Little-Known Halloween Trivia

Another year, another pointless holiday I hate: Halloween. I’ve written about how much I hate Halloween before, so I don’t feel the need to do so now; besides, I’m really busy and I’d like to get trashed tonight—it’s Friday, after all. But, before I check out from my usual reality and enter Bingedrinkingville (population me), I figured I’d note some interesting facts about Halloween.

Contrary to popular belief, Halloween is not Satan’s Birthday. It’s actually the anniversary of the first time he speared one of the damned in the ass with his hell-spork. That’s right, Satan doesn’t use a pitchfork. It’s really a humorously oversized, fire-retardant spork.

Kids don’t really trick-or-treat just for the free candy, or at least that wasn’t the original intent of the Halloween tradition. Back in the early days of Halloween, parents would send their kids door to door to collect goodies to test their luck for the following year. You see, if the kids were given poisoned food, stuff with razor blades or glass shards in it, or excrement wrapped in cellophane baggies, they’d know their luck was shitty because their kids would die. If their kids lived, they knew their luck was tits, and they’d let their children play with the family groundhog.

Sacrificing small animals to the dark lord on Halloween makes your offerings no more effective than they would be any other night of the year; except, of course, for Christmas Eve. Satan digs it when people pay more attention to him than the Baby Jesus (Although, Baby Jesus doesn’t give a damn).

Druids and witches only celebrate the solstice, or what-the-fuck-ever, on Halloween because any other time of the year, they’d get their asses kicked for walking around in public, looking like lunatics and performing stupid, gay rituals.

Jack-o-lanterns used to be made out of turnips because it was harder for thugs to break them on Halloween night. Unfortunately, as dumb as common thugs are, they still figured out turnips were perfect for throwing through windows. After that, people tried making their Jack-o-lanterns out of bear traps baited with little bottles of Cinnamon Aftershock to fuck with the thugs. Again, however, even with their unusually low IQs, the thugs used trick-or-treaters and unlucky raccoons to trip the traps and take the booze. That’s when the mayor of some New Hampshire town was heard to say, “Aw, fuck it.” The next day he signed a local law that required all Jack-o-lanterns to be made of pumpkins. Word spread around the country, and Jack-o-lanterns have been made from pumpkins ever since.

People toilet paper houses because they think it’s a mean prank, when in all reality it’s a grand, albeit wasteful, tribute to America. This papery prank was started by Pierre Jacques Pierre of the French Bidet Company of Paris during the 1900s in order to make Americans switch to bidets from good ol’ TP. In a resourceful act of American kickassery, the toilet paper manufacturer Johnny “Tabula Raza” Smith paid Steven Seagal to go to Paris and throw bidets at all the cafés and ass-flatten every pastry he could sit on. Soon, a large number of Parisians switched to TP, and Americans everywhere scoffed at the idea of water spraying their asses and used toilet paper instead. Houses are still toilet papered today in honor of Johnny “Tabula Raza” Smith.

According to most State Constitutions (check your own to see if your state is included), killing people in scary costumes on Halloween is self-defense. Here’s the clause in my state’s constitution: “…and because on the darkest and blackest of nights known to man, any spectre, goblin, hobgoblin, Dracula, undead, member of the legions of hell, witch, or the occasional mummy may be indeed what it appears to be, slay them with sticks, torches, arms, or whatever you may possess, lest you should fall into evil’s meaty fists. Should the apparition be merely a costumed citizen, the maximum fine faced by the murderer shall be one dollar seventy-five because he murdered in terrified self-defense. Beside the point, grim reapers are spooky, and anyone dressed as one deserves whatever he gets. Bastards.” Last year, I had a pile of little dead Power Rangers, Spongebobs, pirates, and ballerinas three feet tall stinking up my front lawn.

Speaking of shitty costumes, I’ve noticed a severe lack of creativity in Halloween costumes as of late. Granted, dressing up like anything—unless you’re undercover, possess super powers, or have a severe yet hilarious mental disability—is stupid. At any rate, in order to encourage people to look less idiotic in their Halloween costumes, here are a few interesting costumes.

1. Anti-Bush/Iraq War protester with a protest sign absent of obvious typos.

2. The guy who plays “PC” in the Mac commercials beating the shit out of the guy that plays “Mac.”

3. A Muslim that doesn’t get pissed off if you insult Allah.

4. A predominantly black 11x17 printout on high-gloss paper that doesn’t just look really, really dark green.

5. Barak Obama Bin Laden.

6. A famous hip-hop mogul/rapper drinking tea and reading feminist poetry.

7. That fucked-up-looking midget in the red hood and cape that kills Donald Sutherland in Don’t Look Now.

8. A starving, AIDS-infested African child, recently adopted by a rich, Hollywood celebrity.