Rant-Man's Notebook

By Jim "Rant-Man" MacQuarrie

Boo!

It's Halloween again, and once again, I'm forced to rant and scream about all the silly nonsense that surrounds the day.

Say it with me: Nobody is going to poison the children. Nobody is going to put razor blades in apples or needles in Snickers bars. It doesn't happen. Period. You had fun with Halloween when you were a kid, now unclench and let your kids have some fun with it, okay? Here, just go re-read my "Attack of the Funsuckers" piece from last year so I don't have to go over it all again. Then go read this editorial from today's Star-News just to hammer home the point.

Okay, now that the paranoia is out of the way, let's take a look at the other big objection to Halloween: It's EEEEEE-vil!

Some well-meaning folks have religious objections to Halloween, on the grounds that (a) it's pagan, and (b) it glorifies ungodly things. That's one way of looking at it, but I think that's a load of hooey.

It's pagan. Yeah, so? If that's your big objection, then we really need to take a look at Christmas and Easter, the two big days of the Christian calendar, both of which are soaked to the eyeballs in pagan traditions. The christmas tree, the yule log, easter eggs, the easter bunny, all of it is drawn from ancient harvest traditions and fertility rituals. The paganism charge as it relates to Halloween is just an excuse to cover the fact that some people find Halloween unpleasant, whereas the bunnies and chickies are cute and non-threatening. Halloween is scary, and if you don't like scary stuff, at least have the intellectual honesty to cop to it. The paganism charge doesn't wash if you aren't raising it in December and April.

It glorifies evil. Again; yeah, so? The world is a scary place. Your kids need to learn to deal with scary things instead of running from them. As my mama used to say, it's easier to put on shoes than to carpet the world. The whole point of Halloween is to overcome and conquer evil. On the scariest night of the year, the children go out and challenge the dark and scary things; they march fearlessly into the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and come back not only whole and safe, but with a bag of swag to show for it. The good guys win. It's an adventure, a rite of passage, a chance to actually confront and handle their fears.

It's also a good chance for you to teach your kids about the nature of the dark and scary world they have to live in, and how to handle it. Instead of feeding their fears, you can teach them to be brave in spite of them. There's a bit in the bible where somebody says "in all these things we are more than conquerors;" looking at the way some people freak out about Halloween, you'd never know it.

Going trick-or-treating will not turn your kids into satan-worshipers, okay?

But okay, so you don't like it and want no part of it. Fine. You better do a good job of explaining why, or it's going to be just one more fun thing your kids can't do, one more reason for them to get as far away from your religion as they possibly can as soon as they can. Being uptight about trivia like Halloween will actually help to turn your kids away from the God you're trying to serve. Is that what you want?

And no, don't try to sell them on some watered-down imitation "harvest party" nonsense. They see through it, and they know it's just a weak compromise so you don't have to feel so guilty about being a funsucker. It actually makes it worse, not better. Harvest parties are boring. Dressing up as biblical characters is no fun at all, but dressing up as a zombie from the grave and scaring the pants off random strangers is a LOT of fun. And believe it or not, letting your kids be a little bit evil one night a year won't do them any harm at all. Don't sweat the small stuff. Don't be a funsucker.

If you want to argue with me about this, feel free to pop over to our forum and have your say. It's right here.

BOO! Ha! Made you jump!

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