Ah Halloween, how I missed you.
Halloween is basically like christmas for me, really its like every holiday rolled into one for me and the only holiday I recognize. Every time Halloween rolls around I get flashbacks to as a kid how much fun it was seeing houses decorated, people in costumes, the cool moon filled nights of fall, knowing evil was afoot looking out into the night and seeing leaves rustles by in the breeze and that fresh crisp smell of autumn air. Even as a kid I found Halloween night as a magical night for me. I spent the majority of my childhood with my grandparents in the country so overnight excusions into the hills alone, sleeping in the woods by a fire with just my satchel of basic supplies and pistol (alot of coyotes out there) were quite common, but just something about Halloween night was more of an adventure, one just for me. Maybe its just more suited to my morbid sense of being.
Halloween is a linguistic breakdown of All Hallow’s Evening, which broke down to All Hallow’s Even, which broke down to All Hallow’s Eve which somehow managed to mutate to Halloween. What does that mean? All Hallow’s Eve was the Christian replacement for the Celtic Pagan festival of Samhain. Originally, set on March 13, Pope Gregory III moved it to October 31st in 9th century, AD. Christian settlement of Ireland, England and Scotland began in 6th Century, AD and over a period of several hundred years, they slowly replaced the pagan traditions with traditions from their own faith, often replacing Celtic holidays with their own in order to ease the transition. All Hallow’s Eve, also known as All Saints or All Souls Day (now a separate pair of Christian holidays on the first and second of November), is your typical Day of the Dead festival similar to the Mexican Dia De Los Muertos yet without all the revelry and sweet iconography and stacked to the rafters with the laconic sincerity of Ireland’s dreary brand of Catholicism.
Damn christians always take other holidays and turn it into something for themselves. Like Easter for instance is another holiday taken from pagans. Lets look at this a little closer and Ill use easter as my template. 1- The pagans has the spring festival which they celebrated the birth of new life, christians took it over and called it easter to celebrate the new birth of jesus. 2- The pagans saw rabbits as signs of fertility in their festival again as sign of new life, the christians took rabbits and made a fairy tale out of it to make the holiday more digestable by making it fun for kids as I cant think of anyother reason why rabbits would be associated with jesus. 3- The pagans used eggs as a sign of fertility also for their spring festival, so christians took eggs and colored them again to get kids interested in it because really what do colored eggs have to do with jesus? 4- The day easter is on changes every year depending on the posistion of the moon for fucks sake, if thats not pagan then I dont know what is. Whoever invented christianity is a genius because they dont pay taxes to the government and are able to take whatever holidays they want from others and turn it into what they want.
Im going way off the rails here though, this is about Halloween!
Looking around at Halloween the past 10 years I see it diminsh each year. Gone are the days when everyone was enjoying the day. As a kid I remember one ladys house where her whole family got into it. You could hear the spooky music and kids screaming as they ran from the house 2 blocks away. The whole house was decorated and I got the shit scared out of me when I got the courage to walk up to the porch to see chairs lining the long porch with dummies in them and as I reached for the candy bowl in the lap of a dummy it reached out and grabbed me, it was her husband and I ran away. Now if Im lucky someone has a paper cutout of a bat on their door and thats it, no one seems to want to have fun with the holiday as if our society is somehow to mature to have fun doing something that doesnt require wrapping gifts. Now we all we have are lame adult parties for an excuse to drink where women dress like sluts and say "Im a witch", of course you are.
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