Happy Halloween Y’all. Please don’t burn any cats or people.
Monday, October 31st, 2011
My pumpkin came out surprisingly well this year, if I do say so myself. The blood is cut from a roma tomato and pressed into a crevice carved into the surface.
I say “Happy Halloween” today, but back when I was in grade school I remember receiving a different message, which went something like this:
Don’t celebrate Halloween. It’s a celebration of a day on which bad people used to go around burning Jews.
I did a bit of Google searching today and have yet to find any evidence that there was a general practice of burning Jews on Halloween. Communities in Europe did burn people who had been accused of witchcraft with alarming regularity1, but I don’t know if they did so particularly on October 31. There does appear to have been a common practice in which black cats were burned on Halloween, which I don’t condone. Many sermons on the net claim that the predecessor to Halloween was a Celtic feast to celebrate a god of death named “Samhain”, and thus anyone of a religion that doesn’t recognize Samhain as a god should spurn the holiday –but it appears that this god of the dead thing is likely a translation mixup that started in the 18th century and according to academics Samhain is just the name of a festival and not a deity.
So I say as long as you’re not inclined to celebrate the flammability of humans of any stripe, feel free to go out and celebrate Spider Man or whoever your costume is supposed to represent. And if you’re driving, watch out for kids chasing candy into the street, and try not to get too distracted by all the women wearing sexy-whatever costumes2.
- but apparently not as often as many believe [↩]
- “Sassy” Adult Cookie Monster Costume? WTF! [↩]
