Halloween Guilt – Nostalgia Versus Modern Excess

The world is on a slippery slope. I’m not sure which way it’s slipping. Is it slipping into a fiery hellhole of violence and depravity, or is it slipping down a luge of lube to P-Diddy’s house? We are totally into truly terrible things as a people. Which is alright… wait, I don’t mean P-Diddy is “alright,” so pretend I used a different reference there. The point is that we are into terrible things. We like true crime, we like horror, we like cringe video compilations, we like “questionable” porn, and the list goes on. This isn’t the problem. It’s the compartmentalization of our liking these things and the unchecked bleeding between compartments.

Halloween started as a day for fear, or death, or fear and death. Regardless of the date you think “Halloween” started, Samhain, All Saints’ Day, All Souls’ Day, Day of the Dead, Pomona? Whatever. It was all rooted in the death of crops, death of people, and the fear about dead crops and/or dead people returning. But over the years, we’ve added in the sexy factor… and yes, pagans, calm down, I’m sure there was some heavy petting going on during Samhain, but to be fair, it seems like getting busy was a regular part of a lot of pagan holidays. Believe me, I’d be way into those sexy Pagan holidays! The only issue is all the Pagans look a lot like me and that, sure as shit, ain’t sexy.

Back to the point. We’re human. We compartmentalize. We’re going to do it. I’m just wondering how we are doing it. When it comes to a lot of things, we say we compartmentalize by age. But do we? At 18-21, you can vote, but you can’t drink or smoke? We trust you to pick a president but not to consume things? I just saw a preview for an upcoming DC animated cartoon, Creature Commandos. The preview is brutally violent and on the internet for all to see, literally because you don’t have to be logged in and 18 to watch it. So here’s a cartoon with brutal violence and some sexual innuendo, but I bet it won’t have any tits or dicks in it.

So should there be tits and dicks in our brutal child violence cartoons? We hope everyone grows up to have a healthy sex life, right? Do we hope they grow up to shoot zombies through the face and joke about it? Okay, kinda…

This all started as a roundabout way to get to my real complaint: the sexification of Halloween. My issue is that Halloween, and all other holidays, are really only a collection of traditions and memories. I remember going trick-or-treating, watching horror movies, carnivals, costume competitions, and generalized spookiness. What I don’t remember is my mom getting crying drunk on the couch while dressed as a slutty nurse while my dad ignores us to drunk rage dressed as the manta that killed Steve Irwin. We have to ask ourselves, “What are our kids going to remember?” But to be completely honest, I think the real question is, “Chauncey, what are your kids going to remember? They are adults now. You can just ask them.” But, I really don’t want to hear the answer…