The following events took place on Halloween night 2007:
Christian fundamentalists have long maintained that there exists a War on Christmas, and conservative news media such as Fox News are only too happy to advance that meme that somehow, somewhere there exists a conspiracy that seeks to completely erase Christian elements from the Christmas season. We, being sound, rational human beings, know that there exists no such war and it is simply a way to further outrage conservative Christians and keep them blinded from the true ills of the world, ills such as global poverty and the horrors of war.
Now, this does not mean that there isn't a concerted effort to wage war against a particular holiday, but it isn't Christmas and Christians are not the victims, rather it is fundamentalist Christians who are the aggressors and the victim is Halloween.
I was raised in a fundamentalist, Pentecostal home. My grandmother was the main influence upon my religious upbringing filling me with fear of Satan, fear of the Rapture, and fear of evil atheists who are seeking to commit genocide against the followers of Christ. It wasn't until college that I was able to overthrow those childhood terrors, but until then I lived in the bosom of conspiracy spouting traveling evangelists, charismatic tent revivals, and mad epileptic seizures of "getting in the Holy Spirit." Religion was frightening, but the Devil was even more frightening.
We participated in Halloween, though my grandmother disapproved and, due to her influence, we were unable to dress in more horrific costumes (the we being my cousins and I who lived close together). Later, when I was a teenager and had outgrown the trick-or-treating my grandmother's church would have a service at the church on Halloween night where all the kids would come dressed like people from the Bible and have punch and candy right there in the safety of the church. Luckily I was able to avoid participating.
When I was a child I remember my grandmother bringing home, every now and then, little pamphlets that were known as Chick tracts. For those who do not know who Jack Chick is he is a mysterious personage who publishes comic book style tracts that tell of various issues from a fundamentalist Christian point of view. In these tracts I learned the evils of evolution, Catholicism, Islam, atheism and even Halloween through a tract called "The Little Ghost." More on that later. Chick also dwelt obsessively on topics of the Rapture, the Antichrist, and Satan. They were full of fear and were meant to inspire fear in order to lead to confession and conversion, much like "Sinners in the hands of an angry God" did so many years ago.
Fast forward to present day. I am 30 years of age, married, with a wonderful 3 year old son. My wife and I were quite excited this year because this was the first year where my son could take such an active role in Halloween, which ranks as one of our favorite holidays. We live in Blackshear, Georgia. It is a small town in the southeast corner of Georgia near Waycross, famous for being the childhood home of Gram Parsons, and where the nearest real city is Jacksonville, Florida about an hour and half southeast. It is a town where the tallest building is the towering spire of the First Baptist Church and you can keep your houses unlocked and walk the streets at night without fear of being bothered. People say hello and drivers actually wave when they pass each other, a full hand and not just a particular finger.
Our neighborhood is middle class and rather than being a planned community or subdivision, it seems to have naturally grown around the southern edge of Blackshear. No one house is similar to another and they represent different styles and time periods. Many of our neighbors are nurses, teachers, and business leaders of the community. They are also typically middle-aged with children either in high school or out and about on their own, though there are a few younger families like our own. If you go outside around 9 or 10 a.m. you can see a line of cars and pickup trucks heading to church services at the First Baptist Church, the First United Methodist Church, Blackshear Presbyterian Church, or the huge monolith of the Emmanuel Baptist Church and its adjoining private school where to gain admittance one must answer a few questions proving that one believes in God and Jesus Christ.
It is nice, quiet and everyone is friendly. The local eatery is called Jerry J's which whips up some great homestyle, Southern cooking and has, hands down, the best fried squash that you will ever in your life dream of eating. People are absolutely loyal to the local high school football team, the Pierce County Bears, and on Friday gameday you can see the school colors blanketing the town. The most common front page story of the local newspaper is a young hunter's first killing of a deer, or local issues like the current top story dealing with the abundant pecan crop this year being the best in recent memory.
My wife and I love it here, but we have often felt like black sheep. The Republican Party is overwhelmingly dominate in this section of Georgia and the majority of those around us are conservative Christians. There is no question that Jesus died for our sins and that evolution is a ridiculous theory. Confederate flag memorabilia is still a popular sales item and Jesus fish are abundant on the trunks of passing cars, or decals of "Real Men Love Jesus" imprinted on the backglass of the numerous pickup trucks that rumble down the roadways shaded by the ever-present pine trees.
My wife and I are not religious, at best we can be called agnostic and, though we consider ourselves quite politically moderate, in this section of the state we are considered leftwing and radical. We consider ourselves educated, reasonable, and tolerant, and we do our best to raise our son in that fashion. Unlike many of our neighbors we do not smoke nor do we physically discipline our son, and we certainly do not require him to say "sir" and "ma'am" believing respect has to be earned no matter if it is an adult seeking it from a child, though "please" and "thank you" are certainly in order and perfectly appropriate.
We are friendly with many around us, being that we were raised in the area, but we don't see our entire life being spent in this small southern area of Georgia. We want the best education and environment for our son and so we will be leaving here within the next couple of years for someplace much more urban and multicultural. We love it here but we know that we do not belong.
So, we fast forward once more to Halloween night 2007. My son was to be dressed in doctor scrubs with a stethoscope around his neck. It seemed appropriate being that his mother's family were quite heavily reprsented in the medical field, even my wife is a Registered Nurse at the local hospital (she has much to say about the absolute necessity of universal healthcare). The trick-or-treating was set to begin at approximately 5:30 p.m. and to last until dark. As per custom, those houses participating and actively passing out candy to the youngsters would have their porch lights on and were often standing upon their decorated porches handing out candy from bowls covered with jack-o-lanterns and vampire bats.
We departed the house at about 6:00 p.m. and the roads through our neighborhood were already full of parents and youngsters walking or riding in golf carts or on flatbed trailers being pulled by a Chevy pickup. Kids were dressed like fairy-tale princesses, vampires, football players, and superheroes. We even saw infants dressed as pumpkins and carried by their young mothers, though what enjoyment the drooling balls of joy could gain from such an experience was beyond us. Everyone was laughing, even older men and women sitting in lawn chairs on their porches with chocolate, dum-dum lollipops, and twizzlers arranged carefully in little goodie-bags, or strewn in Halloween bowls with automatic hands that would reach out for unsuspecting trick-or-treaters.
My wife and I decided to just stick to our immediate neighborhood figuring, correctly, that would provide ample candy for my son, and so we decided to just walk and enjoy the cool October evening, always keep one of my son's hand in my own being that he is uber-energetic and quick. We passed by many of our neighbors and transients from other neighborhoods traveling in our own, who laughed and spoke of how cute our son's costume was and there was one rotund man in particular with a heavy beard and calloused hands remarking that my son resembled a little "Meredith Grey." Our son is often mistaken for being a girl, but we laughed and walked on letting the faux pas pass and also not commenting on how such a gruff, burly man would be familiar with such a melodramatic television show.
My son had been looking forward to this night of trick-or-treating all week. Earlier that week he had a fairy tale party at his daycare with candy and games a plenty (it is called a fairy tale party b/c this, the only good daycare in town for some reason avoids the term "Halloween" and is, not too overtly, Christian). My son does not walk, he either runs or prances, and there he was in the developing twilight prancing and saying trick-or-treat to flappers, witches, and ghosts who were kind enough to sit for a few hours on their front porch and pass out candy to the greedy trick-or-treaters.
This went on for about an hour and we were winding down our trip, nearly completing the circle which would end at the place it began, our house. The roads were still full of trick-or-treaters, though their numbers were dwindling. We were approximately three houses from our own and watching our son as he gazed rapturously into his plastic jack-o-lantern filled 3/4 of the way with candy, lollipops, chocolate, and gum, when out of a single-story brick dwelling there trotted a middle aged man with a small goodie-bag.
We halted and smiled as our son innocently held out his plastic pumpkin and said in his high pitched voice, "Trick or treat," though it was supposed to be a question my son had not grasped the proper inflection of the phrase. The man smiled and asked if the young doctor could check his chest pain with his very real stethoscope. We chuckled as our son tried to listen to the man's thigh instead. He commented that this was the last goody-bag that they had, his wife had also exited the house, still wearing nursing scrubs and she commented that they had had two large bowls full and were now emptied. My son stated quite properly, "Thank you," as the man slipped the goody-bag into my son's candy war chest. My wife and I echoed our son's thanks and waved as they waved back, and then we moved on.
We returned to our house and quickly my son ran to the living room floor and began to dig into the mountain of candy that he had received. Being that he still hasn't gained that dexterity and control over appendages that can only be gained in time, my wife and I decided to aid him and open the goody-bags and empty the candy and chocolate with the rest. I noticed the goody-bag that we had just received from the previously mentioned couple was strangely flat. The goody-bag, to my great interest, held no candy nor did it hold chocolate or even Teddy Grahams. Rather, to my growing anger, it held this.
I was appalled. My son, innocent as he was, had been given a Chick tract, "The Little Ghost." He had been evangelized. He had received a tract that talked about the death of Jesus, the Devil, and implied the evils of celebrating Halloween. My son did not know what he had received, he has yet to reach such a state of awareness, but my wife and I did and, needless to say, we were quite pissed.
We were not worshipping the Devil, or burning inverted crosses on innocent children. We were not having pagan orgies or sacrificing goats to the enthroned Baphomet. We were out and about with our community having fun and receiving candy and dressing up in outrageous costumes. We were having fun, but that wasn't good enough for that particular couple, they had to ruin the fun and rather than hand out candy, they handed out religious literature aiming to convert MY child, not theirs, MINE!
I had to resist an urge to walk back to that house, ring the doorbell, and throw that tract in their slackjawed, self-righteous faces, but I didn't. I didn't want to justify their beliefs. I didn't want to give them a story that they could tell at the next tent revival where they could relate thir most recent battle against the Heathens. I didn't want to give them such satisfaction. I was dismayed, however, at all the other children that had also received such a missive from Downer Debbie. I was dismayed that it might reach favorable minds.
I'm reminded of Pat Robertson's tirade against Halloween and how it is a mistake for Christians to participate. That middle-aged couple, I am quite sure, agreed whole-heartedly with Robertson. They probably, quite smugly, felt that they were doing good in the world trying to evangelize impressionable youngsters. It also reminds me of the woman from Georgia who is trying to get Harry Potter books banned from public school libraries for promoting witchcraft, and now she can claim homosexuality as well.
What upset me the most is that this couple were trying to do the parenting for me. They never considered that maybe I don't want my son exposed to such dismal, hateful, horrific literature, nor do I want my son believing in such fantastical tales as those woven by fundamentalist Christians and their great God and Messiah. We don't try to parent their children and I expect the same courtesy in return. You don't see me at Christmas time handing out tracts from Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins.
Pat Robertson, that lady from Georgia, and this middle-aged couple are trying to tell us that these things are immoral and they don't want their children exposed to it, but rather than keep it at that they are trying to make the decision for us all. If you believe Halloween is immoral then don't participate! Do not turn on your porch light! Do not stand on your porch and pass out goody-bags! Don't be a coward and hide the tract inside a Halloween themed wrapper!
"The Little Ghost" ended up in the trash. My son will still believe that Halloween is a time of fun and community. I'll do my best to shield him from the hateful armies that seek to ruin a holiday that youngsters nationwide find so fun and so joyous. I cannot do it forever. At some point he will be exposed to the intolerance of others who hold their Judgement Houses at the local churches that show the evils of Halloween and the destination for sinners and their torment in hell. He'll see an odious Chick tract. He'll hear the poison spewed from such hateful bigots like Pat Robertson who proclaim their exists a Pagan Invasion that is trying to covert our children to Satanic Witchcraft.
I'll parent the best way I canand try to raise my son as tolerant and reasonable as I can. That is my right as his parent, to instill my son with my sense of morality and right conduct. I don't try to parent other people's children and demand the same respect in turn.
I was happy to find that when my wife mentioned the episode to her coworkers in the hospital ER, they were appalled as well. We may live in a small, conservative town in Georgia, but not everyone is so closeminded, hateful, and rude. It is hard not to place such importance on the behavior of this one couple, and I am sure there are many more in this town and section of the state, who feel as they do, though they were kind enough to simply not participate, and I like to think that there was this one rude house opposed by dozens and dozens of smiling neighbors and fellow Georgians who enjoyed the holiday and participated happily and very much in the Halloween spirit. I appreciate those people.