Halloween (born October 31, Ancient Gaelic times) is a former pagan ritual turned commercialized American holiday, a celebration of death and violent murder, a leading cause of childhood diabetes, and a dick.
Ever since dickish Irish immigrants arrived in North America in the 19th century with their ignorant annual tradition of begging evil spirits not to hurt them, Halloween has become the United States' second most popular holiday behind Christmas. Presently, there are few Americans who do not feel some level of social obligation to celebrate this night by wearing a mass-produced latex mask, plying local children with free sugar, or defacing a perfectly good pumpkin, leaving it to rot on their doorsteps throughout most of November.
Halloween has also made October by far the most important sales month for the Plastic Spider Ring industry.
Ever since dickish Irish immigrants arrived in North America in the 19th century with their ignorant annual tradition of begging evil spirits not to hurt them, Halloween has become the United States' second most popular holiday behind Christmas. Presently, there are few Americans who do not feel some level of social obligation to celebrate this night by wearing a mass-produced latex mask, plying local children with free sugar, or defacing a perfectly good pumpkin, leaving it to rot on their doorsteps throughout most of November.
Halloween has also made October by far the most important sales month for the Plastic Spider Ring industry.
Early life
Halloween’s father is the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, in which pagans celebrated the end of the harvest season by taking stock of supplies and slaughtering livestock to prepare for the upcoming winter. These activities make Samhain seem less like a “festival” and more like “backbreaking labor necessary to survive,” but either way, the ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundary between the living and the dead disappeared, allowing the dead to cause all sorts of problems like disease and crop damage. The best defense against the undead was, of course, to wear silly homemade costumes and throw the bones of slaughtered livestock into a bonfire. It is unclear where Charleston Chews came into play in all of this.
Halloween’s mother is the Christian holiday of All Saints’ Day, AKA "All Hallows' Day", a celebration of all the martyrs who had died in the name of Jesus while trying to kill other people in the name of Jesus. This holiday took place on May 13th until the early 8th century when Pope Gregory III moved it to November 1, because Popes can pretty much do whatever they want. After moving to her new calendar date, innocent All Hallows Day caught the eye of bad boy Samhain who immediately knocked her up pagan-style and named the resulting bastard child All Hallows' Eve.
[edit]
Growing up and leaving home
In the mid-1800s, the newly nicknamed “Halloween” left home and followed the transatlantic migration of millions of Irish people to the United States during the great Potato Famine.
As with most young dicks living away from home for the first time, Halloween took its newfound freedom a little too far, quickly becoming known as a night of vandalism, destruction of property, and animal cruelty. In the early 20th century, neighborhood organizations held an intervention for the n’er do well holiday, transforming it into a wussified version of its former self, during which children went door to door, receiving treats, rather than playing tricks on their neighbors. This small-time bribery helped to reduce the mischief, and by the 1930s, “trick-or-treating” became widespread.
[edit]
Halloween sells out
If we’ve all learned anything from The Big Chill, it’s that idealistic youth eventually gives way to compromised adulthood. That, and you can slap a cool Motown soundtrack over any piece of crap and make it instantly watchable on some level. As the former would have us expect, once tricks were replaced by treats, Halloween quickly slid down the slippery slope toward selling out.
The commercialization of Halloween started in the early 1900s with Halloween postcards. This lead to commercially made Halloween decorations, which led to mass-produced Halloween costumes, which led to a variety of annoying Halloween yard decorations including jack-o’-lantern shaped leaf bags, those door-length cardboard skeleton decorations, and tombstones with hilarious epithets like “Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake; Stepped on the gas instead of the brake” and “I told you I was sick!”
The National Confectioners Association reported in 2005 that 80 percent of American adults planned to give out candy to trick-or-treaters, and that 93 percent of children planned to go trick-or-treating. The following year, the National Association Watch Group reported that the National Confectioners Association was a ridiculous association and its members should deeply consider what they’re doing with their lives.
[edit]
Dickish Halloween traditions
Halloween imagery tends to be a commercialized take on the dark and mysterious, rounding the edges off normally unpleasant things like death, monsters, ghosts, ghouls, witches, spiders, zombies, mummies, skeletons, demons, and hockey mask-wearing psychopaths who murder promiscuous teenagers just as we’re about to see some bare tits.
[edit]
Jack-o’-lanterns
One of the most recognizable symbols for Halloween is a pumpkin with a face carved into the side, lit from within by a candle. Back in Ireland, these lanterns were first carved from a turnip or rutabaga, but once the food-wasting tradition spread to North America, pumpkins were more available and thus became food of choice for such inane dickery. The name “jack-o'-lantern” comes from the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a greedy, gambling, hard-drinking old farmer who allegedly tricked the devil into climbing a tree, then trapped him up there by carving a cross into the tree trunk. If such an item were named today it might be called a “Gary Busey-o' lantern."
[edit]
Costumes
While Halloween costumes started out as spooky creatures like ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils, they have evolved (or devolved) into animals, famous athletes, movie characters, political figures, and pretty much anything else that has ever existed throughout the history of time. Dick couples often dress in matching costumes like Salt and Pepper or Lindsay Lohan and cocaine. And there’s always some dick who dresses up as an abstract concept like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to show off how clever they are.
According to the National Retail Federation, the most popular Halloween costumes for adults are: witch, pirate, vampire, cat and clown. The most popular Halloween costume themes for adult females are: sexy witch, sexy pirate, sexy vampire, sexy nurse and sexy person who was too lazy to think of a costume and just bought a pair of cat ears for $1.75 on the way to a party.
[edit]
Foods
The most popular Halloween “treats” are actually all let downs in some way or another. Candy corn gets stuck in your teeth well before it even gets a chance to touch your tongue. Candy apples might be coated in sugar, but they’re still 95% apple. “Fun size” candy bars are way to small to result in any actual fun from eating them. And if you actually do enjoy eating any of this junk, keep in mind there’s always a chance some dick hid razor blades or pins inside them. It’s true. Just ask your parents.
[edit]
Haunted houses
Another time honored Halloween tradition is to walk through a fake house covered with fake cobwebs where local community theatre actors dress up in homemade monster costumes and pretend to assault you. -------The scariest thing about haunted houses is that people actually pay for the experience of being disappointed by them.
[edit]
TV specials
If you’re not a “leaving the house ever” kind of person, you can still celebrate the magic of Halloween through your television. Local channels with low budgets often show endless marathons of low rent horror movies from the 1930s. And the networks air Halloween episodes of your favorite sitcoms, like the episode of Punky Brewster where Punky stabs a vampire in the heart with a wooden table leg from Henry Warnimont’s kitchen table. Any sitcom that can’t manage to come up with a spooky plot is preempted by animated Halloween specials like It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Garfield's Halloween Adventure, and Spongebob Squarepants Accidentally Murders Squidward in an Innocent Halloween Prank Gone Horribly Awry.
Halloween’s father is the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, in which pagans celebrated the end of the harvest season by taking stock of supplies and slaughtering livestock to prepare for the upcoming winter. These activities make Samhain seem less like a “festival” and more like “backbreaking labor necessary to survive,” but either way, the ancient Gaels believed that on October 31, the boundary between the living and the dead disappeared, allowing the dead to cause all sorts of problems like disease and crop damage. The best defense against the undead was, of course, to wear silly homemade costumes and throw the bones of slaughtered livestock into a bonfire. It is unclear where Charleston Chews came into play in all of this.
Halloween’s mother is the Christian holiday of All Saints’ Day, AKA "All Hallows' Day", a celebration of all the martyrs who had died in the name of Jesus while trying to kill other people in the name of Jesus. This holiday took place on May 13th until the early 8th century when Pope Gregory III moved it to November 1, because Popes can pretty much do whatever they want. After moving to her new calendar date, innocent All Hallows Day caught the eye of bad boy Samhain who immediately knocked her up pagan-style and named the resulting bastard child All Hallows' Eve.
[edit]
Growing up and leaving home
In the mid-1800s, the newly nicknamed “Halloween” left home and followed the transatlantic migration of millions of Irish people to the United States during the great Potato Famine.
As with most young dicks living away from home for the first time, Halloween took its newfound freedom a little too far, quickly becoming known as a night of vandalism, destruction of property, and animal cruelty. In the early 20th century, neighborhood organizations held an intervention for the n’er do well holiday, transforming it into a wussified version of its former self, during which children went door to door, receiving treats, rather than playing tricks on their neighbors. This small-time bribery helped to reduce the mischief, and by the 1930s, “trick-or-treating” became widespread.
[edit]
Halloween sells out
If we’ve all learned anything from The Big Chill, it’s that idealistic youth eventually gives way to compromised adulthood. That, and you can slap a cool Motown soundtrack over any piece of crap and make it instantly watchable on some level. As the former would have us expect, once tricks were replaced by treats, Halloween quickly slid down the slippery slope toward selling out.
The commercialization of Halloween started in the early 1900s with Halloween postcards. This lead to commercially made Halloween decorations, which led to mass-produced Halloween costumes, which led to a variety of annoying Halloween yard decorations including jack-o’-lantern shaped leaf bags, those door-length cardboard skeleton decorations, and tombstones with hilarious epithets like “Here lies the body of Jonathan Blake; Stepped on the gas instead of the brake” and “I told you I was sick!”
The National Confectioners Association reported in 2005 that 80 percent of American adults planned to give out candy to trick-or-treaters, and that 93 percent of children planned to go trick-or-treating. The following year, the National Association Watch Group reported that the National Confectioners Association was a ridiculous association and its members should deeply consider what they’re doing with their lives.
[edit]
Dickish Halloween traditions
Halloween imagery tends to be a commercialized take on the dark and mysterious, rounding the edges off normally unpleasant things like death, monsters, ghosts, ghouls, witches, spiders, zombies, mummies, skeletons, demons, and hockey mask-wearing psychopaths who murder promiscuous teenagers just as we’re about to see some bare tits.
[edit]
Jack-o’-lanterns
One of the most recognizable symbols for Halloween is a pumpkin with a face carved into the side, lit from within by a candle. Back in Ireland, these lanterns were first carved from a turnip or rutabaga, but once the food-wasting tradition spread to North America, pumpkins were more available and thus became food of choice for such inane dickery. The name “jack-o'-lantern” comes from the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a greedy, gambling, hard-drinking old farmer who allegedly tricked the devil into climbing a tree, then trapped him up there by carving a cross into the tree trunk. If such an item were named today it might be called a “Gary Busey-o' lantern."
[edit]
Costumes
While Halloween costumes started out as spooky creatures like ghosts, skeletons, witches, and devils, they have evolved (or devolved) into animals, famous athletes, movie characters, political figures, and pretty much anything else that has ever existed throughout the history of time. Dick couples often dress in matching costumes like Salt and Pepper or Lindsay Lohan and cocaine. And there’s always some dick who dresses up as an abstract concept like Einstein’s Theory of Relativity to show off how clever they are.
According to the National Retail Federation, the most popular Halloween costumes for adults are: witch, pirate, vampire, cat and clown. The most popular Halloween costume themes for adult females are: sexy witch, sexy pirate, sexy vampire, sexy nurse and sexy person who was too lazy to think of a costume and just bought a pair of cat ears for $1.75 on the way to a party.
[edit]
Foods
The most popular Halloween “treats” are actually all let downs in some way or another. Candy corn gets stuck in your teeth well before it even gets a chance to touch your tongue. Candy apples might be coated in sugar, but they’re still 95% apple. “Fun size” candy bars are way to small to result in any actual fun from eating them. And if you actually do enjoy eating any of this junk, keep in mind there’s always a chance some dick hid razor blades or pins inside them. It’s true. Just ask your parents.
[edit]
Haunted houses
Another time honored Halloween tradition is to walk through a fake house covered with fake cobwebs where local community theatre actors dress up in homemade monster costumes and pretend to assault you. -------The scariest thing about haunted houses is that people actually pay for the experience of being disappointed by them.
[edit]
TV specials
If you’re not a “leaving the house ever” kind of person, you can still celebrate the magic of Halloween through your television. Local channels with low budgets often show endless marathons of low rent horror movies from the 1930s. And the networks air Halloween episodes of your favorite sitcoms, like the episode of Punky Brewster where Punky stabs a vampire in the heart with a wooden table leg from Henry Warnimont’s kitchen table. Any sitcom that can’t manage to come up with a spooky plot is preempted by animated Halloween specials like It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, Garfield's Halloween Adventure, and Spongebob Squarepants Accidentally Murders Squidward in an Innocent Halloween Prank Gone Horribly Awry.
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