Is Halloween Evil?

A friend asked me if I allow my kids to celebrate Halloween. I should have seen the trap coming from a mile away. But I didn’t. I will save you the lecture. The conclusion was “Halloween is evil.”

I’ve been told a lot of things are evil. Halloween. Harry Potter. Yoga. Dinosaurs. I tend to disagree, but not completely . . .

• Halloween on a Monday is evil.
• Someone ruining the Harry Potter ending before I finished the book is evil.
• Yoga pose “Garuda” or “The Eagle” is evil after a long day of sitting.
• Dinosaurs in the Barbie dollhouse. Evil.

Somehow, I don’t think that me getting dressed up as Uhura from Star Trek is a bad thing or an evil thing.

I’m okay with “Fall Festivals” and “Costumes Parties” if you must avoid the use of the word Halloween. I will spare you the history lesson on All-Hallows-Eve. You can Google it yourself.

Do you want to know what I think is deranged?

• Valentine's Day. Little naked man shoots you with arrow through your heart. Bad. Evil. Weird.
• Guy Fawkes Day. Let’s drag a stuffed man around town begging for candy, and then throw him on a bonfire. Just because you do it with a British accent doesn’t make it right.
• The Birthday Piñata. What did that poor burro do to you? Whacking it with a stick makes it OK?
• American Holidays. Why are all of our holidays only one day long? Where are the three-days festivals? Feasting? Running with the bulls? Dancing in the streets?

Halloween (or your Fall Festival) is the closest thing we have to letting our Puritanical hair down. Let us revel. Let us debauch. Let us trick-or-treat. Endure it long enough to take some photos of your Fall-Festival-of-Non-Evil-Masquerading. Or the .

Strangest thing is that in order to make Halloween less evil, it has become sexier. Every mom I know loves the inappropriate options for our underaged girls. Sexy nurse? Sexy Dorothy? Sexy vampire? Wait, that’s both evil and sexy.

I quit.

Next you’ll be complaining about the sugar in the candy.