I LOVE Halloween.  If it's not my favorite holiday, that's only because I'm Irish, and Joyce's Bloomsday is June 16th.  I like the idea that for one gerat day of the year, everyone in America and elsewhere (minus overly-religious wet blanket types) get to try to SCARE one another, or at least out-glam one another.  Tonight, kids will crawl all over their cities and towns searching for sweets and frights, though most will hope to find the former and avoid the latter.

Weeners.  Frights are what make Halloween special, what make it distinct from the other "candy" holidays (Valentines Day and Easter which, I'm told, is not ONLY about candy).  Halloween, coming as it does right after Daylights Savings Time wraps up for the season, marks a sort of cultural "Return to Nighttime," a time when peoples interest turn away from fun, frolicky daytime activities towards nocturnal nonsense and, yes, naughtiness.

Halloween has naturally been attacked as a celebration of sin, a savoring of carnality, an orgy of lechery, and so on.  To all those who make such accusations, I retort, succinctly, YOU ARE CORRECT!  Halloween is a night of the year when you can take a moment and be nasty, be naughty, get dirty, get dangerous, and get away with it.  It's not a time to really truly act bad and break the laws and stuff.  No, that's the day after and only in Detroit.  Halloweens just a time to revel in the fact that naughtiness abounds, it's a human trait, and mostly we act with dignity and sense.

Halloween has likewise been attacked as the "Devil's Holiday," or a time to worship Satan, whoever that is.  Who that is, according to the Book of Job, Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Isaiah, is a creation of the almighty, and party of the whole program.  The word Satan comes from the simple butchering of the Hebrew word for adversary.  And yet many a zealot will blame Satan for this or that or whatever.  Certainly they'll blame Satan or the Devil for Halloween.  POPPYCOCK!  Don't blame anybody for Halloween that isn't associated with candy industry.

I'll not waste a key-stroke lambasting candy.  Say what you will about your dentist bills or the diabetes epidemic, but there's absolutely no arguing with a snickers bar.   It's been a long time since I watched Saturday Morning Cartoons, but I sure hope that Reeses Peanut Butter Cups still has those commercials where a somehow a Republican eating from a jar of Peanut Butter and a Democrat eating a chocolate bar get into a fist fight and somehow invent those sublime little discs.

Halloween manifests the recognition of sin principally through candy, giving kids a chance to gobble up something that most of the year most of them are denied.  Obviously, as a representative of a healthy snack company, I'm supposed to talk about how candy's terrible for kids, and how everybody should be giving away Peeled Snacks instead.  I certainly agree with both of those statements, the first because there's no denying it, the second because I'm a self-serving goof.

But you want to know the truth?  Take candy out of Halloween and you MISS THE POINT!  Take sin and gore away from October 31st, and all you've got is the responsibility to dress up.  A friend of mine who shall remain nameless and awesome says that Halloween is an excuse for girls to dress super-sexy.  They can dress up like any professional, be it a nurse or a teacher or a firefighter or a superhero or whatever, so long as its supersexy.  Its an excuse to, for one night, let it ALL hang out, and then go back to being good little girls and boys.

 Lets all get back to being good little girls and boys TOMORROW.  Tonight, LET IT ALL HANG OUT!!

A Halloween ode to Shel Silverstein... 

There's poison in the apples, dear

and spider in the gin.

Your costume's lined with razor blades

to help you get more thin.

I wrapped a cobra round your hat

and hypnotized your granny.

So when the cobra bites your head,

your granny will kick your fanny!

There's booby traps all round the lieu

and trap-doors in your closet.

I hooked a blood bag up to the sink

so don't turn on the faucet!

Werewolves came to my house last night,

I gave them your address.

They asked if you were tasty meat,

I told them all, "oh YES!"

A ghost I met had lost his house,

when witches burned it down.

I told them all just where you live,

the address and the town.

Vampire coffins in your garage

will soon be opened up.

They quietly sneak in your room

and on your blood they'll sup!

You might ask why I tell you this.

I just thought that you should know.

Oh, for one other reason-

You're STANDING ON MY TOE!!!