Halloween

[Read_Lives_of_Saints]

xposting from Funny pics & vids

 

[scary_robot_music]

Halloween shouldn't be participated in by Christians, at least by us Catholics, because its function is to shift attention from celebrating the saints and faithful departed, to the evil spirits that would prevent us from joining the Church Triumphant. Those who excuse it by calling it, "harmless fun", need to sit down and think about it more critically. It's a light hearted celebration of forces and practices that the saints and martyrs struggled so heroically against and whose Hallowed day is being eclipsed by.

I wrote elsewhere that I believe the subversive movie E. T. was responsible for popularising Halloween in the UK. SoS's Spielberg was particularly adept at such propaganda and subversion.

I'm not Catholic but my wife is and I attend Catholic services with her. For what it's worth, some priests are strongly against any participation in it at all, whereas some say it's fine as long as you're just doing activities for kids and not dressing up as evil creatures like zombies and witches.

I was always in the "harmless fun" camp until recently, whereas the last few years I've found myself suspecting there really is something wrong with celebrating it. I love the aesthetics of fall like pumpkins and leaves turning color and the weather getting colder, but at this point I'd probably rather have some kind of fall festival than celebrate Halloween itself.

 

[Iakobos]

but at this point I'd probably rather have some kind of fall festival than celebrate Halloween itself.

Nail on the head this is what people are actually after, it's a great human thing to celebrate the passing of the seasons. Needs to be separated from this plastic demonic crap.

 

[thinkreadwritecode]

Another Halloween done and over with. We live in a hilly area so most neighborhoods are no-go zones due to no shoulder to pull off on, houses being spaced far apart, and super long (and dark) driveways. The small town has a downtown thing that happens every year where loads of families show up and trick-or-treat around the main streets. What's annoying is how the police will block off streets for just about everything except this one time tons of kids pack the sidewalks and people are constantly crossing the street. The little town is busy on Friday night for some reason, many cars driving through, and I can never understand the drivers who get annoyed that loads of people are swarming the downtown doing what is done every year, they'll get past the last stop sign then speed off like other humans are nothing more than an inconvenience to their existence. A microcosm of the sin that is prevalent in our nation and world.

This year we found a nice neighborhood to tramp around. About half the homes were giving out candy. Of those half, half of them had bowls of candy sitting unattended on their front porch. The rest of the people were sitting in their driveways with the candy. All I could think was... why doesn't anyone let kids come up to their door? We didn't get to ring or knock at one house, and the result is that it steals the moment of "trick-or-treat!" from the child. When you are running up to a driveway to collect candy, and the person is just there, my kid kept forgetting to say trick-or-treat, which I thought was on her for forgetting, but now I realize it's because the whole setup doesn't work. The trick-or-treat moment is the moment of surprise, at opening your door and what stands before you is some tiny and weird creature. My child also had a hard time taking more than one candy. She'd grab a tiny piece of candy because she didn't want to appear greedy, and I said, don't worry about it, there's hardly any kids here, it's okay to take a little bit more (especially because these people had tubs of candy, just way too much candy for the amount of kids).

One thing that annoyed me was a cop car patrolling this lily-white, brand-new HOA neighborhood. Like, get off the street man, go somewhere else and leave the kids and adults be with their trick-or-treating. It wasn't even fully dark yet. I bet he wasn't even there for a real purpose other than to watch actual kids trick-or-treat in a nice neighborhood for it. Nostalgia, maybe.

 

[Sandalwood Peak]

 

[Thomas More]

I talked to someone today who is in the Netherlands, and he said his kids went trick or treating there! From what I understand this is a recent thing. There's a certain critical mass required to have enough households stock candy to make it worthwhile for trick or treaters to work the neighborhood.