Hallowe'en

(That's how my British day planner spells it. ;-))
So, when I was growing up in my Good Evangelical Household, Halloween was from the Devil. It was the holiday in which Satan was worshipped and cats were sacrificed in the bayous. In fact, when I was in high school the local Christian music station decided it was going to enlist cars to drive in loops around the city while praying to protect us from the devil's work in Halloween and a Marilyn (sp?) Manson concert.
It was fabulous.
So, anyway, I kind of have a chip on my shoulder about Halloween. I am Determined that, for me, Halloween will now be a Fun and Wholesome experience, no longer tinged by guilt or Satanic overtones. I went to a Halloween party and dressed up. I got candy to give out to the little kids. I even carved The Most Adorable Jack-o-lantern Ever. (Don't tell my mother, she'll think I've joined a Satanic cult.) My roommate and I (the sane one) had a great time handing out candy to the trick-or-treaters, admiring all the costumes, wanting to steal the babies, and desperately searching the house for more candy to give to demanding adolescent boys when we ran out. (We finally found two suckers and told them to split them among a group of about six boys. It was pretty funny. We managed to keep a snickers and a kit-kat for ourselves. ;-))
On the other hand, a part of me is still a wee bit sympathetic towards the anti-Halloween people. Down the street there are two houses that went All Out as far as decorations. Both have set out graveyards, monsters, and, tonight, homemade haunted houses. However, the part I find really disturbing is this: in addition to the fake dismembered heads stuck randomly around the yard, one of the houses has a man hung from the eaves. The noose is tight, the body is limp, the head is drooping, and a small trickle of blood runs from the neck.
Alright, here's the thing. Remember that scene at the beginning of Braveheart when little William Wallace walks into the barn-thing and finds all the men hung from the rafters? Remember how frightening and disturbing that was the first time you saw it, and how frightening and disturbing you thought that must have been for little William? Well, the thing is, that's Supposed to be frightening and disturbing. Such a display of suicide or human- inflicted brutality Should be horrific, because both of those things are so terrible. But when it's something on the house of the Guy-Down-the-Street, the sight simply brings a thrill of fear and rebellion.
So please stop robbing the little kids of their God-given right to feel horror at something that should never take place.
(And I bet the people next door would really appreciate it too, because even in Southern California with the 'hot real estate market,' those poor people can't seem to manage to sell their house. ;-))
After all, people, you're just inciting Christian radio stations to perform weird, slightly cultish rituals anyway. ;-)