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Last-Minute Halloween Advice From Steel Magnificat

Last-Minute Halloween Advice From Steel Magnificat

Last updated on: October 31, 2017 at 9:47 am by Mary Pezzulo

Last-Minute Halloween Advice From Steel Magnificat 2017-10-31T09:47:14-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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It’s All Hallow’s Eve Eve! The most wonderful time of the year! I am so excited for Halloween I think I’ll burst, but that may be be all the candy I’ve already eaten. In any case, we here at Steel Magnificat have compiled some very important last-minute advice to help your family have a safe, comfortable and uniquely Catholic Halloween.

First of all, please be advised that NO ONE IS GOING TO GIVE YOUR CHILDREN DRUGS DISGUISED AS TRICK-OR-TREAT CANDY. Seriously. No one is going to deliberately put LSD in your children’s candy, or give them ecstasy pills or “edibles” or whatever the cool kids are calling them these days. Drugs are expensive. What drug users do with drugs, is use the drugs on themselves. What drug dealers do with drugs, is sell them for a very high price. No one is going to give drugs away to children for free. I know that many of us had to act out skits with the DARE program in grammar school, practicing what we would do if a total stranger tried to hand us drugs and then just walk away to let us get high on the playground. But we all need to face the fact that that scenario, like Columbus discovering America and most of the other things we learned in grammar school, is bullhonkey. Drug dealers don’t give free samples to try and get children hooked. If they did, trick-or-treat candy would be a very stupid way to do it. Take a chill pill, but not literally.

Secondly, do not let your children eat any candy that has razor blades in it. We’re warned about razor blade in candy every year, so this must be a matter of confusion for some people. I cannot imagine anyone giving away pieces of candy big enough to hide an entire razor blade without it being really obvious they’ve been tampered with, but just for the record: don’t eat razor blades. They’re bad for your health. If you think your child has ingested even a small serving of razor blades, take them to the emergency room at once.

Third: if there is a lonely old woman living in a tumbledown house at the far end of your street, and your children sneak into her house attempting to play a mean prank on her after trick-or-treating, but then they discover that she is really very sweet and not a witch and gives away delicious homemade doughnuts and cider: you are a horrible parent and you need to PUNISH your hellion brats. Variations on this scenario seem to happen in every Halloween book and cartoon my daughter has brought home from the library, but I’ve never once seen one where anyone addresses the fact that breaking into someone’s house to vandalize it is a crime or that helpless old people should be cared for and not frightened. The burden of proof is always on the lonely old woman to win the children’s affections with doughnuts. If there is a disabled elderly person in your neighborhood and you have able-bodied children, you should take your children over to her place, introduce yourselves like civilized people, and offer to fix up her house and cut her grass as a family to help her out. And don’t take the doughnuts from her unless you’re sure she has enough food to get through the month. Check them for razor blades as well. Not because the old person would do such a thing on purpose, but because old people are forgetful and might have left the razor blades in the mixing bowl by mistake. Seriously, you are a rotten parent.

Now, we all know that All Saints Day falls on the day after Halloween again this year. Funny how that works out. I think it would be great if we all dressed our children in some kind of clever, topical costume that celebrates our Catholic heritage but is scary enough for Halloween as well. After all, there are lots of nice spooky things about being a Catholic. For an inexpensive disguise, you could staple printed off pages from Spirit Daily all over your child’s clothing, and he could go trick-or-treating as an unapproved private revelation! Or, you could make a patchwork priest’s alb out of leftover pieces from the discount bin at the fabric store, turn your back on everyone and speak only in Latin all night, and be The Remnant! You could use cardboard boxes to make a costume of a charter bus buried in a dangerous snow drift, and go trick-or-treating as a Franciscan University attempt at a political protest! Or, if you really really want to terrify the sour traditionalist Catholics on your block, you could dress your daughter as Rebecca Bratten Weiss or your son as Mark Shea. The possibilities are endless.

Finally: a very important note. Do not, under any circumstances, allow your children to eat Almond Joy candies this Halloween. Not even after you’ve checked them for razor blades. No. What you do with Almond Joy candies, is pack them into a box and mail them to the Almond Joy Candy Disposal Facility located in the LaBelle neighborhood in Steubenville. Leave a comment and I’ll email you the address. I will take them off your hands for you. They are my all-time favorite.

Happy Halloween!

(image via Pixabay)

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