Amethyst Rose
October 15th, 2001, 11:14 PM
This story was published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Editorial on Sunday, October 14, 2001.
http://home.postdispatch.com/channel/pdweb.nsf/pd/86256A0E068FE5086256AE500304AEDOpenDocument&PubWrapper=Editorial
A holiday we can do without
By Kevin Horrigan
HALLOWEEN
"It's going to be a patriotic Halloween. Four weeks ago all people werelooking for was a Gary Condit mask. Now nobody knows his name."
-- Bruce Baum, costume salesman
quoted in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
Well, thank God for small favors. All it took to get America's mind off onephilandering California congressman were 5,000 deaths, remarkable heroismand a war. But as a nation that dotes on the sleazy, morbid andinconsequential, we could very easily slip back into old habits. Which iswhy today's screed is entitled:
13 Good Reasons to Cancel Halloween.
(1) Halloween is the festival of the dead. Some festival. We've had lots ofreal dead people lately. Before Sept. 11, people were prepared to make lightof a man who lied about his relationship with a young woman who disappearedand who may very well be dead. Celebrating Halloween, particularly thisyear, merely multiplies the tastelessness.
(2) Substituting patriotic costumes -- Uncle Sam, the Statue of Liberty,Dick Cheney (yes, Dick Cheney masks are hot) -- doesn't help much. It'sstill phony and still morbid. We're at war, folks. Dressing up like DickCheney and getting sloppy drunk is not the correct response. Neither isdressing up like Dick Cheney and staying sober, unless you're Dick Cheney.
(3) Dressing up like a firefighter, unless you're (a) a firefighter or (b) 3years old, doesn't help much either. Firefighter costumes, according tomanagers of stores who deal in such things, are in great demand. If you wantto dress up like a firefighter, lose 40 pounds, enter the academy and learnhow to roll hose.
(And while we're on that subject, a couple of weeks ago, I saw grown men dressing up like soldiers and running around the woods near Pacific shooting each other with paintball guns. Two words for them: Recruiting Office.)
(4) "But kids love Halloween." Tough. It's a great time to teach them aboutsacrifice. Take the dough you'd spend on Halloween candy (estimated last year at $1.93 billion nationwide) and send it to the Red Cross. The president wants kids to each send $1 to the Red Cross. How 'bout $1.9 billion instead?
(5) Halloween isn't really about kids any more. It's about grown-ups acting like children. Nearly 3 in 10 grown-ups said they planned to dress up for Halloween. Between candy and assorted other paraphernalia, Halloween generated $6 billion in consumer spending last year, second only to
Christmas for holiday spending. Among occasions for swilling booze, Halloween is third to New Years Eve and Super Bowl Sunday. Halloween last year edged out St. Patrick's Day.
(6) Don't get me started on the desecration of St. Patrick's Day.
(7) "But we need to get back to normal." What's normal about haunted houses, dancing skeletons, vampires, zombies and fake blood?
(8) Like we haven't seen enough real blood lately?
(9) Not to mention real fear? Didn't Sept. 11 teach us anything? Why do we need to dabble in fake fear when we've seen 110-story buildings collapse?
(10) The local discount store is selling fake bloody hands. In the New York Daily News, I saw a picture of a bloody hand, with well-manicured nails, lying in the ruins of the World Trade Center. It wasn't fake.
(11) "Ghoulishness and gore are being played down this year," reports the Sun-Sentinel. The paper quoted one Erik Mandell, an executive of Party City Inc., as saying the chain had removed items in "poor taste with current events." Yo, Erik . . . they were in poor taste on Sept. 10.
(12) Wiccans and Druids will be devastated if their biggest holiday is canceled. Awww. Our Constitution guarantees an individual's right to believe anything he wants, no matter how weird, and I would not for a minute want to change that, even though some perverts use the occult as a cover to abuse
children. Most of your modern-day witches and Druids claim to be peaceful folks who worship nature and trees. "Harm nothing," is their motto. However:
(13) Irving Berlin did not write, "Trees Bless America."
COMMENTARY\KevinHorrigan\postnet.com/horrigan\khorrigan@post-dispatch.com
http://home.postdispatch.com/channel/pdweb.nsf/pd/86256A0E068FE5086256AE500304AEDOpenDocument&PubWrapper=Editorial
A holiday we can do without
By Kevin Horrigan
HALLOWEEN
"It's going to be a patriotic Halloween. Four weeks ago all people werelooking for was a Gary Condit mask. Now nobody knows his name."
-- Bruce Baum, costume salesman
quoted in the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel
Well, thank God for small favors. All it took to get America's mind off onephilandering California congressman were 5,000 deaths, remarkable heroismand a war. But as a nation that dotes on the sleazy, morbid andinconsequential, we could very easily slip back into old habits. Which iswhy today's screed is entitled:
13 Good Reasons to Cancel Halloween.
(1) Halloween is the festival of the dead. Some festival. We've had lots ofreal dead people lately. Before Sept. 11, people were prepared to make lightof a man who lied about his relationship with a young woman who disappearedand who may very well be dead. Celebrating Halloween, particularly thisyear, merely multiplies the tastelessness.
(2) Substituting patriotic costumes -- Uncle Sam, the Statue of Liberty,Dick Cheney (yes, Dick Cheney masks are hot) -- doesn't help much. It'sstill phony and still morbid. We're at war, folks. Dressing up like DickCheney and getting sloppy drunk is not the correct response. Neither isdressing up like Dick Cheney and staying sober, unless you're Dick Cheney.
(3) Dressing up like a firefighter, unless you're (a) a firefighter or (b) 3years old, doesn't help much either. Firefighter costumes, according tomanagers of stores who deal in such things, are in great demand. If you wantto dress up like a firefighter, lose 40 pounds, enter the academy and learnhow to roll hose.
(And while we're on that subject, a couple of weeks ago, I saw grown men dressing up like soldiers and running around the woods near Pacific shooting each other with paintball guns. Two words for them: Recruiting Office.)
(4) "But kids love Halloween." Tough. It's a great time to teach them aboutsacrifice. Take the dough you'd spend on Halloween candy (estimated last year at $1.93 billion nationwide) and send it to the Red Cross. The president wants kids to each send $1 to the Red Cross. How 'bout $1.9 billion instead?
(5) Halloween isn't really about kids any more. It's about grown-ups acting like children. Nearly 3 in 10 grown-ups said they planned to dress up for Halloween. Between candy and assorted other paraphernalia, Halloween generated $6 billion in consumer spending last year, second only to
Christmas for holiday spending. Among occasions for swilling booze, Halloween is third to New Years Eve and Super Bowl Sunday. Halloween last year edged out St. Patrick's Day.
(6) Don't get me started on the desecration of St. Patrick's Day.
(7) "But we need to get back to normal." What's normal about haunted houses, dancing skeletons, vampires, zombies and fake blood?
(8) Like we haven't seen enough real blood lately?
(9) Not to mention real fear? Didn't Sept. 11 teach us anything? Why do we need to dabble in fake fear when we've seen 110-story buildings collapse?
(10) The local discount store is selling fake bloody hands. In the New York Daily News, I saw a picture of a bloody hand, with well-manicured nails, lying in the ruins of the World Trade Center. It wasn't fake.
(11) "Ghoulishness and gore are being played down this year," reports the Sun-Sentinel. The paper quoted one Erik Mandell, an executive of Party City Inc., as saying the chain had removed items in "poor taste with current events." Yo, Erik . . . they were in poor taste on Sept. 10.
(12) Wiccans and Druids will be devastated if their biggest holiday is canceled. Awww. Our Constitution guarantees an individual's right to believe anything he wants, no matter how weird, and I would not for a minute want to change that, even though some perverts use the occult as a cover to abuse
children. Most of your modern-day witches and Druids claim to be peaceful folks who worship nature and trees. "Harm nothing," is their motto. However:
(13) Irving Berlin did not write, "Trees Bless America."
COMMENTARY\KevinHorrigan\postnet.com/horrigan\khorrigan@post-dispatch.com