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自分史～29歳からやり直し英語

(1)

2005.11.01

Tonight is Halloween in America

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テーマ：英語のお勉強日記(8063)

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Tonight is Halloween in America...,

...and the newscasts are filled with such comments as, "It's raining, so dress your little ghosts and goblins accordingly." Or, "Looking for a dry place to take your little witch for trick or treating?"

And reflected in these comments is the great social divide about Halloween in America.

Halloween has been significant for cultures that celebrate the darker side of spirituality-often called "pagan worshipers". The world Christian community has attempted to make Halloween the eve of a Christian celebration called "All Saints Day". Having been raised in a strict, "Christian right" family, my perspective of Halloween is that of a conservative right American.

Most significant and easily observed on Halloween is the "trick or treating" practiced by children and even young teenagers. Even a few young adults have participated in this custom, but we tend to think of older kids, or adults participating as taking advantage of the situation. I trick or treated many years! Being in a strict family with rules about everything though, my accumulation of candy and the rules about how much could be eaten at a particular time usually resulted in much of the candy becoming old before it could be eaten. So, it was thrown away. Today, where the rule seems to be "lack of rules", it's not uncommon for an American child to eat as much candy-and definitely sugar- in a night as a Japanese may eat in a year. Trick or treat I did, yes. However, my family and my conservative Christian right associations always reminded me that I was begging for food, door to door. And likely, I was begging from many that had less than I.

Another problem the Christian community has about Halloween is that while it could have easily been celebrated as a Christian holiday, the more popular adaptation of Halloween was that of the occult, Satan, dark magic, the dead that rise for one night, and ghosts that "party" at the expense of mortal's lives. And so it goes, many children are dressed as Satan, skeletons, ghosts and other characters of darkness and nightmares.

Probably celebrating Halloween the least is the American male. Halloween may be an excuse to party and drink on a night before a workday. But beyond that, adult males tend not to care much if Halloween is celebrated, or not. Now an exception would be that of the upper class American male that attends the upper class Halloween party. The upper class Halloween party takes on the atmosphere of the old European masquerade party, where most of the fun of the part is cleverly disguising one's self so as to confuse others as to who you REALLY are.

The American female with repressed sexual urges and issues often finds the "no rules about costume" the perfect excuse to dress as...to be blunt about it...a slut or a prostitute. And this practice has resulted in tragedy and even death for some female Halloween revelers.

So what were some of MY Halloween celebrations like? I "trick or treated" for many years, as a child. One year, a group of us young teenagers decided to give a disliked teacher only a trick, instead of giving him the choice of treating us. We drew pictures and wrote things on his car windows and house windows with bar soap-one of the oldest Halloween "tricks". Easily removable, it was just an annoyance to the one "tricked". We threw toilet paper in his trees (called "teepee"). A real task to remove lightweight toilet paper, if a heavy dew or rain were present that same night, removing the toilet paper was nearly impossible. During my early teens, as part of a conservative Christian right family, my only choice was often to attend a church function renamed as "Fall Festival", "Halloween Shut-in", or other creative name to distract from the darkness Halloween had come to mean to many Americans. We would "bob for apples", melt caramel candy and dip apples into the caramel, then coating the apple with peanut pieces, play games and otherwise sit around outside bon fires and toast marshmallows and yes, tell ghost stories. "Bob for apples"? Apples are floating in a tub of water and you must leave your hands behind your back. Person to most quickly pick an apple out of the water with their teeth, is the winner. If you've ever done this, you know that the quicker you secure an apple with your teeth, the more wet you become. Possibly the quickest way to secure the apple is to submerge your head completely under the water and "pin" the apple to the bottom of the tub, then biting it while it won't move and bringing your head out of the water with apple between teeth.

There you have it! Just a bit of "Halloween in America".

************

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