Shots Across The Bow

Halloween

This one is going to get me into trouble.

I like Halloween. I think it is a blast. Dressing up in costumes, going to parties, taking the kids trick or treating, 'inspecting' their candy (my first encounter with graft, by the way, was having my parents skim all the good stuff from the pile, a tradition I proudly carry on with my own kids), making caramel popcorn, enjoying the crisp evening; it's just a good time.
The first Halloween I can remember my brother sister and I walked the entire neighborhood. We were using pillowcases to carry our loot, and they were full by the time we got home. Mom would only let us eat a few pieces that night, so we made sure to cram as much down as we could before we got home. Later, our parents tried to scare us with tales of razor blades in apples to keep us from eating the candy.
We just didn't eat the apples.
Since then, I've taken my kids trick or treating every year, and had just as much fun, watching them go. I've escorted angels, princesses, witches, dead rock stars, aliens, skeletons, ghosts, pumpkins, and big orange M&Ms on nocturnal candy missions. We live out in the country, so we have to take our kids to the mall, or to a nearby trailer park to trick or treat. I never imagenied I would have to bus my kids for trick or treating!
I know there are people who don't like Halloween. One group doesn't like how it seems to glorify death.

"The gravestones and people coming out of the ground are upsetting to some of our members," said Nancy Ruhe-Munch, executive director of Parents of Murdered Children. "I just think it's sad when we make a game or a costume out of death."

What Ms. Ruhe-Munch doesn't realize is that it is our ability to laugh at death which makes us human. Think about it; every other species, when confronted with the inevitibility of it's own demise, sinks into apathy and dies. Man is the only exception to this rule. We know we are going to die; we know it from the time we reach maturity, yet we go on living, when every other organism would quit. Why is that?
Because we can laugh at death. We can evolved the ability to look past death. We can minimize it, trivialize it, ward it off with laughter.

Others object to it's pagan origins, and I can respect that. But there is a sub group of these people that I don't understand, and do object to.
Several of the churches in my area run "Judgment Houses" as a replacement for the typical haunted houses. The portray scenes of torture and damnation, the fate awaiting any sinner who refuses to be born again. Now, in a typical haunted house, the terrors are imaginary, fiction, they aren't real, and even the younger kids know this. Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy; they're all fake. They've seen monsters unmasked by Shaggy and Scooby, so the scare is temporary. Mom and Dad are there to tell them it isn't real, it's just makeup and special effects.
In a Judgment House, kids don't get that. They get hellfire and damnation, everlasting torment, and Mom and Dad this time tell them it's real.They're told every Sunday by the preacher that these things are real. What a terrible thing to do to a child!
Being scared is fun when you know it isn't real. You get the adrenaline rush, and the endorphine high afterwards. Being scared for real isn't fun at all. The difference between going to a haunted house and a Judgment House is the difference between bungee jumping in Gatlinburg, and falling out of a 10 story window.
There's another risk to the whole Judgment House thing. By presenting it as entertainment, don't you devaluate it? Aren't you putting the fires of Hell on the same level as Scooby Doo?

Posted by Rich at October 31, 2002 12:36 PM