{"id":1246,"date":"2009-11-02T02:01:00","date_gmt":"2009-11-02T02:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1246"},"modified":"2009-11-02T02:01:00","modified_gmt":"2009-11-02T02:01:00","slug":"organizing-halloween-ritual","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1246","title":{"rendered":"Organizing Halloween Ritual"},"content":{"rendered":"

I said that I was not going to post any more Halloween items. I take that back. Here is one more. <\/a><\/p>\n

One decision we’ve made is to rebuff curious friends who ask to join our Halloween rituals. It seems like half the people I know want to be pagan on Halloween. I have no problem with a little religious tourism. I’m a bit of a spiritual slut. I have never turned down an invitation to a Seder. Bach thundering through a church transports me. But when I see visions of bacchanals dancing in my nonpagan friends’ heads, I get a little testy. Certain experiences are too comforting, too sacred to be spectacles. For me, Samhain is one of them.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is what happens when the news media notice you only one week a year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I said that I was not going to post any more Halloween items. I take that back. Here is one more. One decision we’ve made is to rebuff curious friends who ask to join our Halloween rituals. It seems like half the people I know want to be pagan on Halloween. I have no problem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[66],"class_list":["post-1246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-halloween"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-k6","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":298,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=298","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":0},"title":"Halloween night A Halloween storm\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 31, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Halloween night A Halloween storm seems to be traditional in the Wet Mountains. The forecast calls for rain turning to snow. I finished digging up and separating the day lilies and then turned to Halloween preparation. As a little boy I lived some years on the outskirts of Rapid City,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11003,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11003","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":1},"title":"Happy Halloween","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 31, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy Halloween, dear readers. This day finds me still coping with the 16.5 inches (41 cm) of snow that fell this week, working simultaneously on two journals (a new Pomegranate is coming!) and preparing to start a book-editing project. And my own stuff too, of course. It doesn't feel very\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/halloween-goth-girl-240x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1216,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1216","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":2},"title":"Are You Too Old for Trick-or-Treating?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 7, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I was in a state government office today and saw my first office Halloween decorations. It's coming. So read this Metafilter discussion about when you are too old for trick-or-treating.Lots of great comments, but don't miss np312's! It's the most creative Halloween \"trick\" I ever heard of.","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6787,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=6787","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":3},"title":"The Myth of Halloween Sadism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 16, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Myth in the popular sense, that is to say, an urban legend, says sociologist Joel Best, who has been studying the razor-blade-in-the-apple and similar stories for decades. Visit his website and click the tab for \"Halloween Sadism.\" Halloween sadism is best seen as a contemporary legend (sometimes called an urban\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1245,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1245","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":4},"title":"Free-Range Kids Have a ‘Scary’ Halloween","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"One last Halloween post, and then I'll shut up.Lenore Skenazy, author of Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry speaks truth to power and rejects the nanny state on October 31.If you want to see something really scary on Halloween, come to my\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0470471948","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3369,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3369","url_meta":{"origin":1246,"position":5},"title":"Did You Contribute to the Halloween Economy?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It is worth more than $2 billion annually. Not really that big in the overall holiday picture, though. Halloween's haul was the smallest, accounting for a mere 2.6% of holiday spending. But for a few industries, October 31 is the night to shine. According to the National Confectioners Association, sweets-makers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}