My Traditional Halloween Posting (Ranting ahead)

Every year at this time, I climb on my soapbox like Andy Rooney on a bender, and rant and rave about how people are ruining my favorite holiday, Halloween. My usual favorite topics are the ever amusing Chick Tracts that people have the audacity to give to my children with their fun sized bags of M&Ms (check out the new one for this year, The Walking Dead!), cities that postpone or worse yet cancel their trick or treating because of religious pressures or Halloween falling on a Monday, and ANYONE who holds a Trunk or Treat in a church parking lot to help save their spawn from the horrors of the Pagan holiday. So far the airwaves have been pretty quiet, so I will just repost my post from 2009, and keep an eye on this space for any future developments ;) 

REPOSTED FROM 2009:

Free Range Kids has a great post about how Halloween is being ruined for scores of children FOR NO GOOD REASON!! Something I have discussed on this blog several times ;)

Read it here!

Here is a repost of my classic posting from 2008 ;)

It's that time of year again...
When families are faced with the choice, to celebrate or not celebrate Halloween. Personally, I am sure all of you know, I not only celebrate Halloween, I revel in it! I LOVE Halloween, and would prefer to get rid of Christmas and Thanksgiving all together ;)

But I swear, the more I read people's arguments on why to NOT celebrate Halloween, I am filled with a dread that I can't shake. Are people really so paranoid of a holiday that PartyWorks and Hershey's have so corrupted from it's original form, that it is barely recognizable?? I understand the not wanting to expose your children to excessive blood and gore, okay, I get that. But to not even let them dress up and trick or treat?? Or worse yet, to be a TOTAL hypocrite and let them go to a trunk or treat at the local church. If they are trunk or treating, you are celebrating, so get over yourselves.

Let me give you a few thoughts to ponder. First off, if you have EVER gotten your information about Halloween from a Chick Tract, then please, click away from my page now and go and pray or something, cause you are too stupid to continue reading.

First off, Halloween started out as a harvest holiday known as Samhain. Now contrary to popular Christian belief, there was NEVER a pagan god known as Samhain. Samhain is derived from the Celtic word for Summer's End, cause DUH! it happened at the end of summer, LOL! So, no pagan god Samhain, and therefore no human sacrifices to him. Also, pagan's don't believe in Satan, and they sure don't worship him, cause he's NON-EXISTENT in pagan culture. So, no human sacrifice to him either. In fact, there is NO human sacrifice in paganism today, AT ALL! And if you look at history, Christians have killed many, many more humans then any pagans, I'm just sayin...

Secondly, the whole idea of poisoned, tampered with, or booby trapped candy. This is a myth that has been blown so far out of proportion, it's absurd! TWO, yes TWO cases of children being killed by Halloween candy have been recorded in the news since 1964 (yep, that was 44 years ago people). The first was a boy in 1970 who ate his uncles stash of heroin, and then the family tried to cover it up by saying the drugs were in his Halloween candy. The second, in 1974, a boy ate a pixy stick that was laced with poison. Upon investigation it turned out the boys own father planted the candy in his sons bag, to collect on the boys insurance money. NEVER has there been a recorded incident of a stranger handing out laced, tampered with or poison treats on Halloween, and contrary to the Chick tract above, it is not common practice to do this to harvest sacrifices for Satan!

So, while I can go on and on about the non-horrors of Halloween, I do want to make a point. These days, Halloween is another hallmark holiday, cleansed of all it's original roots, and make palatable to the masses. If you are a family who chooses to NOT celebrate Halloween because of it's pagan roots, then I recommend you think twice about Easter and Christmas too. Because while the historical activities attributed to those holidays, namely the birth of Christ and his resurrection, are widely accepted as accurate, the actual dates of said activities and the celebrating of those holidays are NOT specifically condoned in the bible. Shockingly the dates and MOST of the activities now celebrated for those holidays are in fact PAGAN in origin ;) Christmas trees or Easter bunnies anyone??

I will accept reasonable discussion of this topic in my comments. BUT keep in mind, any argument you make to me that uses God or the Bible as it's basis, will be countered with the teachings of the ALL POWERFUL AND KNOWING SQUIRREL IN MY BACK YARD :) After of course, the appropriate offerings of nuts and seeds are made ;)