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Halloween - The Good, Bad, and the Scary
Children love Halloween; or most likely, they love to dress up and pretend they are super heroes, rock stars, cheerleaders, or monsters. Too bad that Halloween is only once a year, and too bad that Halloween has such an evil reputation as being a day that opens the gateway to Hell. Seeing happy little children dressed as fairies or Darth Vader is not the same Halloween it was two thousand years ago.
Ancient people (and even modern people today) believe in spirits - good ones, and bad ones. When I am seeing a traditional Hmong family in the clinic, they are unusually quiet. They do not want to draw attention to themselves by the evil spirits that lurk around medical offices. Actually, I have seen them myself, cleverly disguised as inspectors renewing one of our many accreditations. The Hmong and many other people in third-world nations do not believe in germs as a cause of disease; they believe that evil spirits are responsible. Since it is becoming more and more difficult treating certain drug-resistant diseases now, I am inclined to start believing it myself.
Two thousand years ago, the Celts, a much admired group by the tattooed crowd, believed that October 31st - the last day of their year - was a day when ghosts came back for a visit, and the dead comingled with the living. The Celts would dress in masks and costumes to scare them away, and leave offerings of food (the "treats") to appease them. However, if you are already dead and just making an annual visit, I don't really understand the point. Come on...they're already dead. What can happen? I wonder if adult Celts ate the primitive Baby Ruths and Milky Ways out of their kid's stash, as is our tradition now? I heard that archeologist have found some wrappers, including one intact 2000 year old Snicker that was missed. It is still edible.
After the Romans invaded Ireland and England, Halloween begin to change. The Romans didn't really like Celts dancing around in goat pants and stuff. Then came the Christians, who put the damper on this annual holiday by making November 1st All Saints Day; thus making October 31st All Hallow's Eve, or as we know and mispronounce it, Halloween. Hallow means "Saint". All Hallow's Eve became a religious holiday. The Celts were not pleased, so they invented Irish dancing and whiskey. I made that last part up, but I love to start Internet rumors.
The good part of Halloween is the fun that children have dressing up. They love going door-to-door getting candy (for their parents). Competing neck and neck with Christmas and their birthday, Halloween is often their favorite. Why do some people hate it?
The bad part of Halloween has got to be those poor choices for costumes. Being in the medical profession and having done my time in the emergency rooms, I don't really care too much for eyeball hanging out, knives stuck in ears (worse than Q-tips!), or blood dripping down from severed limbs. I keep trying to bandage them, or at least put on some gloves to keep from getting fake blood-borne pathogens. That is the scary part for us. For the younger crowd, these costume choices are equally as terrifying. Let the teenagers wear them at parties that only have teenagers, but let's not go door to door scaring the crap out of the little ones (and their parents).
Halloween can bring out the ultimate essence of poor taste, like a transvestite Obama or a Nazi cheerleader. No one, and I repeat, no one, should be wearing costumes that are offensive or in poor taste. The medical assistant who works with my wife is from Moldova, and is offended by anything related to Halloween, even pumpkins. Since my wife loves to decorate her office for Halloween, she is slowly (very slowly) learning to tolerate this American tradition.
Spiderman, Superman, and the Transformers tend to be popular in my office for the boys. The girls still love being ballerinas, divas, or one of the Disney heroines, like Ariel or Pocahontas, although Native Americans or mermaids may be insulted. Witches and ghosts are okay; I am not particularly fond of vampires, although I did like Twilight. I can vividly remember as a child, sleeping in my hot, humid attic room with the window closed, so that Dracula would not come in. I would avoid walking through the woods at night, too. The Wolfman, if you are curious.
A local mega-church goes half-way and has a Harvest Festival. For the safety of the children, they organize an annual "Trunk and Treat." Cars are parked all around the periphery of their large lot; the children go from car to car in their costumes, getting candy and treats from the trunks of their cars. I think this is a great idea and a wonderful compromise. They are prohibited from being witches, vampires, or axe-murderers, as they should.
It is time to re-invent Halloween, not abandon it because a few inflexible people may be offended because of some issues and associations 2000 years ago. Halloween is fun if you set some reasonable perimeters and join in.
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Ancient people (and even modern people today) believe in spirits - good ones, and bad ones. When I am seeing a traditional Hmong family in the clinic, they are unusually quiet. They do not want to draw attention to themselves by the evil spirits that lurk around medical offices. Actually, I have seen them myself, cleverly disguised as inspectors renewing one of our many accreditations. The Hmong and many other people in third-world nations do not believe in germs as a cause of disease; they believe that evil spirits are responsible. Since it is becoming more and more difficult treating certain drug-resistant diseases now, I am inclined to start believing it myself.
Two thousand years ago, the Celts, a much admired group by the tattooed crowd, believed that October 31st - the last day of their year - was a day when ghosts came back for a visit, and the dead comingled with the living. The Celts would dress in masks and costumes to scare them away, and leave offerings of food (the "treats") to appease them. However, if you are already dead and just making an annual visit, I don't really understand the point. Come on...they're already dead. What can happen? I wonder if adult Celts ate the primitive Baby Ruths and Milky Ways out of their kid's stash, as is our tradition now? I heard that archeologist have found some wrappers, including one intact 2000 year old Snicker that was missed. It is still edible.
After the Romans invaded Ireland and England, Halloween begin to change. The Romans didn't really like Celts dancing around in goat pants and stuff. Then came the Christians, who put the damper on this annual holiday by making November 1st All Saints Day; thus making October 31st All Hallow's Eve, or as we know and mispronounce it, Halloween. Hallow means "Saint". All Hallow's Eve became a religious holiday. The Celts were not pleased, so they invented Irish dancing and whiskey. I made that last part up, but I love to start Internet rumors.
The good part of Halloween is the fun that children have dressing up. They love going door-to-door getting candy (for their parents). Competing neck and neck with Christmas and their birthday, Halloween is often their favorite. Why do some people hate it?
The bad part of Halloween has got to be those poor choices for costumes. Being in the medical profession and having done my time in the emergency rooms, I don't really care too much for eyeball hanging out, knives stuck in ears (worse than Q-tips!), or blood dripping down from severed limbs. I keep trying to bandage them, or at least put on some gloves to keep from getting fake blood-borne pathogens. That is the scary part for us. For the younger crowd, these costume choices are equally as terrifying. Let the teenagers wear them at parties that only have teenagers, but let's not go door to door scaring the crap out of the little ones (and their parents).
Halloween can bring out the ultimate essence of poor taste, like a transvestite Obama or a Nazi cheerleader. No one, and I repeat, no one, should be wearing costumes that are offensive or in poor taste. The medical assistant who works with my wife is from Moldova, and is offended by anything related to Halloween, even pumpkins. Since my wife loves to decorate her office for Halloween, she is slowly (very slowly) learning to tolerate this American tradition.
Spiderman, Superman, and the Transformers tend to be popular in my office for the boys. The girls still love being ballerinas, divas, or one of the Disney heroines, like Ariel or Pocahontas, although Native Americans or mermaids may be insulted. Witches and ghosts are okay; I am not particularly fond of vampires, although I did like Twilight. I can vividly remember as a child, sleeping in my hot, humid attic room with the window closed, so that Dracula would not come in. I would avoid walking through the woods at night, too. The Wolfman, if you are curious.
A local mega-church goes half-way and has a Harvest Festival. For the safety of the children, they organize an annual "Trunk and Treat." Cars are parked all around the periphery of their large lot; the children go from car to car in their costumes, getting candy and treats from the trunks of their cars. I think this is a great idea and a wonderful compromise. They are prohibited from being witches, vampires, or axe-murderers, as they should.
It is time to re-invent Halloween, not abandon it because a few inflexible people may be offended because of some issues and associations 2000 years ago. Halloween is fun if you set some reasonable perimeters and join in.
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Labels: childrens health, Halloween, holidays
3 Comments:
I think the younger kids have the best costumes, although I suppose that might be the case only in my area. It's nice having cute little princesses, fairies, spidermans, and tigers come to the door.
The teenagers in my area don't seem to put much effort into their costumes and I'm 99.9% sure that a trio that came by weren't in costume at all. They were just wearing dark clothing...maybe they were pretending to be themselves.
I saw a video on the internet of a man dressed as one of the transformers, Bumblebee I think. When he knelt down and tried to fold in on himself his costumes turned into a car. Quite creative.
Growing up my Mother never let me participate, it was the "Devil's Day". Of course now days its turned into more tradition of fun and poor dental hygene(darn spelling) than that of pagan rituals and dead spirits visitng.
This year im being rather unorigional, putting a book on my head and calling myself "Facebook", and the women of the group will dress to show off their assets. Why do they do this? Any other day and its harrassment by a male to look at them, but on halloween its allowed. Oh heck why am I complaining?
Anyway, I like the church doing the trunk and treet. My church always put a HUGE cardboard box maze in the basement, could take almost 30 min to navigate. That is fun for a kid I tell ya.
This so needed to be said. Thank you fellow Twilight groupie! :D
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