Bitter Musings on Halloween (reposting)

I admit it. I am bitter. I don't understand when Halloween became a major holiday. Maybe it's because as a kid when all the other kids were traipsing all over town gathering huge amounts of candy I was being driven in my car by my parents to just a few houses of people we knew. We arrived home with a nice amount of candy but not the huge bag fulls I imagined my friends with parents who didn't care about their safety as much as mine did received.

At least we never had to hunt for razor blades in our apples. I always threw them out anyway. I have a few core principles I live by. One of them is: FRUIT IS NOT DESSERT! And it sure as heck isn't a treat either.


Halloween used to be strictly for kids. Lately more and more adults seem to relish this holiday. Personally I think they just want another occasion to drink after baseball season is over. Why? If you are an adult and you want a drink, drink. There is no reason to go to the trouble of dressing up to do it.

I guess I have been asked to wear too many strange outfits on stage. I don't understand why adults want to dress up. If you want to wear funny clothes audition for a show, spend weeks in rehearsals and perform. At least then there would be a point to you wearing a silly outfit. (There are other reasons to dress up I suppose but I don't want this to be one of those kinky sex blogs.)

The Halloween interests must have gotten a better PR man than they had when I was a kid. It seems to have become a major event now. I should be grateful I suppose otherwise the stores would already be overrun with Christmas decor.

I love people who decorate the outside of their homes for Christmas. I am much too lazy to ever do this of course. But lately I see people doing the same thing at Halloween with purple and orange lights, giant spider webs  and those awful huge nylon blow-up characters.

 Don't people realize this is the latest communist plot? Those nylon characters are all made in China after all. Soon Americans will have spent so much money on them that they will all have to file for bankruptcy, leaving the Chinese to scoop up huge amounts of real estate all over the country. I beg you if you don't want to eat chow mien the rest of your life stop investing in these characters.

I guess I would like Halloween more if there were better songs for it. The only one that comes to mind is Monster Mash and I never really understood it's appeal.

Hallmark came out with a Halloween song book a few years ago but they substituted new words to Christmas tunes. I never liked that idea much. Whatever words I hear to a tune the first time I hear it are the words I expect to hear every time. If you can't come up with your own tune, don't write a song! (This includes you Elton John. If you had really loved Lady Di you wouldn't have recycled your Marilyn Monroe song at her funeral.)

And please! While I am on the subject would someone please stop writing new verses to Amazing Grace? Any song with more than three verses is repugnant. You can imagine how I feel about the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Let's get back to traditional values this Halloween. If you are an adult, celebrate the old fashioned way this year by sitting at home waiting for your neighbor children to show up asking for candy. The only acceptable decoration is a jack-o-lantern outside your door. I am not talking about one of those polystyrene models or whatever carcinogenic material that it is I see in Hobby Lobby.

Remember none of those decorations is made in America. If you  love America you will carve your own pumpkin this year.