#80-Harvest Parties as the church's generic-brand competition of Halloween

Preclude: I am an avowed Trick or Treater and will be until the day that the good Lord calls me home. This stance will inform the rest of this post. Think this might get you mad? Don't read....

Chapter 1: Those Nasty Rumors about Halloween (and the geniuses who started them) aka "Where we were"

Let me take you back to the late 80's and early 90's.... When I was in elementary school, and while the momentum of Halloween was at it's participatory height historically, there was a growing sense of paranoia in the air...

Amidst all the rumors of just how evil Devil's Night was complete with imaginary gangs bringing hell on earth, and the joy in the chaos of costume, threats of trickery with demands for glucose infested dietary suplements, and downright excitement as more and more television shows were airing their Halloween episodes, were news reports to watch out for drugs, poison, or razor blades inserted in candy....

And these news reports were no small matter....Parents ate this stuff up really thinking that their creepy dude down the street was unwrapping tootsie rolls and soaking them in cyanide and then re-wrapping the tootsie rolls again....If someone gave out unwrapped food for the treats at Halloween us children were warned adamantly to dispose of such items because within that unwrapped food lay your death....

Of course these fears were complete urban myths (complete with someone knowing someone who found a razor blade in their caramel corn from the witch in the old house on the other side of town) and these myths and the subsequent health precautions that were taken were essentially a symbolic foreshadowing of the intense paranoia of the parents a decade later who would go to extreme precautions to protect their children's health and safety (complete with mandatory bike-riding helmets and booster seats for toddlers) which ultimately robbed the fun out of childhood a for a good 70% of children everywhere.....

But for the purpose of this blog....we must ask, who were the ultimate perpetrators of spreading these urban myths of danger lying underneath every bite of sugary goodness? And to you I propose that it was none other than the Pro-Harvest Party lobbyists who were paving the way for harvest parties to ruin Halloween for children everywhere a good 10 years later....

Chapter 2: The revolution, the results, and the rip-offs ...aka "Where we are"

I remember having many conversations growing up (some of which I am sure will be replicated in a very similar form in the comment section here) in discussions with friends from church who were not allowed to participate in Halloween. I would listen to their rhetoric but I couldn't comprehend....my mind was on one thing: "Free Candy"......

they would say something about vampires and evil spirits and the general attitude of the holiday, and I'm thinking in my head "Have you seen the free candy?"....

They would try explaining the history of the holiday (which is really based in Christian lore more than pagan myth ironically) and how if Jesus gets Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost Sunday, it's only seems fair that Satan gets his own holiday, and since Halloween is that holiday, we need to stay as far away from it as possible....and loudly I would blurt back "We're talking about enough free candy to last you through Christmas without even rationing, and should you properly execute good trick or treat strategy in the right neighborhood, you could be possibly looking at free candy to last through the entire winter (there is a careful balance between distance of households apart from each other (as little as possible) with average income of household in neighborhood (as high as possible without damaging the run-time between houses).

Basically it became a giant argument every year between my friend's parents feeding their kids the proper rhetoric of why they don't do Halloween and my insistence upon how awesome free candy is in addition to the added value experience of dressing up however you wanted, which would most likely end with my friend running home to his parents in near tears wondering why they can't go trick or treating....

However, the storm was brewing......

And it was not too long after my childhood at reached near completion when the Harvest Party was introduced at my church....WHAT?!?

And it was on Halloween...(or a very near date to Halloween)...And of course the policy at my house was that all secular events went to naught if they competed with Church or a Church event (which was already a problem when Halloween fell on Wednesday/Sunday nights)...

So this meant Harvest Party over Halloween...

And while I am not a man of curse words to any extent, I am fairly certain that the one time I even thought of a swear word in my head was the moment I realized I was going to have to attend this dreaded Harvest Party in my youth group.....

And that Harvest Party was everything one could expect from Christian alternative to Halloween: A Youth Fun-Night except there are fake leaves and bobbing for apples. Oh and you can dress up! Except you have to dress up as something biblical (which meant basically like 10 costume choices unless a kid had a very creative mom who have their kid dress up like an abstract reference to a bible verse (my brilliant Sister is one of those who I commend highly for such creativity))....

The worst part: They would send you home with candy to compensate the children for their lost memories of all that free candy that could have been....except all the candy that one took home never amounted more than half-filling a paper lunch bag full of candy corn and bible bookmarks....

Costumes and candy, candy and costumes...what is more central to Halloween than these two items?

And all of this amounted to the conclusion: All harvest parties are is Halloween made boring. It's not a seasonal Christian youth event on it's own, since it is purely reactionary to the highest degree. Harvest parties are Halloween's little brother that you have to walk to school everyday to make sure the school bully doesn't beat little brother up....They're made of the same genetic material...they all stem from the same point of reference: October 31st

Here's the worst part about Harvest Parties (an alleged celebration of the harvest): We already celebrate the harvest as Christians annually at a far greater reverence than a harvest party could ever dream of: It's called Thanksgiving.....

Thanksgiving is really the true celebration of the Harvest, so really Harvest Parties have no celebratory value. He is also my arch-rival.

Chapter 3: The Genetic Mutation of Harvest Parties....AkA "Where we are Going"

It is with all the above observations and everyone realizing these observations en masse, that I do believe we are witnessing the dying of the Harvest Party within the church sphere....In recent years though I have heard of a possible replacement in forthcoming years...It's called "Trunk or Treat" where people "dress up" the trunks of their cars and pass out candy or items or something...With such a title as "Trunk or Treat," two-things must be noted: Firstly, the Christian alternative to "Trick or Treat" is now simply removing the threat of possible prank on a house who chooses not to give candy (the trick in trick or treat).....Secondly with such a name change and atmosphere change from Harvest Party to Trunk or Treat, the Christian alternative to Halloween goes from generic rip-off to downright and open plagiarism of Halloween...Not only has the event moved outside, and the event is mobile, but we are even directly referencing the cornerstone activity of Halloween itself...

The only thing missing is the threat of the poisoned candy and razor blades...

And I'm all for it....

Addendum: So I just found out there is a wikipedia article all about the fear of poison in Halloween candy. It is definitely a must read for paranoid parents everywhere....However my belief that the threat of candy poisoning started in the 80's was off by a good decade or two (apologies for historical ignorance):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_scare