Hello, chaps, and a happy Halloween to all of you, regardless of where you live. I hope you all enjoy your evening, whether you’re begging for candy or scaring the snot out of little kids who come to you begging for candy. (I fall into the second category. My technique? I look at them once and they run away screaming… if they haven’t turned into stone.)
Right then. I know I said I’d give you a game review this week, but guess what? I’m not. Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever written an article about a topic when I said I would. It’s really horrible, isn’t it? Oh well. I would have reviewed it, except at the last minute I realized nobody would care about this particular game and pelt me with tomatoes for playing it.
So instead, we’re going to do something educational! Isn’t that fun?
[Mad Mod: No.]
Oh. Come on, it’ll be great!
[Mad Mod: There is absolutely no way you can teach us something and entertain us at the same time.]
Oh yeah? Is that a challenge? Well, you’re on, dude, you’re on!
Today, class, we’ll be teaching you about the origins of Halloween. Don’t forget, your term paper on this will be due next week. You’ll get ten points off for each day you’re late. Get to work, ya lazy slobs!
Halloween’s origins lie in various pagan religions, so Strike is gonna love this. (Pagan means non-Christian and heretical and stuff, for those who don’t know.) Examples include the Celts, who celebrated a version of Halloween called Samhain. According to them – oh, wait a second.
DISCLAIMER: If you’re a pagan and happen to be reading this, I apologize in advance for relentlessly making fun of you. Please don’t hurt me. I’m not trying to offend you, just to make a few jokes.
Okay then. On Samhain, the spirits of the dead would rise and crowd in the streets. Because there were so many of them, there would naturally be lots of jostling and shoving in the streets, until eventually all the ghosts got pissed at each other and started brawling. Eventually the Celts heard all the ruckus, came out with a shotgun–er, I mean, they gave the ghosts pie to appease them, and then when the ghosts didn’t like the pie, put on masks to scare the ghosts. Hey, don’t look at me like that, this is what my research tells me. (Except with a lot of embellishing.)
Then the Christians came along.
DISCLAIMER: The same as the first one, except for Christians.
Now, the Christians were crafty li’l monotheists. They thought, hey, y’know what? I bet we can convert more people if we take other religions’ holidays and make ‘em part of our own! (It actually makes some sense, if you think about it. Wouldn’t you rather join a religion that had the same customs as your own?)
Thus was born All Saints’ Eve. The basic premise is that lots of people died in the past for the cause of Christianity, so why don’t we spare one day each year to eat a lot of food and commemorate them? This merry little festival continued on for a bit, eventually getting a do-over and being renamed All Hallows’ Eve. (A “hallow” evidently meant a saint, which shouldn’t be so surprising considering the meaning of the word “hallowed”.)
Funny story… while I was typing up “Eve”, I made a typo and wrote “Eva” instead. Then I did it again during the last sentence. Ain’t that a hoot? Ha ha ha!
[Mad Mod: You’ve taken a practice SAT, right, Grondring? Well, y’know the sections where they give you a paragraph, and ask you to remove the sentence that doesn’t fit in with the overall theme? Well, in the spirit of the SAT, REMOVE THAT WHOLE LAST PARAGRAPH!]
[AT: Amen.]
Er… no. I like rambling.
Eventually, All Hallows’ Eve evolved into what we know today as Halloween. Halloween today is pretty much a secular (nonreligious) holiday. As you should probably know, people dress up in costumes, go around to houses, and ask for candy. The adults (or incredibly lazy teenagers, in my case) give it to them. And so the vicious cycle goes on and on.
As the children of the neighborhood grow older, though, an interesting thing happens. They start pulling pranks. Mostly these pranks consist of throwing stuff. Famous tricks consist of chucking eggs, toilet paper, or cats at houses. This is always rather fun from the kid’s perspective… until the adults come out with a shotgun–er, I mean, they call the police, who book the kids for assault and steal all their candy.
In general, Halloween’s a fun little end of the year holiday (if only for the free candy). So go out and knock yourself out this evening. And maybe a few cats as you throw them at people’s houses.
Another little digression. One of my friends said that one prank he’d love to pull on Halloween would be to kill a cat and leave it on a guy’s porch. I sure keep interesting pals, don’t I?
Oh yeah…
DISCLAIMER: I apologize for making so many references to hurting cats in this article. If you’re a cat person, I’m deeply sorry for insulting those stupid pieces of fur you call pets. I didn’t mean to offend you.
That’s it for this week. Oh, by the way, if you haven’t noticed yet, there’s a poll up today. If enough people like the idea of me posting stories during these weekly slots, then I’ll go ahead and next week will consist of samples from my writing so you guys can choose one.
… oh crap. I just jinxed it. I never write about what I say I’ll write about, remember?
Ah well. Vote and have fun. Ciao.
Grondy-VOTE!!!
Axem Titanium-In the election on Tuesday!!!
Mad Mod is so gonna throw cats at people’s houses now.
HAHAHAHAHA!!!! THAT'S THE BEST POST YET!!!!
we learned about Samhain too...
... okay, who voted for "huh?"?