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All Hallow's Eve: Difference between revisions
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* '''Decoration:''' Halloween trails only [[Christmas in America|Christmas]] as the most popular holiday for decorating one's house. The Celtic jack-o'-lantern tradition has been imported largely intact, the main difference being that pumpkins have replaced turnips as the carved vegetable of choice (pumpkins being larger, easier to carve and more common in North America). Most people carve the usual scary faces into their jack-o'-lanterns, although some will carve funny faces, words or images. In addition to jack-o'-lanterns, people will decorate their property with scarecrows, witches, spiders, tombstones, hands reaching out of the ground, and various items (blood splatters, hand prints) in their windows.
* '''Trick-or-treating:''' A practice that is mostly celebrated by children and their parents (although some will tell you that you're never too old to trick-or-treat), in which they go door-to-door asking for candy, saying "Trick or treat!" whenever the door is opened. The "trick" refers to the (mostly idle) threat of performing mischief against the homeowners or their property if no treats are given. No, most of us do not view this as extortion. A house is marked as "open" for trick-or-treaters by the presence of a lit jack-o'-lantern and porch lights. Trick-or-treating usually takes place at very specific hours of the evening (often 5-8 PM) so that kids won't stay out too late. The treats are almost always wrapped candies bought from a store, such as chocolate bars, lollipops, Twizzlers and candy corn. Sometimes, people giving out candy, not wanting to be bothered to go to the door, choose to rely on the honor system, leaving a bowl of candy that kids are expected to only take small amounts of. [[Humans Are Bastards|Kids being kids]], the bowl is usually empty, if not outright gone, halfway through the night.<br /><br />Candy apples (apples coated with caramel or toffee) used to be a popular treat, but that ended due to [[You Can Panic Now|a scare]] in [[The Eighties]] over people putting razor blades, needles or poison in the apples. [[Cowboy Bebop at His Computer|In reality]], the [http://www.snopes.com/horrors/poison/halloween.asp only proven cases] of people deliberately spiking kids' candy with poison or drugs were crazy parents who were trying to kill their own children (and one of the most famous cases involved Pixi-Stix, a "safe" wrapped candy), not strangers handing out poison at the door. Hiding pins or needles in Halloween candy [http://www.snopes.com/horrors/mayhem/needles.asp has been known to happen several times], but usually as a prank by one's friends -- and it can just as easily be done with a wrapped Snickers bar as with an apple. There certainly wasn't any conspiracy by [[Hollywood Satanism|Satanic cultists]] to murder children as sacrifices to the Dark Lord, as has been claimed.<ref>Perhaps not coincidentally, the rise of this legend came at the same time as the [[You Can Panic Now|"Satanic Panic"]] of [[The Eighties]], when so-called [[
* '''Haunted attractions:''' Starting in late September, [[Amusement Park|amusement parks]] go on a massive Halloween splurge, giving all of their attractions a horror theme, dressing the employees in spooky costumes and makeup, and putting up most of the aforementioned decorations. It helps that, north of the snow line, most amusement parks close for the winter at the start of November, making Halloween their last hurrah for the year. This practice died down for a couple of years after 9/11 due to the perception that it was [[Too Soon]] to be glamorizing death and horror, but has since kicked back in with a vengeance. Some parks, such as the Universal Studios parks in Hollywood and Orlando, are famous for their big-budget Halloween attractions, which draw in millions of visitors from across America and beyond.<br /><br />For those with a smaller budget than the big amusement parks, the [[Haunted House]] (or [[Abandoned Warehouse|abandoned factory]], [[Prison]], [[Bedlam House|mental asylum]] or other spooky place) is a popular attraction, as are the haunted hayride, the corn maze and the haunted trail in less urban areas, with people jumping out of the shadows to scare the bejesus out of the visitors. The "scariness" of attractions varies widely, depending on the target audience -- some may be family attractions (the haunted hayride in particular is seen as this), while others are [[Body Horror|most definitely]] ''[[Gorn|not recommended]]'' for children or those with weak stomachs. In recent times, due to their popularity, many major haunted attractions have grown to be highly elaborate and sophisticated, with Hollywood-quality special effects and production values.<br /><br />A popular [[Urban Legends]] claims that there exists [http://www.snopes.com/holidays/halloween/haunted.asp a haunted attraction] somewhere in the country that is so scary, it offers cash rewards or full refunds to anybody who can complete it -- and of course, nobody ever succeeds. Sometimes, the legend claims that the reason why it's so scary is because the performers are allowed to touch and even physically restrain the guests. To the best of our knowledge, such a place does not exist, though as described above, people have tried their damnedest to come close. And in any event, direct contact with the guests can easily cause an accident that can lead to a lawsuit, which is why, even at the most thrilling haunted attractions, the performers stop ''just'' short of doing this.
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For the most part, Catholics and mainline Protestants are tolerant of the holiday, seeing any ties to paganism as having long since been buried by centuries of Christian and secular tradition -- after all, does anybody, apart from Jehovah's Witnesses, complain about the connections between [[Christmas in America|modern Christmas celebrations]] and the pagan solstice holiday of Yule? To them, it is a harmless, secular holiday built around imaginary monsters and handing out candy. Catholic schools often hold Halloween celebrations, and a Vatican exorcist has said that the day is harmless. The Catholic and Anglican Churches may emphasize All Saints' Day, the celebration that comes after Halloween, while Protestants may celebrate Reformation Day -- the day when in 1517, Martin Luther started The Protestant Reformation -- which falls on the same day. However, these celebrations are usually held simultaneously with Halloween, rather than in opposition to it. The laissez-faire attitude that Catholics hold to the holiday makes sense -- the Catholic Church was instrumental in Christianizing the holiday, and it was Irish Catholics who brought Halloween to America in the first place.
Some conservative Christians, however, feel that Halloween trivializes and celebrates the occult and is incompatible with the Christian faith. They point to its Celtic pagan connections, [[
The same dichotomy exists within Judaism and Islam. The Orthodox Jewish and conservative Muslim views on the holiday are similar to the conservative Christian one -- it has deep pagan roots, and is therefore incompatible with observance of Judaism or Islam. It is for this reason that celebrations of Halloween have failed to gain traction in the conservative Middle East. On the other hand, Reform Jews and the more secular and liberal Muslims<ref>They do exist, and there are in fact quite a lot of them</ref> in the US and Canada tend to follow the more "who cares" view of their liberal Christian counterparts, holding it to be harmless fun that lost any semblance of being ''any'' religion's holiday once the marketers got a hold of it. Meanwhile, the Conservative Jews (as usual) stand half-here, half-there on the subject.
And finally, with so much controversy over its pagan history, what do actual pagans think about it? Celtic pagans (of both the [[
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