HALLOWEEN 101

You can surf the Internet until you’re blue researching the origins of Halloween, but this is how it was explained to me, while attending fifth grade in Catholic school.

Halloween began as a Catholic tradition.  Parishioners would dress up as their favorite saint, and then go door to door and collect money for the poor.  Considering the name, “Hallow” means to make holy, and the occasion is celebrated on the eve of All Saints Day (also known to some as All Souls Day), I tend to believe that Halloween began as a Holy day.  As humans evolve, so do our holidays.

When I was a kid, we use to steal Farmer Brown’s field corn.  His field was only a block from our house.  All of us neighborhood kids would get together and collect ears of corn, then take them back to my house and spend a few hours shucking the corn from the cob.  It was really hard and rough on your hands, because the corn was very firm and fixed.  Still, we stood over a trash bag and all of us did our part.

When the night would arrive, we would fill little paper lunch sacks with the corn, and begin our little adventure.  We would run up and down the streets throwing the corn on the front porches of our victims, who were relaxed and cozy in their homes watching prime time television. 

CRASH!  The corn would explode loudly against the aluminum screen doors and siding, as it bounced along the porch.  If you were on the other side of the door, it would scare the ba-Jevus out of you!  I know, because there were times when I was grounded and not allowed to join my friends, and they would corn our house.

Those were the best days of my life as a kid.  People would get mad and chase you down the street, only because you scared the crap out of them.  The corn didn’t do any damage to the house.  It was good clean entertainment.  Our parents even knew what we were up to and most times they did not object. 

When I reminisce on the experience today, I know it was wrong to steal Farmer Brown’s corn, but other than that, it was fun!  Farmer Brown would even sometimes sit in his field with a salt gun and shoot at us.  I never was hit, so I can laugh about it.

Still, I do not know of anyone who corns houses today.  It was one of those traditions that quietly slipped away.  Just like a holy custom becoming a tradition of terror and hell raising. 

I’m much older now.  As close as I get to scaring people these days is sitting in a dark house by candle light allowing my imagination to run wild while watching horror flicks.  If I’m in an ornery mood, I’ll dress up and scare the kids who come a knocking for candy.  Blow their little minds away!

I use to play scary sounds on cassette tape, but then most of the kids were too frightened to approach the house.  So I toned it down a bit after that.  Not many kids trick or treat in our neighborhood as it is.  Most of the little trick or treaters don’t even wear a costume anymore.

Come as you are . . . the real world is much more scarier anyway.  Who knows?  Maybe it’s the birth of a new Halloween custom.