Happy Halloween! Religious Zealots Bugger Off!

Hooray! At last, at last it's Halloween! I'm in all my states of glee.

Pumpkins carved... check.
Treats ready to hand out...check.
Creepy music ready to play all evening...check.
Thing1/Thing2 costumes staged...check.

WE'RE READY TO TRICK-OR-TREAT!

I hope you all have a frighteningly fabulous Halloween!!!

And now for my "incident" report...

I took Thing1/Thing2 to a park in Wilmington (1 hour away) yesterday for some R&R. While there, several tween-aged girls approached me with flyers. One girl simpered, "Our church is having an ALTERNATIVE TO HALLOWEEN tonight..." At this point, I politely interjected with, "We're not from this area, thanks." And then, I paused and said, "...And there IS no 'alternative' to Halloween."

They all got horrified looks on their faces (Satan's mistress is visiting the park!) and scurried away. Heh. Flee, girlies, flee...

I loathe Harvest Festivals. They are thinly-veiled attempts at sabotaging Halloween. You don't see an alternative being promoted for Valentine's Day or Arbor Day, do you? Nope. Just Halloween. I think the churches are threatened by the popularity of Halloween and are fighting back with all the tools at their disposal. It's fine by me if their parishoners want to cut Halloween out of their own lives. What pisses me off is when the church holds a "Harvest Festival" and promotes it to the community. They try to guilt the population into skipping Halloween by saying it's 'dangerous' and not-Christian. Well, DUH, of course it's not Christian.

[Digression: technically, there are NO Christian holidays, they're all pagan holy days that have been taken over and modified by the church. holiday -- Old English -- haligdaeg-- holy day. Halloween is one of the few holidays that has managed to stay afloat as a non-Christian celebration.]

HEY, ALL YOU ZEALOTS! STOP MEESSING UP HALLOWEEN FOR THE REST OF US! STOP INTRUDING ON OUR FUN!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: If you believe that trick-or-treating is the step that will turn your kid into a satanic cult follower--then you've got more problems going on at home then just Halloween. The 'harvest festivals' are just proselytizing. There is no harvesting going on at these faux festivals, just religion in the form of candy and cheap hot dog dinners. HANDS OFF HALLOWEEN!

I think I should start an 'alternative to Christmas' and see what happens. We'll call it an Ice Festival, and serve candy and hot dogs...