Ichabod's Kin
A place for politics, pop culture, and social issues

          This is the season I totally don’t understand. It purports to be a celebration—if competition to scare polite society may be called a happy time.

          Costumes tell much about people. Young women often prefer hooker attire—a shameless plug if ever there were one–and guys hanker to play mobsters who, by the way, have an eye for hookers. Such profiles are made for each other and, I’m sure, make for many a meaningful overnight, uh, hook-up.

          When someone shows up as Dracula I’m compelled to put them in leg-irons right away: portraying one known for blood-biting women on the neck calls to mind rapacious acts as can be imagined in these enlightened times. Violence toward women comes in many forms but none scarier than that.

          At my youngest I was not impressed by a man with fangs, slicked-down hair and wearing a cape—nor the Wolf Man who was a far second to the mythical Pan, from whom we get the word “panic”—and not unlike a lot of college guys with sportive energy always looking to get laid.

          Not to say ghouls aren’t in the running, though the attraction of brain-eating by the so-called “Undead” escapes me. I thought all that  would be a fad but it’s time someone looked into that weird psyche.

          So I never cared for Halloween, not as a child, not now. Trick-Or-Treating should be outlawed for the obvious dangers manifest in these ugly times, and all calls for dietary reform of the treats have not reduced provenance of everything that’s bad for kids. Such events now wisely tend to be safely indoors and with much supervision.

          The worst of this season is the preoccupation with witches—and for all the wrong reasons. Some gals like the outfit because they manage to look cute and sexy by contrast. What are called witches were rather interesting people beginning with the 14^th century, resulting in the suppression of women hardly given to the images handed down to us.

          They didn’t call themselves “witches” any more than John Wesley called himself a Methodist. They were often among the only women who, being well-read, came to know that for their kind, marriage was a trap and men were bullying fools.

          Such self-gained education broadened their interests in many useful areas, such as healing arts, horticulture, etc., and some became sought out for knowledge of weather and crop cycles. That this should meet with jaundiced eye by very territorial men, was to be expected.

          As clouds hovered over their safety and well-being, men deemed that only the harshest consequences should be visited on them. They were given a nasty brand, “Witches,” accused of consorting with the Devil, and measures to prevent their influence got more than ugly.

          They were also blamed for the tragedy of errors in Salem, where the most overwrought presentations of Halloween are yet enacted. While too many books teased that there “may or may not” have been an evil presence around, I interviewed Marion Starkey, author of “The Devil in Massachusetts”–an investigation of said Trials. She stressed the simple truth that a “devil” was b.s. and that the mischief began with a group of pubescent girls who gained a great deal of social power among adults—and revenge towards townswomen they didn’t like—by making up malicious stories. Once egg was all over the faces of the duped, these young but very real witches stood before God and the world and said they had no idea what made them do that. And life went on. Sadly, their victims were dead, and dead forever.

          Such malevolence is around today and we’re still playing games with serious themes: fearing all kinds of scapegoats but thinking nothing of the miscreants who kill them.

Real evil is insidious. Too often it is “in here” and not “out there.” St. Augustine shocked early Christians saying that the Antichrist was actually within the Church, not out in the world.

If anything should scare us, it’s that.