PC holloween, no more gore?

Great Debates
1

Halloween is not only OK to celebrate, I think it’s important. When I was a kid and afraid of monsters, aliens, and death… Halloween was a chance to laugh at all of the things I was terrified of. I think overall, the fear of dying plagues a lot of us, so to have fun with what we’re afraid of makes us less incline to dread it. The problem is, after this WTC disaster, parents (mostly mothers) are considering that Halloween is too violent, and what to forever change the face of Halloween.

(When I say “mostly mothers”, it’s true… there was a conference about gore and Halloween shown on the news, ALL women. So I don’t know if there’s something inside men, [blood lust, i.e., Fight Club… but I’m not supposed to talk about that], that only a few women have or understand. Or if it’s conditioning. I don’t know, my mother was always cool about that stuff.)

There was someone on the news who works at a novelty shop and said that the WTC disaster had hindered her sales on fake blood and gruesome masks. She said “I hope it’s a permanent change, violence and gore is not something we should expose to our children”. After she made that statement on video, the news caster said, “Wouldn’t that be wonderful.”

First of… people who aren’t ever exposed to any type of gore, they’re the ones that would probably come back from war all fucked up. Death and violence is something that’s out there in the real world. THOUGH, I DO agree with peoples who want to tone the gore and blood down this year, I don’t want it to be messed up forever. (I also don’t like watching simulated deaths of young people in movies like scream, but if other people do… fine.)

Second… It’s fun to be scared.

Third… Some extreme religious saps are afraid of pretty much everything. I don’t know how they can leave the house knowing that there are people having sex for fun, (not JUST for procreation), or homosexual love is growing in acceptance. These are very unhappy people for the most part. I feel sorry for them and their kids.
DON’T MESS UP HALLOWEEN!!

sorry for spelling or grammar…
you know basically what I’m saying I’m sure

2

Gore?

We haven’t seen him in nearly a year…

3

There’s going to be the same amount of gore this year as any prior one. The day is ruled by 8-year olds, and those who think like 8-year olds, the parents of 8-year olds who want to please them, etc.

Gore, slime, eyeball, bones, will all be everwhere.

And anything green that normally isn’t.

4

What about those churches that hold haunted houses? Not like the crummy ones done by high schools, but the really freaky, gory ones.

They have things like REALLY bloody abortion ORs, gay AIDS victim funerals, shootings, a tour through Hell, and a bunch of other disturbing crap.

And then have the nerve to have Jesus at the end, as if that makes up for everything.

5

PHEW, Spanky, glad I don’t live in your town (or wherever those church scare houses are…).

A mom, speaking, here…

I personally wish I could control some of the scary stuff for a few more years (not that I really can, now, anyway) - not because I think scary play is wrong or bad, but because my son is genuinely TERRIFIED by some of this stuff, and will literally climb up me to escape, in utter panic. It has been somewhat worse since the WTC, but it could be just his age, at that… He loves ‘pretend’ scary, but he has a hard time separating pretend from real sometimes (he’s almost 4).

I’m sure he’ll be into it at 8 yrs old (or I think so, anyway - he’s very tuned in to other people’s emotions, and hates upsetting other kids especially), but now… well, I’ll be keeping him separated from the older kids as much as I can, and be there to tell him what is real and what is not, and hope that the other young kids are relatively non-frightening. Getting rid of the scare/gore factor comes up again and again, really, but it never goes away. I remember campaigns to tone things down when I was in high school, too - didn’t stick!

Actually, I’d really really like to get rid of Barney and other such costumes for adults. Want to scare my kid so bad that he remembers it for years? Walk into his classroom in a Barney costume, or wander the grocery store in a chipmunk costume. More than a year later, and he still asks if the ‘Chikmunk’ will be there when we go to the grocery store… (I think he was sure it was going to eat him alive…)

6

wow, someone else who’s actually thinking about a topic I’m thinking about. Kewl. Ok here goes…

  1. I am Pagan.
  2. I am a Witch.
  3. No, I don’t use eye of newt or have a green face and warts.

Halloween is derived from the Pagan holiday of Samhain, and really, the whole “gore and scary things” bit of it sort of evolved from the original purpose behind the holiday. In Celtic traditions it was several things

  1. The Celtic New Year
  2. the final harvest (remember wayyy back then when food was the center of your existance you would actually celebrate harvest times as a holiday)
  3. The time when it was perceived that the veil between the spirit world and this one was thinest, so you could best commune with past loved ones. It became a time set aside specifically for the purpose of honoring our ancestors. (in other traditions now called All Souls day and The Day of the Dead to name a few)

As this holiday got absorbed by other cultures and religions it sort of evolved. While some were concentrating on communing with lost loved ones in honor and respect, others where shaking in their boots about spirits coming to haunt them and what have you. People would actually go around and collect “soul cakes”, they got treats from each place they visited to pray for the departed loved ones. Weird huh? Now we have trick or treating.

In Pagan beliefs, death wasn’t something to be afraid of per se, more like, respected and honored as part of the experience of existance. So the images of skeletons and ghosts and what have you weren’t really frightening. It was sort of a way of nervously laughing at it, accepting the necessity for it. Even while you respect it it does still send a chill down your back, and people had at it with that whole mentality of nervously mocking death and the gore that might go along with it.

These churches that have such a violent negative reaction to it are really missing the point. It’s not a holiday about violence and murder and sin, it’s about embracing the frailty of our existance and honoring those that have come before us. Personally, I think it’s sad that people have lost the beauty behind the holiday.

Ah well. Que sera, sera!

Bet that was more then you bargained for eh? :smiley:

7

Actually, Hedra, you’d be pretty hard pressed to find a good-sized town anywhere in the US that doesn’t have one of these farces. In fact, there’s a booming business in “Hell House” kits, primarily sold by Abundant Life Christian Center in Colorado. Landover did a great parody last year–but frighteningly, it wasn’t all that far off the mark. These things are hideous, and too disturbingly earnest to be laughable.
As to Halloween, I find it disgusting. What was a valid holiday for the Celts, and at least understandable for the Christians, has become nothing more nor less than an excuse to teach greed, covetousness, and gluttony. Take the begging for candy out of the equation, and I’m all for it.