Happy Halloween or Whatever

Happy Halloween to those of you who celebrate Halloween.

Some religious folks on the inter-mc-net want to change Halloween to make it more Christian. http://jesusween.com/

Jesusween.

Because the kids will LOVE that.

Really, what are they thinking? First of all... Jesus-Ween? Did they not vet this name with anyone who might have left their house in the past 20 years, or maybe someone under the age of 30? Jesus Ween. Come ON.  And second, why take a holiday that may once have been religion based, but is now so completely bastardized and covered in chocolate that it’s pointless and try to turn it around again to make it super boring. Hey kids, choose between getting pillowcases full of candy or, alternatively, let’s talk about Saints and how they all got burned at the stake or impaled or whatnot. Hmmm.

this would be a great concept for a rock music video.

I warn you, Jesus Weeners, your children will resent you and grow up and start smoking.

Well, whatever, I say. Do what you want. Brian and I have been celebrating our own holidays for awhile now. 

Halloween, in our household is known as “Other Earth Day” because we turn off all our lights. It’s also like regular Earth Day because we hide in the basement and pretend not to be home, but are actually watching TV. 

Our house on Halloween. It's not the one with the open door.

On regular Earth Day this makes me feel somewhat guilty, but asking us to go one hour without TV is akin to asking Gandhi to eat a burger. Shocking, disrespectful, and just not going to happen.

So on “Other Earth Day” while many of you are trolling your children around for free candy and “sorting” through it later (aka stealing the best stuff), Brian and I will be watching TV and avoiding the 4 children who might come to our house; we live at the top of a hill and children (read parents) don’t want to climb up that hill for a couple of measly mini-O Henry bars. 

So you crazy old Christians can appropriate Halloween if you want. Just like you stole International Chocolate Rabbit Day and Santa Day.

Brian and I don’t celebrate Christmas anymore either, really. It all started because he really really really hates shopping --- for other people. And anything he wants, he buys for himself, plus he’s super persnickitty about stuff - so he’s impossible to buy for. But I find it really depressing when everyone else is opening presents and I get nothing. So we came up with a compromise. We buy ourselves our own gifts, wrap them and put them under the tree. You’d think that this might suck a little, but actually it works out wonderfully. Stuff you buy and wrap in August, well you forget about it by December. Plus you are sure to get exactly what you want. I mean, there’s NO WAY I would have known to buy Brian a pair of fleece pyjama bottoms with skulls all over them. But because we buy our own gifts, he was able to have the awful pyjama bottoms that he wanted. And despite my repeatedly telling him that I wanted a Tiffany key necklace (I mean, REPEATEDLY), Brian never seemed to know that that was what I wanted, so I was able to buy it for myself, and everyone’s happy!

We now celebrate AWESOME DAY on December 25th. Here’s the story with Awesome Day.

Aside from the buying of our own gifts, there is only one rule for Awesome Day. You can’t ruin anyone else’s Awesome Day. Awesome Day is for doing whatever you want, eating whatever you want, with no guilt or obligations. If you want to eat cake all day and sleep in until noon, you can. Why? Because it’s Awesome Day! If you want to spend 10 hours needlepointing and eating Vector, you can do it, because it’s Awesome Day!

It’s just that Awesome.

Of course, we realize that not everyone can have a complete and total Awesome Day in it’s purist form. For example, my elderly neighbour will have dinner with us on the 25th. That means that during those hours we have to wear pants, even if we might not want to. We also can’t just leave the table whenever we want to stick our naked bums in a snowbank, if that was indeed what we wanted to do. So we have to make a few adjustments to keep the peace. 

Also, if you have young children, you have to buy presents for them, as they, ostensibly, are not working and can’t buy their own presents (plus it takes away the fun of spending 200 bucks on a toy and then watch them play with the cardboard box it came in). So you have to work around your particular situation.

What about the Christmas story? Santa? All that good stuff?

We have the Awesome Day Arachnid.

Or the Seasonal Spider.

The Seasonal Spider comes to all children’s houses on the 25th and leaves presents under his Web of Wonder. On the 24th, children leave out tumblers of scotch and cheese trays for the Awesome Day Arachnid and are delighted the next morning  to see proof  that the Spider has been there when the tumblers are empty, the cheese tray is gone, Daddy is grumpy and Mommy can’t poop.

It could work.

Well, whatever you celebrate tonight, be it Halloween or Jesus-ween, or Other Earth Day, have a good time, play safe and eat candy.

Jesus Ween. I wonder what that would look like.

No. I am going to stop wondering that RIGHT NOW!