So that time has come and gone again–Hallow’een. Probably the most confusing and confounding “celebration” of them all. This odd reason to leave school comes with another holiday, this one All Saints Day. Okay, so we have more or less dropped the all saints day thing, and instead of decorating Wal-Mart® with angels and representations of all things good, we decided to place devils, skeletons, witches, and all other sorts of things that stops M.M. from bringing the Cutie of the Bunch with her on her shopping trips.
“Come and get a creepy skeleton costume with an ax in the head and an eyeball hanging out! After all, you must prepare for the most illogical, ludicrous, and brainless holiday in the world, and scare yourself to death every time you open a newspaper or door to a mall!”
Wow, that one makes lots of sense. Now, ponder this situation. Demon-Boy comes up to you and yells “Trick or Treat!”
You, being rational (and totally disconnected from the pathetic, sad world we live in), ask this kid, whose tongue is hanging out and has bloodstains on his shirt, “What does that mean?”
Well, Demon-Boy has never been asked this before, and looks totally bewildered. “Uhh, it means you have a civic obligation (whether or not you celebrate this holiday,) to spend plenty of your hard-earned money to give me candy.”
Ah. Well, that sounds fair to you (huh?). So you dig into your pocket, give Demon-Boy your stash of Almond Joy®, and say “Happy Bloodbath Day.”
Oh, I see. Do I run up to every door in my county on Purim telling them they must give me Mishloach Manos, or they will be -----? And even if I did, would I gleefully toss it into my bag with candy to last me 4 months, without even acknowledging that person’s existence in the world?
Let me ask you this question. Would you ever, in your right mind, get up on a table and yell, “Enough of all these celebrations about the good in the world! It’s about time we begin to celebrate the evil, dark side of the world! Let’s celebrate murder, death, doom! Yes, let’s cheer for the very idea that evil exists. Hooray, we have found yet another reason to party! For there is evil, the Devil, hell, crime, terror and all other sorts of grand stuff! And so, let us all put on costumes to see who will make 3-year-old, innocent, toddlers scream the loudest! Let us scourge the neighborhood, pulling up to each and every door to disturb the peace they most clearly desired by staying home, and vacuum out their stocks of chocolate and candy. Yea, let us ignore the good, peace, and saintlihood of man. Instead, we will make this preposterous, daft, and outrageous holiday of evil the focus of our lives for 5 weeks!”
Okay, I’ve made my point. I’m going to move on.
My good friend, whom I shall call Nate, called me (not texted!) to ask how to get Trick-or-Treaters to come to his door. You see, he lives on one of these dead-end courts, so they don’t “drive by” his house. My sister, KWBSLKM, answered the phone, and informed him of some little tips on said topic. Sadly, he never got what he was looking for. And neither did we, but we weren’t hoping they would come. Well, we did get one. Allow me.
As I came home from Maariv, my carpooler did not know that my garage door code thing was not working, and dropped me there anyhow. This was no problem for me: I instead went to the front door. I had (woefully) forgotten that this was Bloodbath Night. So I knocked on the door, and heard scampering inside. Now, I was wondering, if they know I’m at the front door, why won’t they get it? I was rudely reminded why, when Rabbim finally opened the door, and instead of saying “hello, SLiM,” he said “happy Hallow’een,” with a small bag of M&M®s. Once he saw my face, (we had left the outside light off so that no trick-or-treaters would come,) he then said “Oh. Hi, SLiM!” I am kind of remorseful that I did not grab the bag of candy, and run off, howling, into the moonless night. That would actually have been very funny.
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