Till Next Year

Halloween is disturbing because of the way that grownups have become so engrossed in “celebrating” this made up holiday. Halloween is a multibillion-dollar commercial enterprise, for which refined sugars are offered as “food” and vacant shopping mall spaces are briefly occupied with “Spirit” stores purveying immodest slut outfits for overweight middle-aged women.It’s seen as “normal” to pay up to $10 for a single pumpkin, which isn’t just normal but necessary (unless you really do want to hasten the end of the world). Does anyone care that pumpkins cost so much, despite the fact that children everywhere do not receive adequate diets of fresh fruits and vegetables?No one actually eats the pumpkins, except the squirrels! If we simply bought Halloween sweet potatoes we could at least feed some people! Isn’t there a bit of avarice in such a display? Squirrels or not, Halloween pumpkins end up a disgusting mess on the front porch for someone to clean up, and disgusting messes are always my favorite ways to spend $50.Bars and dance clubs – ever adept at removing inhibitions through “theming” and “branding” – devise “spooky” drinking games and concoct libations served in plastic cauldrons and sputtering dry ice fog. Pop songs are remixed with spooky sound effects. People too old for Halloween find another excuse to overindulge and behave like horny zombies, “twerking” and “grinding” all over the place.Halloween is the celebration of excess. It wouldn’t exist but for a culture and economy that is so self-referential that it excuses the admittance of the wholesome and healthy in exchange for the base and sensual. Holidays are supposed to be feasts! At a holiday table, you should find good things that elevate body and mind: rich foods, fine drink, hearty laughs, and warm hearths.Perhaps there are spiritual pitfalls in celebrating Halloween, but secular culture so heartily rejects the reality of evil that the likelihood of anyone encountering anything other than gross overconsumption is actually very low.What I’m saying is that the evil to be found in Halloween is the same as sin itself: it is stupid. It is a celebration of the inane and pointless. There is no virtue. There is nothing edifying. There is no great mystery, no reason for hope or joy as with actual holidays. There is no silver lining within dark clouds. There isn’t even dark. There is only dim: dimness in mind, heart, and soul.While at Halloween even the devil isn’t taken seriously, you can seriously be assured he likes it that way. The devil likes plausible deniability. He is, after all, the Father of Lies. What’s the point of possession if candy, sex, and stupidity does the job far more easily and cheaply?