Captain Great thinks too hard about halloween

So apparently it was Halloween in America yesterday, Halloween being an annual holiday with its roots in paganism and celebrated on the 31st of October. Halloween always struck me as an odd holiday considering that it was celebrated by a nation so fervently christian that their President doesn't believe in science and Harry Potter book burnings are practically a televizied team sport.

But then again, there are quite a few contradictions in American society really. For starters their popular culture comes across as fairly benign, featuring lots of TV shows about wholesome middle class families or groups of non-threatening yuppies living in houses and apartments inexplicably five times nicer than they should be able to afford. Yet Americans are also really violent: they're always starting wars and they all seem to think that everyone owning lots and lots of guns is a really good idea.

Like I said, the place is odd. Take Halloween for example: supposedly it's a holiday in which small children dress up like superheroes and demand candy from their neighbours while a couple of cute specials about Casper the Friendly Ghost get played on TV. Sounds innocuous enough right? Well you wouldn't think so if you looked at the media coverage of the yearly event. Typing 'halloween' into google news produced the following headlines on the first page alone: Halloween hell in the city, Shootings mar Castro Halloween, Sex offenders caught in Halloween curfew, School security guard shot on Halloween, Halloween fallout: 10 shot, 3 stabbed, dozens arrested in Bay Area, Giving out candy on Halloween, man is shot in the face and my personal favourite No High School Halloween for Hitler. Jesus Christ! You could be excused for thinking that you were reading about some war ravaged third world country or a horrible post apocalyptic future in which society has broken down and all cities have been taken over by violent hover-bike riding street gangs or something.

Is America really that violent that they need to turn a children's holiday into a free-for-all brawl or is it just a media build-up? I really don't know but what I do know is, if they stopped spreading the lie that anyone can achieve anything in America they would have a lot less shitty famewhore reality TV stars hanging around.

Mexico's Day of the Dead holiday is way more awesome than Halloween by the way.