If the usual traditional holidays and the Hallmark holidays all went away, I would survive. There is only one holiday that I would clamour to keep, two if you happen to count April 1st as a notable day.
Halloween is the [string of expletives deleted] best. It annoys fundamentalists and evangelicals so much that they have gone and created alternative faith-based safe spaces for their children to get overloaded on sugary treats without having to walk around being friendly to own neighbors. It is the only day of the year where people can show up to their otherwise buttoned-down corporate offices in bizarre and/or sexy outfits and no one freaks out about it. Even the die-hard furries and cosplayers get to come out of the closet on Halloween, walking about openly in fully-costumed regalia. We might well wonder about their enthusiasm for such costumes, as adults, but we have to let it slide.
Halloween is also a rare occasion when we Americans explicitly honor and recreate various ancient superstitions, which makes it a particularly propitious time for training youth in the process of skepticism:
While the original customs of Hallowe’en are being forgotten more and more across the ocean, Americans have fostered them and are making this an occasion something like what it must have been in its best days overseas. All Hallowe’en customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of other countries. All superstitions, everyday ones, and those pertaining to Christmas and New Year’s have special value on Hallowe’en. (The Book of Hallowe’en, Ruth Edna Kelley, 1919, pp. 153-154)
Since people are running about dressed as witches, what better time to discuss with your friends the fact that Christians have been taught to believe in witches and instructed by their holy text to put them to death? I mean that’s probably going to be an awkward conversation even at the best of times, but I’ve found that gifts of free chocolate help smooth ruffled feelings. Kids will also be running around dressed as fairies, ghosts, werewolves, and zombies, and any number of other beings well within the purview of scientific skepticism. It may be a given these days that these old folk superstitions are just that, but the kids don’t know how we got from there to here. Halloween can thus be seen as a rare consciousness-raising opportunity for the dedicated skeptic. Not to mention a chance to dress up, act ridiculously, and maybe prank the crap out of your in-laws, if you’re into that more traditional aspect of the holiday.
Of course, I’m not nearly the first person to point out that Halloween is a perfect time to reconsider the perils of placing one’s faith in superstitious or supernatural entities, it is basically the entire plotline of the Great Pumpkin Halloween special, written by Charles Schulz in the 1960’s, well before his public announcement of turning to secular humanism. Makes me wonder whether his own personal skepticism had been mentally percolating for all the intervening years.
Thank you for reading my rambling thoughts on the multifarious joys of All Hallows’ Eve. You now have 364 days to get ready for next time. Halloween yesterday. Halloween today. Halloween forever!
