Halloween In! Easter and Christmas Out!

When I was a schoolboy – admittedly a long time ago and in the UK – I don’t remember there being a Halloween.   I do remember Easter (Good Friday and Easter Sunday) with the following Monday being a public holiday, and Christmas. At public school both Christian occasions were officially recognized with religious services and the Christmas break was preceded by a school carol service. Of course there were other related activities outside of school, particularly for those children with parents who were involved with religious organizations. Mine were best described as unconsciously agnostic so the school was the place where I mostly experienced some religion. 

    For every child I knew of, (including a couple of Jewish children) Christmas was an exciting time, and though the Christian message barely penetrated my thinking, the carol service was a positive experience, both musically and emotionally. All Saints Day was marked in the morning assembly’s short daily service but I can’t remember it had any meaning for me. I think it is this Christian event that has been hi-jacked to spawn the awful modern-day Halloween nonsense. 

    On this website we have set out to strip bare contemporary political and cultural events and issues and place them in the context of what we claim is a barely-declared but full-blown revolution. We also seek to unmask ‘expertise’ which is really deceitful propaganda and use commonsense to find and proclaim truth. We also look for evidence of societal harm when a seemingly benign trend is destroying the character and culture of the people of both the USA and the UK. Recently we drew attention to the replacement of children with pets (mostly dogs) that is leading to a self-imposed holocaust of the American and British people. We consistently assert that contemporary popular music and pop culture is so decadent as to herald the demise of our civilization. We maintain that watching almost all TV whether for news or entertainment is to submit oneself to brainwashing. And we say that brainwashing is the purpose of virtually all Media. We claim that pro-Sports are the modern-day version of “dope for the masses”. We know that some or all of this will alienate many website visitors who will feel personally criticized and made uncomfortable but so be it! 

    By denouncing Halloween as yet another seductive but harmful event on the modern calendar we will probably alienate the last of our visitors. Clearly it is fast becoming one of the biggest and most popular celebrations of the American year. Mr. Radical tells me that the UK is not far behind in promoting and elevating this culturally bankrupt and childish annual nonsense. 

    What has brought this to a head for me is that my son’s public school here in California requested all pupils to come to school dressed in Halloween costumes on 31st October. At 8.30am there was to be a Halloween parade around the school, to be followed with classroom activities focused on Halloween celebrations around the world. This is now to be an annual school event. I should place this further official elevation of Halloween in the context of a school year where there is no longer a mention of Christmas or Easter. There will be no carol singing in December and all classroom decorations are purged of anything that identifies the Christmas break for what it historically is. It is now the Winter break! 

    My son hates dressing up in any kind of costume. His objections reminded me that when I was growing up in a rough working class English neighborhood we boys would only countenance cowboy or soldier outfits with guns and anything else would have been seen as ‘cissy’. I am sure that boys – unlike girls – are generally repulsed by costumes. In the mixed-sex schools of modern California all of the activities have been ‘girlified’ and so there is a ‘come in pyjamas day’ and a ‘pink ribbon day’ and a ‘wear green’ day. Halloween is now the ‘dressing-up’ day par excellence. This year the afternoon of the 31st was made a school holiday, presumably to enable children and teachers to get home and into costume and ready for the big evening activities. I notified the school that I was keeping my son at home and would home school him – which I did. 

    So what happened in the evening? As in preceding years my wife had a large bowl of candy inside the front door for she doesn’t want us to be seen by the neighbors as mean spirited. As soon as darkness descended the door bell began ringing and kids in costumes were at the door – the boys mostly dressed in horror costumes and the girls in fairy clothes. In most cases a parent was standing down at the end of the path, although a few teenage boys came unaccompanied. In every case, shouting ‘trick or treat’, the kids greedily grabbed a handful of candy and hurried off. I am not sure what would have happened if my wife had said either ‘trick’ or ‘treat’ for I am convinced that no kid had any idea of why they were parroting these three words. This grabbing of candy by kids who were mostly overweight was the sum total of the ‘fun’. Perhaps this coarse, greedy and culturally empty activity is a preparation for a future America of something-for-nothing welfare, the redistribution of wealth and an addiction to fantasy? 

    In our adopted town many houses and front yards are now, in the lead-up to Halloween, festooned with macabre decorations, from cobwebs to skeletons. Each year seems to bring bigger and more expensive shows, even at addresses where there are no kids. This Halloween event is surely growing year by year. And it is devoid of cultural and historic content and extremely childish. 

    Some friends and my family have begun taking our children out around the neighborhood in mid December singing Christmas carols outside houses. The kids knock on doors and wish the residents a “Merry Christmas”. We are well received. I know of no other group doing this, though in England many years ago, this was a common December activity. The only carol concerts that I know of are held in private by Churches. We ask for no money. Not all members of our carol singing group are practicing Christians, though most are members of that diminishing and persecuted religion. I organize this in order to do my small bit to rescue a tradition that is being covertly suppressed. I am not much of a Christian but I am sure that the kids who take part in our night time street singing will have fond memories of something that was culturally and spiritually meaningful. Hopefully the wonderful tunes and masterful lyrics of “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”, “Once in Royal David’s City” and “Silent Night” will be a small antidote to the musical trash that is making millionaires and billionaires out of misfits, exhibitionists and perverts. And hopefully our children and our listeners are being kept mindful of a long tradition that is a mark of a true civilization. 

    How long before our carol-singing activity is banned from the streets as offensive to minorities, perverts and secularists and we are extinguished – just as Easter and Christmas has been extinguished in the schools and officially replaced with Halloween, pink ribbon and pyjama days? 

    Weather – Here in middle California the weather has been pleasantly warm but with no sign of much needed precipitation. There has not been one record-breaking day of temperature and nothing near such days 20 or 30 years ago. In the UK, October has been wet, stormy and windy which is actually unremarkable. 

    Music Choice – The incomparable late Frank Sinatra singing “Love and Marriage” (between a man and a woman!)

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