4 Myths About Halloween
October 19, 2011, By Jack Heffron 2 comments
In a land of wholesome holidays, Halloween is the bad seed. The black sheep. And it really doesn't deserve such a bad rep. Yes, it gives license to certain behaviors that could be considered inappropriate on any other day, but surely that leads to a healthy catharsis for the national psyche.
Kids dress up as monsters and witches, allowing them an empowered night of romping up to strangers' porches, where they blatantly beg for—and receive!— free candy. Some people complain that this tradition teaches greed, but being allowed to do it on one special day out of 365 hardly seems to support that indictment. A typical night of TV exposes them to far more avarice.
Halloween also lets adults break out of their safe routine and inhibitions. Yes, this social latitude unfortunately leads your middle-aged neighbor to break out her slutwear, but, again, her once-a-year fashion misstatement isn't likely to shove her down the road to perdition.
Some of the other complaints against Halloween are based on urban legends that linger despite much evidence and reporting to the contrary. Here are the four most persistent.
1. Satanic cults sacrifice black cats on Halloween.
In fact, there is no evidence at all that this happens. In fact, true satanists have a no-kill policy. And there aren't even many of them around. In this article on National Geographic's site, author Lesley Bannatyne notes that there are "no confirmed statistics, court cases, or studies to support the idea that serious satanic cult crime even exists." Your local "satanic cult" probably consists of one disturbed, dysfunctional loner teen and maybe his one even lonelier pal. Their largely improvised efforts at satanism can be dangerous to neighborhood pets, true, but usually they get the idea from over-hyped media warnings, and they hardly warrant worries about nefarious cults preying on our animals. Keep your animals safe from this crazy kid and forget about devil-worshipping cults.
The legend that black cats are sacrificed to the devil grew out of the reality of religious groups sacrificing—well, actually just killing—people they suspected were witches. If the victims owned a black feline, it was killed out of fear that it was a "familiar," sort of a devil's hench-cat. A number of animal-adoption agencies won't let black cats be adopted in the weeks before Halloween, which ironically and unfortunately perpetuates the myth. It's much more common for "normal" people to adopt a black cat as a party decoration and then release it when everyone has sobered up the next day. A real concern. But this black mark against Halloween has far less to do with the devil or cults than with the irresponsibility of otherwise only slightly idiotic regular folks.
NEXT: Children are given dangerous treats
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