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Letters From Little Rock |
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a semi-regular column
Letters From Little Rock is my column on whatever topic strikes my fancy at the time. Check in as often as you like, but I make no promise as to when new columns will appear. I hope to add a column on a weekly basis, but honesty compels me to admit that I might not even maintain a monthly schedule. October 10, 2004 It's a glorious grey drizzly Sunday evening and my cold has just not quite hit me. Right now I'm sipping brandy and coke. Soon I'm going to go outside and sit on my patio and enjoy the blustery damp leaf weather. I don't know why I get off on overcast fall weather, but ever since I was a little kid I've enjoyed the end of summer and the onset of fall more than any other time of the year. I have a certain affection for the crisp clean winter days and like everybody else I can find some joy in a bright blue Spring day when everything is new green and full of itself, but I'm basically a sloppy romantic at heart and the wistful end of days charisma of fall just pulls me in a way that a lazy summer day never will. I suppose it's the awareness of one's own mortality that makes the death of the year such a powerful symbol. I don't know why a child of five or six would latch on to fall as his favorite season, but I certainly did. Maybe it is just the glory of Halloween, or the memory of mulled cider and leaf piles and being cozy in a blanket in front of the TV. Who knows? Halloween was certainly the only holiday that accepted the power of a little mystery and make believe. I still think there is something folksy and charming about turning the kids loose and letting them around the neighborhood, knowing that everybody was keeping an eye on them so you didn't have to have them tethered to you every precious second. On the other hand, I haven't even turned the lights on for Halloween in years. I guess it all ended when we had to start throwing away the candied apples. These poor modern kids don't know what it's all about now that the holiday has been co-opted by the Southern Baptists. It makes me sad to see the church I was raised in engage in an assault against innocence and make believe, but if the number of little angels and martyrs I've seen in recent years is any indication, Halloween has been taken over by the grownups now. It was the one holiday that was indisputably a children's holiday. Now in some respects it's just another Easter to the kiddies; a candy occasion ruined by the intrusion of religion. Of course, I don't have anything against the religion specifically; I just don't think every holiday has to be an occasion to ram hell down a kid's throat. In a day and age where everything comes with a protective wrapper and a safety warning it's hard to remember how freely we roamed back then, at least in our own neighborhoods. They'd bundle a passel of toddlers and elementary school kids off down the street with no more guidance than someone's teenage older sister. Now, it's just not safe so they have Halloween events in the schools, or community centers, and, at least in our town, even at the zoo. But the greatest travesties are the church events where the kids have to come as characters from the bible. It's sort of like asking a kid to sell his soul for some gobstoppers. It seems wrong to put a price on a child's conscience in this way. It also seems to be taking a child's spiritual beliefs very lightly. I think I'm probably not alone in resenting every patronizing attempt by my elders to inculcate their beliefs in me. Is it really as easy as feeding candy to a baby? One thing that bothers me and although it seems trivial it isn't, I have this vicious image of Charlie Brown dressed as Job that runs through my head every time I see some self-satisfied smirking shyster preacher making an appearance on a local TV news program to pat himself on the back and incidentally promote his church's Christian-only Halloween event. When I was a kid it was possible for our preacher-a Southern Baptist-to say openly in our church that he thought a good Muslim, or Jew, or Buddhist, would go to the same heaven as a good Christian. I think it would be very difficult for a Baptist preacher to say that in public and remain a part of the Baptist church for very long these days. Something about it strikes me as very wrong. I like the idea of holidays bringing communities together. I like to see all the pretty Christmas decorations like everybody else, but when I see the massive expenditure on toys for tots every year, I can't help but think about the Jew and Muslim and Atheist children who don't have anything either and I can't help but think there shouldn't be a price of conscience placed on charity. We waste a lot of time and energy fencing people out that could be better spent on opening doors. Maybe it's time we stopped drawing lines in the sand and looking for things to disagree about and start indulging the innocence of children again. When I was a kid you could dress up like the boogey man and collect all the candy you could eat from little old ladies who went to church twice a week and never even said hell or damn in church. And they never thought for a minute to lecture us little devils about our great sins. No, the worst thing they ever did was to pass out gum. I guess it doesn't really matter anyway. All I know is I'm going to go out on my drizzly patio and turn my collar up and listen to the train running in the distance and watch for hobgoblins in the hedges.
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