The "H" word

On Saturday evening, we went to the Fall Festival held at the big honkin' church down the street. Trust me, this church is really big, so big that I use it as a landmark when giving people directions to our house - "our subdivision is .7 miles on the left after the big honkin' church".

Fall festivals are very popular with protestant churches here in Georgia and are usually held the weekend before Halloween, or sometimes even on Halloween night. Children are encouraged to wear costumes and candy is distributed, but the word "Halloween" is never mentioned. I think that if I yelled "Halloween", a hush would fall over the crowd and all would look at the vile person who said the dreaded "H" word.

When did Halloween become such an awful event to a certain segment of the US population? When I was a child in the '60s and '70s, a person could be religious and a regular churchgoer, and still openly celebrate Halloween. I can even remember my parents attending a Halloween party at our church; they were dressed as Raggedy Ann and Andy (if I ever get my hands on a photo of them, I will gleefully post it). Now it seems as though Halloween is something to be preached against and certainly not acknowledged by so-called decent, moral people.

Puh-leeze. Halloween does have its roots in pagan traditions but it also has a healthy dose of Christian tradition mixed in. Yes, many of the images associated with Halloween are witches, devils, vampires and other scary beings. But sometimes a witch is just a little child in a costume and not an evil, spell-issuing crone. And if we are really going to nitpick and over-analyze every holiday, how many of "Christian" Easter and Christmas traditions started with the pagans?

So while we enjoyed the cool weather, the free food and the carnival games that yielded A a good supply of candy and cheap plastic toys, it still grates on us that Halloween has become in some circles a obscene word and that some people are trying to ruin the innocent fun for everyone. Sheesh.