comrade Kevin was a boy, he knew to avoid the houses of the Pentecostal sorts who instead of leaving candy, left a bowl full of religious literature. He also knew to avoid the houses of certain evasive sorts of folks (usually old people) who didn't want to deal with us urchins and instead left bowls of bad candy, like say butterscotch, out on the front porch. A silly move by any stretch of the means, mostly because this meant that problem kids usually took the liberty of taking the entire bowl and dumping it into their Hefty Hefty cinch sack already chock full o' candy.
I plotted for Halloween like a mini-fucking Napoleon. My friends and I schemed weeks prior to get the maximum amount of candy. We would start our rounds early, when it was still light out, not quit until late at night, and have a good four months worth of candy to show for our efforts. One memorable Halloween, we trick o' treated for five hours straight and I had HALF a garbage bag full of sugary sweets.
If lolcatz had been popular then, my personal lolcat would have stated:
OH HAI! I BE TRICKERZ TREATINGZ! I WANTZ CANDIEZ!
I must admit it for all the world to hear...
ReplyDeleteAye luvz dis blugh! Aye luvz comred keven!
You have such wit and insight.
Living here in Heathen/Catholic(we are neo pagan idol worshippers anyway)/Jewville in the Northeast we did not have the Pentecostal factor.
We actually did this in the pre urban legend days of homemade cookies, bobbing for apples and all sorts of cool stuff. No one was afraid. I loved that.
Well you might be afraid of "hoods" or other bad teenage types who were rumored to steal candy from us single digit age types. It never happened though.
Pagan schmagan. Tomorrow the RC Church and others celebrate All Souls Day for a reason.
The wingnutters need a cause to bitch about and Halloween is as good as any.
This was a great read Kev. Thanks.