I was also raised in a house that didn’t really “celebrate” halloween, but my mom objected more to the idea of her already-too-fat kids begging for candy at the neighbors’ houses and threw in a little “oh and it’s evil, too” crap every few years.
And I, like START, pretty much don’t care for the holiday myself now. I really “suck” at halloween. I’ve never had a good costume, except for the time I dressed up as my brother (he had some sort of goth look to him in High School and everyone got my joke).
So now I’m 25 and I still show up to halloween parties w/o a costume and if I do have a costume it sucks and I can’t get into the “spirit” and I wish it would just friggin go away.
Hear, hear! I love Halloween more than anything else. I love the whole spooky atmosphere of the season. And I’m glad there’s one holiday we have that involves that delicious feeling of fear that makes us enjoy horror movies and roller coasters and whatnot.
Plus, here in Nevada, Halloween corresponded with the date that Nevada became a state, so we we used to get Halloween off from school as a state holiday. A few years back a ballot question changed it so that we now observe Nevada day on the closest October Friday or Monday to Halloween, so we can be assured of Nevada Day giving us a three-day weekend. It’s better in a way, but it was really cool getting Halloween itself off from school. Though I think that it would be better to get the day AFTER Halloween off, so you could stay out late trick-or-treating or going to a scary party or whatever and not have to get up early the next day. Ah well.
Anyway, I love Halloween … and although my parents had pretty strict religious beliefs, I’m glad they didn’t find Halloween offensive.
Don’t trick-or-treat if you don’t want to, but anyone who decides to co-opt a holiday - one that they’ll be glad to inform you isn’t Christian - in order to evangelize is a complete asshole. And anyone who decides that they need to take a huge shit all over it by telling kids that Halloween is evil is a worthless sack of shit. I can’t believe people really believe themselves to be so infallible that they have the right to shit all over everyone else’s good time.
You wanna really mess with people’s minds on Halloween?
Dress up in a suit and tie, get yourself a briefcase or satchel type thingy. Relabel some old magaiznes you have lying around the house. Then, go to each door, knock, hold up the relabeled 'zine and say, “Watchtower!”
Sure to cause some wondeful reactions!
One year, while my GF and I were at her mother’s house, she told me the idea she had for going to that year’s big Halloween party.
GF: “I have the perfect costume picked out for you.”
Me: “Yeah?”
GF: “Yeah. You’ll be a vampire pimp! Like a cross between Huggy Bear and Nosferatu.”
Me: “Sure, why not. And you will be…?”
GF: “I’ll be your whore.”
Big pause while everyone in the house knew what was coming.
Me: “How will that be different from every other day?”
GF’s Mom, Sis, and Auntie: “WAHHH!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA… snort… Gaghhh, hee hee hee hee… snicker… chortle…”
I made it threw “the most evil day of the year” and so far nobody has vandalized the house eventhough the people across the street did get TP’d and they gave out Kit Kats.
My mother at the last minute decided on her own that the scary tracts probably wouldn’t be effective so we passed out the comic ones with candy…I knew she would come to her senses.
My step dad made my brother up who is in casts anyway to look like a car accident victim which didn’t go over well at all with Mama Start but other than that Halloween night passed by very smoothly.
If I were you, I wouldn’t hate Halloween so much as I would be trying to distance myself from my parents. You seem to realize that it is them causing the problems and not Halloween itself.
Anyway, glad you didn’t get rolled and you got to hand out some candy afterall.
