The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

It has come to the Crab Cracker’s attention that a petition to boycott Halloween this year has been circulating since summer. Supported by Pastor Paul of the Little Church of the Stingless Nettles, it decries demon worship, gross-out costumes, sugar gluttony, crass commercialization and yoga, particularly Hot Yoga, what the Reverend calls Satan’s Sauna. The anti-goblin signatures numbered in the many dozens.

The Mabana Institute, the South End’s not quite non-partisan think tank, has been conducting its own polls regarding Halloween this past month, according to Prof. Lawrence Glewkose, former director of the American Candy Lobby and now a permanent board member of the Institute. Prof. Glewkose reported that in their admittedly non-scientific poll of children at South End Elementary, 69% were in favor of Halloween as a national holiday while 11% supported having 2 or more Halloweens a year. 11% of the survey responders believed Halloween was already an ongoing event 365 days a year, judging by the proliferation of zombie movies and candy machines and their siblings’ Goth wardrobes. 9% couldn’t read the survey.

According to Joan Hypoglyseemly, spokeswoman for the Pro-Diabetes Foundation, anti-Halloween sentiment is based on  superstition and fear of high fructose sugar perpetuated by the ignorant and the dietary obsessed. “What these people need,” she suggested, “is a Paleo diet exorcism followed by the first ten episodes of Walking Dead.

Prof. Glewkose, unmoved by her sense of humor, suggested she might consider removing her witch costume next interview. Needless to say, Halloween started early on the previously zombie-free South End. According to a Stanwood General Hospital nurse, Prof. Glewkose will recover from his bite wounds, but probably not in time to take his kids Trick or Treating this year.

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A full month of Sunday sermons leading up to Halloween, Pastor Paul preaches mightily against the demonic holiday, pounding his pulpit with his leatherbound copy of the King James version of the Lord’s scripture. “Blasphemous!” he hollers to the assembled congregation. “Devil worshippers! Beggars in obedience to Beelzebub!” Pastor Paul unleashes a stream of caustic invectives to the steady tattoo of his Bible slapping the plywood podium.

“This unholy holiday,” he exhorts, “is an affront to God himself!” In every pew and folding chair, the Little Church in the Ravine’s dutiful members hang their heads and avert their eyes, probably half with kids who’ve already bought skeleton costumes, Star Wars regalia, vampire teeth and wolfman masks. Hypocrisy be damned, they’re not about to tell little Jimmy or Brenda they can’t join in the national gathering of candy, c’mon, they all wandered the streets of their own childhood with a grocery bag or a pillowcase to collect their bribes. No harm done.

If you don’t count cavities and a spike in dental fees by Christmas. The era of juvenile deviltry has long passed into faded myth — even the elders never followed up on the threat of a trick. No outhouses were moved back six feet, no buggies were parked on a shed roof, no bags of dog pop were set on fire on the offenders’ porches to be stamped out after the doorbell was rung and the goblins had fled.

Pastor Paul, unfortunately, every year thinks he’s preaching to the choir, but most of the squirming congregation think he ought to lighten up a bit. Fun is fun and dressing up like a zombie doesn’t make the kids prefer human flesh over Snickers bars and Milky Ways and whatever high fructose treats the suburbs of Stanwoodopolis are parceling out mostly before dark. Even the kids and their parents know the vampires come out after sundown when, hopefully, they’re safely home spoiling an appetite for a healthy dinner. Paul, of course, thinks those parents are boiling up eye of newt soup with a dash of bat blood and who knows what hell broth added too. Same recipe as last year….

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Some years Halloween comes early to the South End … and some years it never seems to leave.  Down here in the nettle regions the kids get driven north to the Stanwoodopolis Suburbs where the candy flows like bottled mineral water and the sodium lights force phantom predators back into the shadows.  This season we just got the fright-filled statistics from studies that show philanthropy by the wealthy dropped by nearly 5%, wealthy being those who made over $200,000 a year.

I guess the candy jars are going to empty a tad earlier when our little ‘Takers’ roll up to the festooned front doors of the Tricklers.  Forget that trickle down theory of supply-siders, I think the drought of charity may be a prolonged one.  And no, it isn’t the result of Global Warming….  Next year we’ll probably see moats around the castles and the gated communities will add spikes to the fences.  Treats for the beggaring poor?  Fuggedaboudit!  When times get tough, some hearts get harder.

In the same study they found that the poorer folks had actually increased their charitable giving by as much as the wealthy had decreased theirs.  I suspect when we belong to a community, we think of neighbors as real people struggling with the same problems as the rest of us.  We don’t think of folks who can’t afford health care, folks who lost a job, folks who had their house repossessed as vampires feeding on the Body Politic.  They’re us.  They’re not who we ‘Unfriend’ when they need help the most.  They’re who we look at in our own mirror.

It would be way too easy to demonize the rich.  Oh, sure, we could send the kids out this Halloween in tuxedoes and Armani suits.  Wearing fangs.  But charity, like our mothers said, begins at home, so maybe we should trickle some down to them.  And no, I don’t mean give them another tax break.  They already got Christmas 365 days a year.

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With Halloween cranking up full volume in stores right after Labor Day, Pastor Paul down at the Little Church in the Ravine made it his mission to warn the South End about a holiday devoted to Devil Worship and the celebration of Evil Spirits.  He’s been pounding the pulpit three Sundays in a row now and we still got three more before Fright Night actually arrives.  No doubt he’ll need chiropractic work on that right hammering hand.

Most of the congregation is my age, meaning they remember when Halloween really was a spooky affair.  Outhouses got moved a few crucial feet back, wagons got disassembled then reassembled on the shed roof, burning bags of dog poop were set on fire in the driveway.  Trick or Treat was no idle threat.  Now, of course, the only Trick is the one played on us by the candy industry.  Like most every holiday, holy or not, Halloween’s been popularized, commercialized and sanitized.  Now they’re profit industries.  Economic engines.  Job creators.

I haven’t seen a kid in a skeleton outfit come knocking on the shack door in decades.  Pastor Paul is maybe a bit overwrought about the flock’s grandkids serving as Spawn of Satan when maybe we ought to worry more about the little tykes dressing up in $50 Star Wars outfits, becoming subjugated Slaves to Obesity.  The poor little high fructose sugar beggars haven’t got the foggiest clue what Pastor Paul is worried about.  And their parents, who’ve driven them to the lucrative candy-rich suburbs of Stanwoodopolis, mostly worry about child predators and sewing needles stuck in apples.

Nowadays Halloween ends before dark and the security lights come on.  Hardly matters with Mom and Dad sitting shotgun in their SUV idling by the curb….  Now, I’m not advocating we go back to the days of cruel tricks.  But it did encourage some creative thinking.  Although maybe this is what Pastor Paul is railing about.  He’s got a steep hill to climb down here on the South End, is all I know.  That, or he should look into Exorcism as a second profession.  Be a cash crop down here.  And not just around Halloween.

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