You see, this is what I get for hiding in the basement and watching old movies — you know, innocent things like Singing in the Rain and Bringing Up Baby — on Halloween night, with all the lights in the house turned off and the front door locked tight.
But I don’t need to turn this into a Halloween discussion of religious traditions in East and West linked to All Saints and All Souls Day.
Apparently this old fogey Eastern Orthodox Christian has missed out on another big Halloween story, a story so big that you have to read about it on the New York Times op-ed page instead of in the news pages of major newspapers.
I refer to the cultural trend covered in John Tierney’s column, “Give the Vixens the Day Off.” You can find it right here, if you want to pay the TimesSelect people for the right to read it. Meanwhile, let me offer a major slice of it for your enjoyment, starting at the top:
In principle, I have nothing against women in vinyl thigh-high boots, leather corsets, French maid micro-dresses or dominatrix gear. If American women are determined to set aside one day a year to go public with their inner vixen, I believe it is men’s solemn duty to respect their wishes.
But should that day be Halloween? This is the great question facing our nation now that Oct. 31 has become known as Slutoween and Dress-Like-a-Whore-Day, much to the distress of moralists on both the left and right. When I see fundamentalists and feminists jointly denouncing something, my knee-jerk libertarian response is: bring it on! If the stores are stocked with nothing but slutty costumes, this must be what customers want. The market has spoken.
I’ve started to wonder, though, if Halloween is a case of market failure, an arms race that’s out of control. It’s supposed to be a night for flouting convention, for taking on a new identity and dispensing with the conventional social order. It’s the night we pretend there are no rules.
Is this true, I mean, somewhere other than the streets and parties of New York? Has the post-feminist age steered us into the season of the sexy witch?
It’s interesting to read one of the official New York Times-friendly conservatives — “conservative,” but pro-gay rights and pro-abortion rights — raise moral concerns about this. It also sounds like a really good story angle for the days ahead. I mean, in this climate, plain old family fun might be an edgy form of rebeliion. Fight convention!
After all, Tierney suggests that people need to start holding “no-sluts-allowed Halloween parties.” What organizations in our culture would have a motivation (and the facilities) to do something like that? And, no, I am not talking about that now standard MSM story about churches using their Hell House Outreach Kit supplies to provide a virtual hell experience as a form of outreach.
I’m asking this question: Is there a “modest Halloween” story out there? Are churches and Christian schools wrestling with this problem?
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Comments (11) |
October 28, 2006, at 1:26 pm
There’s not data behind the Time’s earlier reporting about this trend, a piece by Stephanie Rosenbloom called “Good Girls Go Bad, for a Day.”
Here’s a sample of the kind of evidence for the trend:
There’s a quote later from an online site that sells costumes, that offers a bit more evidence:
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October 28, 2006, at 9:22 pm
Well.
Since I was a teenager, I have been disturbed by the fact that a national holiday is most commonly associated with the sound of a woman’s scream. So I guess this trend doesn’t surprise me, any more than it surprised me that women sat fawningly through Risky Business, one of the most misogynistic movies ever made.
Oh, wait. That did surprise me.
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October 29, 2006, at 12:06 am
I’ve attended more than one Catholic parish that holds an “All Saints” costume party, with candy, on Halloween.
You know, dress the kids as saints or patriarchs, etc.
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October 29, 2006, at 1:30 am
I think this witches legs have been digitally stretched. Was a certain wire service photographer the source of the comely witch picture?
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October 29, 2006, at 5:21 pm
This looks to me like its a resurgence of carnival(which, at least in Germany, begins on Nov. 11, at 11:11 p.m.) with an North American twist—Halloween is just a convenient American holiday to pin it on, since there isn’t a traditional base for it it in largely Protestant countries. I wonder if the Halloween-Carnival-Fasnet connection has been explored at all? I’m not saying it is necessarily historically connected, but the desire to “play the fool” and dump moral restraints, at least temporarily, sounds a lot like Carnival in Europe and South America.
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October 29, 2006, at 6:03 pm
[…] GET RELIGION: “Ho, ho, whore at Halloween” …. (getreligion) […]
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October 29, 2006, at 9:13 pm
“I think this witches legs have been digitally stretched.” Mattk
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It’s gotta be the heels.
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October 30, 2006, at 5:07 pm
Tmatt asked: “Is this true, I mean, somewhere other than the streets and parties of New York?”
It’s certainly true in the wilds of Southern New England, where virtually every woman attending the Halloween parties I go to is dressed as a Sexy Witch, Sexy Devil, Sexy Physics Problem, etc.
There’s a good trend story in how Halloween is basically becoming an adult holiday, because that’s increasingly where the money is. I don’t know if there’s a religion hook, though.
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October 30, 2006, at 5:15 pm
Remind me to include a stout quarterstaff or naginata in my next Halloween costume.
Seriously, though, what constraints do we have in this society to escape from? It’s not like you can’t dress like an idiot every night of the week, and a lot of days, without anyone saying boo.
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October 30, 2006, at 8:19 pm
We don’t have a wrestle/struggle/problem with it because we don’t celebrate it! This is the time of year we come to our doors and tell folks “We’re not interested; we have our own religion; I’m in the shower, I’m on a long distance call…” (Hmmm…. what other stuff do we hear?!…. ;^)
It’s up to each parent within our religion if they want to “supplement something else” at another time for the younger kiddies so they won’t feel deprived, but that’s thier conscience and choice… However if there is any question or eagerness on anyone’s part to find out the dealio on it just do an Internet search on the origin of Halloween - don’t take anyone’s word for it!
Also as a monologue (BUT he does tell the truth) check out Comedian Drew Carey’s White House skit/dialogue on Holidays (if you can find it); it is too funny and too true: Churches tell thier flock all year that Satan is evil and then on October 31st it’s like “Hey let’s party with the Dude and his hordes of Demons” :^D !!!!!
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October 31, 2006, at 10:29 am
A NY JW brings up a good point:
Today of all days, newspapers are filled with totally misleading bilge about the origins of Halloween as some fanciful Celtic pagan ceremony called Samhain.
Here’s a good journalism question for you: What sources do reporters use when passing on this inaccurate information? I never see a single citation, only things like “according to historians” or “many believe.”
I realize this isn’t necessarily religion-related, but why don’t reporters check things out that are “common knowledge,” like the (non-existent) pagan roots of Halloween? I’m sure there are plenty of examples of this popping up in religion coverage - in fact, now that I think of it, my local paper over the weekend carried a story about an Orthodox church in town becoming a cathedral. In the story, without attribution, the reporter wrote, “Eastern Orthodox Christians belong to those churches which broke off from the Roman Catholic Church in the 11th century.” Bet that’s going to draw some letters!
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