In today’s Jesus and Mo, I’m not sure whether the The Holy Boys are hiding out because it’s a pagan holiday, or just because they’re just too cheap to buy candy:
Protip for kids: Go to the rich neighborhoods: they give out better candy. When I was a kids, sometimes they’d give out entire candy bars! Beware of all fruit, as handed out by Leisure Fascists.
Beware of all fruit, as handed out by Leisure Fascists.
Apples have razor blades hidden in them; oranges are injected with mercury.
Without exception.
Probably.
Scarfolk Council studies show 70% of all trick-or-treat candy has been dipped in LSD, arsenic, or both. Paranoia is your friend. No exceptions, no detection, no escape.
Not long ago, this expert explained that Halloween candy is dangerous because it has “been dedicated and prayed over by witches.” Presumably witches without peanut allergies.
That article belongs in the Onion! Hillarious! I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry that there are people who take it seriously.
Sounds like my parents. When I went to someone’s house, they’d say “Don’t drink anything that isn’t in a can, because they could put drugs in it.”
Whenever me and the boys were handed fruit while trick-or-treating, we said “thank-you” and moved on. Once in the street we threw that fruit as far as we could! Never thought the fruit was tainted. Just a statement of youth priorities: gimme candy or gimme nuthin’. {Plus it was fun to throw things that adults gave you.} Logistically, the fruit adds dead weight. Very stupid sensibility, but I can’t deny the fun of throwing fruit.
It’s like that video of the monkey who gets a stupid treat while the other monkey gets the good treat so he whips it out of his cage! I too enjoy throwing fruit & it enters in my metaphors often. I also noticed that Elaine on Seinfeld once threatened to throw an apple at someone.
Maybe it’s a left over in our primate brains from a time when readily available fruit made a good projectile and was worth losing the food. 🙂
Thrown tomatoes have been threatened when I belt out songs around the house…
So, you admit to engaging in a drive-by fruiting?
b&
In El Paso, TX it used to be the case that truck loads of kids would come into neighborhoods and collect candy, then for the next couple of weeks street vendors in Juarez Mexico would not only sell traditional Mexican candy but also American candy. I called it: circle candy economics.
I’d say their behaviour stems from cheapness, rather than conviction.
There is a book I read years ago, I may have mentioned on WEIT before, originally published in the 1990s,
“Europe: Was it Ever Really Christian? The Interaction Between Gospel and Culture” – Amazon says “Anton Wessels asks how Christianity came to be related to pre-Christian cultures. Were these swept away or just given a new significance? Which elements of them were abolished and which Christianized? Did Christianity prevail only by incorporating much of what had previously existed?”
Christmas and Easter, the two biggies, were certainly pagan festivals. Sounds like an interesting book.
“Protip for kids: Go to the rich neighborhoods
I wouldn’t say I live in a “rich” neighborhood, but rich enough to have a gate, and rich enough to see over 200 kids Halloween Eve. Our gate code must be written on bathroom walls.
A few of us adults come to work on Halloween in a costume of some sort. This year, for the first time, I think I will arrive in my old Star Trek uniform.
I think I will arrive in my old Star Trek uniform
Heh, sounds like you are saying you retired from star fleet. 🙂
You have an old Star Trek uniform, but you’ve never yet worn it on Halloween? How does that happen?
I wear it for Halloween on occasion, but not for work.
BAck in the early 70s I took my son trick or treating. When we got home, he asked, “Did you realize we are the only house on the street without a color TV?”
The problem with rich neighborhoods is that the houses are spread really far apart. I have found that in my own neighborhood, which has a mix of smaller and larger homes, you get the most candy per effort expended, by concentrating on the row homes.
I have two young children and much experience in these matters. I have also found that the quality of candy distributed has increased dramatically compared to when I was a child. It’s almost all chocolate now.
Our candy philosophy is to buy candy we like because there’s always leftover. The early kids get a few pieces, 3 to 5 years old get to pick, good costumes get a bunch and late arrivals get hand fulls.
I remember when I was a kid Halloween fell on a Sunday so it was postponed until Monday because of Jesus. I was totally pissed at the whininess of the xians.
Oops sub
i hide because I just don’t like interacting with humans that much, especially kids.
my brother and sister-in-law, keep my niece and nephews out of school on Halloween so they can’t participate in any activities. Uf course they don’t bother keeping them out of stores from, say August, on. Such pathetic ignorance from so many theists. So desperate to hold control.
My kid has been to five (!!!) halloween-related dress-up-get-candy events so far and there will be another such event at his school Friday day, before the actual event Friday night. I love halloween, but this year I am about costumed and candied out.
As for neighborhoods, ours is middle class for the area, with a mix of townhouses, duplexes, etc. The sort of place white collar couples move to when they first get good jobs, but also the sort of place they move out of when they have their second or third kid and want a ‘family-sized’ home. The kids in the neighborhood do really well, as the townhouse set up means loads of doors in close proximity, while the income level means quality candy scores at almost all of them.
We already have >10 lbs of candy from festivities and it is not even Halloween yet…This year it is Halloween Week.
Sub
When I was a kid, we wouldn’t go farther than walking distance, and so you knew everybody whose doors you knocked on and they knew you. Last time I turned on the light, not a single neighbor came to the door, and lots of minivans drove up, vomited kids, and drove away. Indeed, I’m not sure I saw a single kid on foot.
Anyway, Mom’s having her back surgery on Friday, so I’ll be with her and Dad in the recovery room Friday evening. No need to invent any other excuse this year….
b&
Ben,
I hope she recovers well.
Thanks. It’s been planned for months, and we have every reason to expect a speedy recovery. Of course, anything can happen…but, then again, she’s probably more at risk on the roads on the trips to and from the hospital….
b&
I hope your hospital doesn’t charge a fortune for parking. They do this in Canada all the time and I thought we would go bust when my dad had his cancer operation last year!
Now that’s a scary thought!
Fortunately, save for downtown areas, parking here is almost always free. And, even then, there’s usually some sort of validation or the like if you’re parking in a lot that belongs to wherever you’re going.
b&
Love the pro-tip.
Was there ever a more reliably dispiriting experience as a kid than being given fruit while trick-or-treating?
Some people just don’t get it.
I lived in an Italian neighbourhood of new immigrants so they didn’t know about Nalloween. I remember once I got a penny at one house and I got a peanut in the shell at another.
I had a dentist who told me that he gave out toothbrushes. He didn’t say how long it took to get toilet paper out of his trees.
Ha ha!
I do remember I went to my friend’s neighbourhood one year. There was an old lady that people were scared of but as an adult, I realize she was probably just different so the kids were afraid of her and she was really a thoughtful person as she painted rocks with glow-in-the-dark paint & handed those out. I still have my rock & keep it in my bathroom as part of the decour. I tried to scam another but she recognized me so I got busted! 🙂
She probably recognized you because you glowed in the dark…
Another Halloween, I took my black lab. She took a lollipop out of a kid’s mouth, ate it & spit out the stick. It was hilarious but I beat it out of their afraid the kid would say the dog attacked him when she didn’t – she just mugged him. 😀
oops, “there”.
🐸
“…because it’s a pagan holiday, or just because they’re just too cheap to buy candy:
Here’s two other possibilities:
Maybe it violates their sense of charity. They know the children will be gone before they can hand out “free” stuff and coerce them into being saved.
Or. they don’t want to hear, “That’s a funny costume.”
Protip for kids: Go to the rich neighborhoods: they give out better candy.
That can also backfire. I live in a neighborhood with the reputation as the place to go, and we have to ration candy because we get so many kids – two pieces per trick or treater. And lest you think we’re just being cheap, one year a neighbor of ours (who ran out of candy about half an hour before us) counted 800 kids. I weighed our candy another year, and we gave out 40 lbs worth. They even bring in a couple cops to help direct traffic. My daughter always got more candy when we lived in our old neighborhood that didn’t get so overwhelmed.
When I was a kid, Halloween wasn’t celebrated in NZ. It’s starting to be now because of the influence of American culture, and I have to admit I hate it. I can’t turn off the lights either because the sun is still shining at that time of year, and usually the doors and windows are wide open too. It’s too warm to shut the house up. (We don’t do permanently locked in small-town NZ.) Bah humbug and all that!
I can see how living in the southern hemisphere would be a problem for this particular holiday, as it is getting into summer down there. I am sure it would also help if you grew up with it.
Try having to put your snow suit over your costume!
Yeah, it always seemed to snow or sleet on Halloween when my kids were young. DST extension at least makes for lighter evening. We’ve become Halloween Grinches. Close the curtains and turn off the porch light ( or go out to a movie). We used to get about 200 kids in this neighborhood of fairly big houses. It’s slowed down a little bit as our population has aged.
As a kid we waited for it to get dark before going out but that was cool for us since we weren’t allowed out after dark normally. I think the kids out in the daylight are getting ripped off but it also make it easier for me to see them if I’m driving.
Yeah – and here in NZ we celebrate Guy Fawkes’ day on 5 November. No dressing up and getting lollies (candy)just lots of dangerous fireworks.
My mother (from NZ) didn’t get Halloween and was always frustrated with its customs & my exasperation with her. We saw each other weird foreigners. 😀
Now fireworks I LIKE. And it’s a genuine traditional holiday, unlike Halloween.
I totally agree with you, Heather. As far as I’m concerned it is NOT a British / NZ holiday. It’s some obsolete mediaeval custom (like burning witches) which has been perpetuated/revived by American retailers (and now NZ retailers) as an excuse to sell more stuff. We should have nothing to do with it.
And I don’t answer the door except to say ‘sorry, we don’t do that’. And they better not try any ‘tricks’ in retaliation or I’ll have their hides. I don’t believe in encouraging this nonsense.
[/grump]
Trick-or-treat is an American perversion of the Scottish “guising”. As a child I used to go guising around the neighbourhood, dressed in a costume. We had to earn our treats (nuts, fruit, and occasionally sweets and money) by doing a party piece – sing a song, recite a poem, or tell a joke. We would often carry a turnip (swede) lantern, made in much the same way as a pumpkin lantern. Nowadays the supermarkets stock pumpkins specifically for making lanterns, but back then they were not available in Scotland.
Many Scots resent the importation from the US of what is essentially a junior extortion racket. We had to earn our treats! In Scotland it was never a holiday, it all happened after school.
Someone needs to write a Halloween version of “A Christmas Carol” where a Scrooge-like character learns the Halloween spirit.
:)))!
I guess this depend on a country. In Poland the All saints day was nicknamed the “day of the dead”, the day in which you should stop, think about the past, abotu the life, about those who have past. The day was abotu the remembrance. The Halloween in completely incompatible with this sort of thinking and is forced down people’s throats by media’s, which just try to force people to go to shops and buy, buy, buy more. That’s why I hate Halloween.