Halloween Blues

My kid and I went out trick-or-treating last night, with the other liberal professor and her tree-hugging child. My kid was a ballerina-cat (her idea -- I was for the ballerina-vampire that had been her first idea, just because it would have been, you know, funny -- people would have said, "Oh, how sweet, a ballerina!" and then she could have LUNGED at them with her fangs) and our little fellow tree-hugger was a cute skunk.

Anyway, we had some fellow tricksters, but not many. The fundies might be winning, here in the rusty buckle of the belt. Or it might have been the rain. My kid did tell me about the kids in her class at school who weren't going trick-or-treating. "Kate's mama says it's not okay with God," the kid informed me.

Which really annoys me. Halloween, as it existed previous to the fundies getting their nasty paws on it, had nothing to do with religion. It was just a nice little holiday, a night when kids got to wear costumes, eat candy, stay up late, run the streets. There was no God involved. There was no demon worship either. No animal sacrifice. Yes, some ghosts. Yes, some witch costumes. Even a demon costume or two. None of that was real. No one but a total idiot would even think it was real.

Here's a newspaper article (http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-ushall314025609oct31,0,6896352.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines ) with more details -- note that the article claims Wiccans are also opposed to Halloween, because of how witches are currently represented, but that this is, according to my sources, not the case. According to my sources, no Wiccan has ever, in fact, objected to schools celebrating Halloween -- it's only Christians objecting. (Any Wiccans out there with alternate information? Let me know!)

Anyway, the fundies are messing up the one perfectly good non-religious holiday in our whole pantheon of holidays, and, frankly, it's pissing me off. They've already co-opted all the other holidays. Would it have killed them to leave this one alone?