Halloween WEDDINGS?

Halloween, today, falls on a Saturday for the first time since 1998. As Saturday is the traditional Christian wedding day, several people got married with Halloween-themed weddings.

I'm sorry, but this is in bad taste. This may put me in agreement with Pat Robertson, who recently warned us against witch-cursed demonic candy, but think about it. Weddings are solemn, religious rituals designed to celebrate the beginning of a new life between two people. (Note that I didn't say "a man and a woman" - that's where Robertson and I part company.) The bonds joining a couple in holy matrimony are meant to be sacred. So whenever I hear of Halloween weddings, where people wear masks and dine on cake splattered with fake blood, and the bride and groom are dressed like Elvira and Dracula or something like that, well, it's just tacky. We don't need haunted-house weddings to make a mockery of marriage. We already have divorce to do that.

Oh yeah, Pat Robertson. Well, his belief that Halloween is a demonic celebration endorsing witchcraft displays his ignorance of the day's origins as a time in which medieval folk dressed as demons and witches so the real demons and witches wouldn't steal their souls. That's right, the idea was to avoid being sucked into demonism by pretending to be evil spirits until All Soul's Day arrived on November 1. Then people could rest easily, having fooled real evil spirits from taking them to hell. So, Halloween is actually a pro-Christian holiday because it's all about fooling the devil. But don't expect a theological genius like Robertson to know that.

Anyway, Halloween these days is all about two things - dressing up for fun and getting candy. Lots of it. Most people don't dress up like evil spirits for Halloween anyway. Today I saw a little girl dressed as Pebbles Flintstone, the cutest and best costume I've seen this year.

Doesn't Robertson love "The Flintstones?" It's about two traditional families in suburbia who, as most Christian fundamentalists believe actually happened, lived with dinosaurs. :-D