Halloween is old news compared to ongoing national debt

Halloween — a Satanic day to avoid?

People want to instead call it a “Fall Festival?”

A rose by any other name is still a rose, mi bruja.

This bit of nonsense, my opinion, first came to light when our son was in grade school in the early- to mid-1990s.

At first I thought, back when I could still think, that this is taking American culture to the extreme. Halloween isn’t a satanic holiday. Let the kids have some fun and still dress up as witches, goblins, and go trick-or-treating.

In looking back in time this week on American culture at newspapers.com, where one can subscribe and gain access to digitized newspapers from across the country dating back to the late 17th century, I was curious to see if the battle against Halloween had ended, as I thought it had.

What I found was even scarier.

From a newspaper dated Oct. 30, 2006, the Tyler Morning Telegraph: “Unfortunately, in today’s world there are a lot of things more scary than the prospect of Halloween hobgoblins.”

Pray tell.

“For instance, some of the things coming out of Washington D.C., such as an $8.6 trillion national debt, are pretty scary stuff.”

Today, the national debt is approximately $37 trillion.

Talk about scary. A lot of the politicians responsible for this high-rise insanity are still in office, or they’ve retired as millionaires from their role as “public servants.”

Halloween Survived

Not sure how the anti-Halloween deal started, but James Dobson with Focus on the Family didn’t help by claiming that it had “occult dangers.”

From there, some sectors of Christianity caught on and started rebranding it as “Hallelujah Night” or “Fall Festival.”

To me, this seemed insane, but what doesn’t?

Over time, though, even if the fight against Halloween can still be seen in some quarters, money was the deciding factor.

By the 1990s, the pumpkin day had become a $2 to $3 billion industry. Nickelodeon, Disney were airing Halloween specials. Charlie Brown was still doing Halloween.

Trying to cancel the holiday was almost like trying to cancel Thanksgiving.

By the early 2000s, some protestant churches, school districts were still calling it a “Fall Festival,” but the “Satanic Panic” had died down to a large extent.

In the end, Halloween survived by really being too much fun to completely kill off, too profitable, and really too American.

Even today, though, in some quarters, the name “Halloween” is still frowned upon by the “joy killers” among us.

Crazy, I know, but still not as crazy as seeing the $8.6 trillion national debt in 2006 turn into an approximate $37 trillion national debt today.

Who knew that our elected “public servants” had been so busy these past 19 years digging us further into debt.

Happy Halloween.