Yes, it's that time for witches, ghosts and goblins once again. Trick or treat and things that go 'bump' in the night will be the call of the day. Houston will be experiencing lovely weather for it, and my sign that will be on the front door is ready. It says, "Knock on my door and I call the police!!!"
I don't need a bunch of little kids bothering me. I'm not only the Thanksgiving scrooge and the Christmas scrooge, I'm also the Halloween scrooge. Bah humbug.
One thing I find interesting is that Halloween is the only holiday that has never been successfully 'Christianized'. By that, I mean that some of our other holidays have a mixture of paganism in them. Back in the day, people lived for their festivals. It was the only time they were able to enjoy their lives. The rest of the time was spent simply trying to survive. When the early Christian church arrived, they realized that no one would listen to them if they preached against their godless festivals. So, a compromise was made.
For example, the Christmas tree is pagan in its origin. The druids of northern Europe and the UK would bring a tree down from the hills during the winter solstice and prop it up in the village center. All the villagers would decorate it and worship the tree. When the church came along, they adopted the Christmas tree as a sign of worshipping Christ and celebrating his birth. We know, or have a very good idea, that Christ was not born in December. When the Bible says the shepherds were in the fields, watching over their flock by night, this was not done in the dead of winter. Rather, it was during the spring. However, the church moved the celebration of his birth to coincide with the festival and the Christmas tree/Pagan worship festivals were combined.
Then you have Easter. In the middle east, particularly those who worshipped the old Babylonian gods, their main god died every year and was reborn, hatching from a beautifully adorned egg. A great festival was molded around this rebirth and people exchanged decorated eggs in celebration of their god being reborn. The church said...hmmmmm...and chose to continue the use of decorated eggs as a way of continuing the festival, but changing it to be a celebration of Christ's resurrection.
However, Halloween has not been so changed. It is still about scary things and goblins and ghosts and the undead and things wicked. For some reason, this holiday has withstood the influence of the church and has more or less kept its historical past. I fear it is dying out, though, because many people are, rightfully, fearful of sending their children out to stranger's homes. There is so much evil in the world and so many sick in the mind people that even I wouldn't want to knock on a stranger's door in these times. So much the pity. When I was growing up, there wasn't near the danger as you see today. Many things could be attributed to it, but I won't go into that. I'll just say for all to have fun, be careful, and remember there's no such thing as ghosts. There are such things as monsters...human monsters...so keep an eye out.