Crazy......

It's Halloween! I've read that it commercially outsells Christmas. Crazy, huh? I think it's appeal is on a much different level. Christmas is so much harder and requires more responsibility overall. Somehow Christmas makes us feel required to maintain a semblance of spirituality and generosity. Red and green and gold and silver are hopefully spirit lifting and supportive of the season. Halloween gives us no such pressure with all that black and even thoughtfully throws in the orange to kinda match up will fall. Halloween encourages us to get in touch with our darker sides and has all the gore to support it. Escapism that is legal! Yard decorating has reached crazy levels with the lights, skeletons, pumpkins and those obnoxious blow up thingies. Artistic expression, just the same as some costumes, I guess. Movies have explored every possible horror--or so I'm told. I walked out of the Exorcist totally nauseated and have not sat thru a horror flick since. Not exactly a great choice for a date movie, however, I did run right out and buy the book and used my own imagination to fill in the blanks that were too visual for me to handle. And my curiosity was suffiently piqued enough to corner our priest and quiz him on the demonic possession phenom. After He recanted true stories of some such cases, I decided that once again, the truth is always scarier than anything we can dream up. Once I saw a flick called, "It Came from Within" at a drive in during High School. Between the usual drive-in antics, (thank God for Boone's Farm) we viewed HUGE leeches that came from within a persons house and dropped out of faucets and shower heads at very inconvenient times--like anytime would be good. The movie didn't scare me, but I abhor leeches to this day. Horrors like war, addiction, starvation, politics, gnomes, natural disasters, plagues, reality t.v. etc. are what truly scares the bejesus outta me. And another thing. Is it just me, or has Halloween turned into an "adult" holiday? With the exception of poor Charley Brown, all Halloween flicks are rated R, and will surely eff up the innocent babes. I had a total of 3 trick or treaters last year, and they were delighted with the full size snickers bars that I handed out. In my old sub, it was not unusual to have say, 200 of the little beggars yellin' at my door. They were mostly cute except the ones old enough to drive, smokin' a square, with no costumes, and no manners either. Can I at least get a Trick or Treat out of you? Have you heard of thank you? But the risk of them slashing your tires or soaping your windows forced you to comply with the goods. Or how about the mom's carrying the infants, faces painted like bunnies with not a tooth in their head to chew candy yet. Okay, mom, if the candy is that important to you--here it it. Probably the most exercise she had since last year, with the exception of conception. Hang on there and I'll get a sip of milk for the little one. And for heaven sake, it's 30 degrees and sleeting, could you put a hat on the kid? Do children still go to those parties where you bob for apples and tell ghost stories? Being blindfolded and touching a peeled grape "eyeball"? Or are all the good parties at the bars where the women are encouraged to dress as tarts and the men are encouraged to ogle? Prizes and jello shots for the most skin!!! My son reminded me of a Halloween haunted house we went to ONE time. Again, first and last for me. It was absolutely horrifying. Stuffy hallways with strobe lights and monsters grabbing you. I hated it and the kids were petrified. Looking up to me to navigate this thing for them was a big mistake. Near tears, we all exited safely, NEVER to go back. There is no way a child could have handled it. I guess cider mills with petting zoos are the new haunted houses. Fall beauty with sugar and confined farm animals, being the fears we know. Enjoy your Halloween in your own way....xoxo