Halloween

Halloween is fast approaching. While I enjoy most of the holidays, Halloween is far and away my favorite, especially as it is celebrated in the United States. Halloween is a holiday just dedicated to having fun, trick-or-treating, candy, costumes and parties.

Maybe it's because I find other holidays to be too serious in nature, or maybe it's just my Irish heritage. Halloween is generally regarded as having originated in Ireland, where the Celts had an Autumn festival known as Samhain. They would light large bonfires to ward off evil spirits, because they believed the dead revisited the world on that day.

Since the division of the world of the living and the world of the dead did not exist on this night, many believed it was safer to dress as a ghost or "otherworldly creature" so as to blend in when outdoors. The children would knock on doors to gather fruit, nuts and sweets for the festival (the beginning of "trick-or-treating"). Homes would be decorated with pumpkins or turnips carved with scary faces.

Halloween arrived in America with the two million Irish that came because of the potato famine in the mid-nineteenth century. Costumes began to be worn around 1900, and trick-or-treating became widespread in the early 1950's. Halloween is now the sixth most profitable holiday for business, after Christmas, Mother's Day, Valentines Day, Easter and Father's Day.

Oddly enough, there seems to be a significant difference between liberals and conservatives over the celebration of Halloween. While over 70% of liberals and 67% of moderates will be handing out Halloween candy this year, only slightly more than half (55%) of conservatives will be doing so.

I'm told it's because many religious conservatives consider Halloween to be a "demonic" holiday. Personally, I think they're afraid someone might be having fun, and they can't have that.