It's raining. It's Friday. The nuts are on the highways. And the radio.Hub and I were running errands. Conservative talk show host, Sean Hannity was on the radio. He was railing on about how Halloween is a Liberal holiday because it teaches kids to go door to door begging for something for nothing. Wow. Now I realize it takes a lot to fill the hours allotted to talk radio hosts day in and day out, but how absurd does one have to get?
Maybe that's the way it's looked at today. It sure was different when I was a kid. Having grown up Catholic, November first was All Saints Day and we always had to drag our selves out of bed, shrug off our candy high, and hustle off to Mass because it was a Holy Day of Obligation. In other words you had to go.
The night before was Halloween. It really began as a Celtic tradition. You know how those Irish love to party! So, the night before All Hallows was Hallow's Eve; Hallowe'en. The night when the dead wandered, evil dead. People put out food and drink to mollify the creatures before evil befell them.
The tradition continued and morphed into what we as kids knew. Before vandalism and poisoned treats ruined it, kids would spend the night, or maybe even a few nights, before soaping windows, ringing doorbells and running, or rat-a-tatting windows with a homemade notched spool spun with string. Off into the dark we would run giggling at our daring.
Halloween night we'd dress in our homemade costumes and go door to door looking for treats to avoid a repeat performance. It worked, you know, we always got treats.
It's a sad day when all that's left of a tradition for kids is a misconception of what it was about not to mention the politicizing of it.
When happenings like this were more than my Mom could grasp she always slipped into the mantra of how the time she had left on this earth was short and that she had been fortunate enough to have lived in the good old days.
I understand. I really understand. It makes one wonder what kinds of memories kids today will have when they look back at their good old days. I hope it's more than Halloween being a Liberal holiday!
3 comments:
When you look at commentaries such as Hannity's, you always have to wonder if the fellow was born yesterday or arrived on a U.F.O. Does the fellow remember that he was a kid? That he may once have dressed up in a costume and then went trick or treating?
That trick or treating is indeed a continuance of "putting food out for the wandering dead" to keep them from cursing and bedeviling you and your household. And the kids in putting on the costumes become the wandering dead or who play tricks if they don't get treats; are simply acting the parts of a tradition that began thousands of years before.
You can always politicize anything, but I will bet that the people politicizing Hallowe'en and its Christianized traditions today, got into costumes as children and went rick or treating door to door. And can be considered hypocrites now for demeaning a tradition that they once participated in.
Glad you agree with me on something! Lol!
This post just reinforces my opinion of Hannity: he's a whiner. go ahead and check it out--it's totally true.
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