Most of us have fond memories of the Halloweens we enjoyed as children. The costumes, the haunted houses, the parties and the knocking on
doors in pursuit of treats were generally innocuous forms of fun.
Little did we realize that we were fanning the flames of anti-Americanism
around the world.
Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez last week
told his countrymen that Halloween has no place in his socialist paradise. According to CNN.com, he used his weekly TV and radio broadcast to
caution that the observance is strictly a “gringa,” or North American
custom.
Moreover, he warned that the celebration is emblematic
of U.S. culture: “terrorism, putting fear into other nations, putting
fear into their own people.”
Having cracked down on freedom
of speech and the press in Venezuela, Castro’s amigo Chavez knows
a thing or two about putting fear into people. Kids decked out
in Darth Vader or Dora the Explorer costumes don’t engender the same
terror.
A Halloween backlash is also surfacing in
Europe. The Associated Press canvassed there and reported on
the mayor of an Austrian village who terms Halloween “a bad American
habit.” He’s talked several other mayors into boycotting the
occasion.
An authority at Sweden’s Language and Folklore Institute
says that even as Halloween’s popularity has increased there, so has
the judgment that it represents an “unnecessary, bad American custom.”
The AP interviewed an Italian priest who believes
that Halloween undermines his nation’s cultural identity. Denouncing
Halloween as a “manifestation of neo-paganism” and a symbol of America’s
would-be cultural supremacy, the cleric claimed hallowed out pumpkins
reveal our own emptiness.
In Germany there’s concern because
Halloween’s October 31st date is also Reformation Day, a commemoration
of Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses. Germany’s Deutsche Welle
online news service reports the Evangelical Church is responding by
encouraging the faithful to hand out Luther Bonbons. The treats
are wrapped in a paper with a likeness of a winking Luther and an
Internet address for more information.
Meanwhile, a German bishop
told a radio audience that Halloween has become a day celebrated by
Satanists.
I’m weary of foreigners condemning Americans for our
lack of culture, our gross commercialism and our thoroughly pernicious
influence on the world. At the same time the foreigners are
censuring us, they’re wolfing down American fast food, reading American
books, listening to American music, watching American TV shows and
movies and looking for deals on blue jeans.
The United States
is so dreadful that millions of people from around the world are dying
– sometimes literally – to get here.
Yet some foreigners smugly
look down their noses at us and lecture us on what heathens we are. How crude, greedy and coarse we are as we imperialistically force
our uncivilized ways on them.
It’s true there are Americans
who don’t like Halloween. At least one school banned it this
year because it’s unfair to witches. Others have opted to drop
Halloween in favor of “Fall Festivals.”
This is a continuation
of the theme that anything that offends the sensibilities of even
just one person must be tossed aside. The majority has no rights.
The absurd American Civil Liberties Union checked in with its
distilled wisdom that municipalities enforcing ordinances designed
to protect trick or treaters from sexual predators might be discriminatory. To sexual predators. Pass the Kleenex, please.
There
are Christians who object to Halloween because they think it’s the
work of the Devil. And non-Christians who grouse because of
the night’s purported Christian or Catholic roots.
But most of us accept Halloween for what it simply is: a day of fun. A day to let the kids dress up, laugh and play,
and stuff themselves with candy.
Granddaughter Norah, known as
Miss Nice in some quarters, is a typical five-year-old. She
and her friends looked forward to Halloween for weeks. When
the big day arrived, they had a terrific time running around, screaming
and “scaring” adults. You’d think the goodies she garnered were
gold.
I don’t see any harm in that. If it’s nothing more
than a bad American habit, so be it.
I hope Norah’s children
and grandchildren carry on the tradition. Seeing how it irritates
so many who dislike America, it might be the patriotic thing to do.
This appears in the November 3, 2005 Oak Lawn (IL) Reporter.
Mike Bates is the author of Right Angles and Other Obstinate Truths.
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