Ben Heller Week 7- My Halloween


So, I’ve always felt kind of left out when it comes to this time of year- Halloween. My parents have never let me celebrate Halloween, so I don’t look forward to this time. Ever since I was little, I can remember handing out candy to kids my age when they came to trick or treat, while I remained in the house. I feel like this feeling has become even stronger in the past few years. Now that we’re older, there are more kids throwing parties for Halloween, and I can never go. Instead of having fun with my friends, I have to sit at home, with a ban on doing anything Halloween adjacent, excluding handing out candy to other people. For instance, there was a party on Saturday night- a Halloween party, that all my friends were going to. I also wanted to go to the party, but I wasn’t allowed to go. This was kind of a bummer, because Halloween is an otherwise uneventful night when you can’t do the stuff that other people do. I actually just came back from teaching a karate class where my student asked me what I did for Halloween. I told her that I don’t celebrate Halloween, and when I tell you about the blank look on her face, it was the weirdest thing. I noticed that I’ve been missing out, and I think when I have kids one day, I’m going to let them celebrate Halloween. I think the main reason my parents don’t let me celebrate the holiday is because it’s pagan in origin, but I think they fail to realize that it’s just a cultural thing, and a lot of things in Judaism actually come from borrowed pagan practices. Now isn’t that something to chew on?

Halloween - Wikipedia


Comments

  1. AnonymousNov 2, 2021, 1:12:00 PM

    I'm sorry you didn't get to celebrate Halloween, Ben. I think it has become more of an American holiday than something religious. We never celebrated it in South Africa, so since coming to America and celebrating it, I've really felt it is more of an American cultural holiday than anything else.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michael HakimNov 2, 2021, 6:05:00 PM

    That sucks, Ben. I used to not be able to celebrate Halloween either, but my parents have gotten more laid-back about it over the past few years. Hey, at least you can still eat candy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnonymousNov 3, 2021, 8:14:00 AM

    Halloween was always my favorite holiday but I never thought about where it came from. I feel like it has become a pretty secular holiday despite its past religious significance.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousNov 29, 2021, 8:24:00 PM

    I was always meaning to ask you if you were going to allow your own children to celebrate halloween. To be honest, you're not missing out on much because Halloween is slightly overrated in my opinion, I mean we can eat candy literally any day of the year and I don't really like dressing in costumes.

    ReplyDelete

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