MINORITIES LESS LIKELY TO TRICK OR TREAT

 

AP Photo A scary pumpkin patch marches in the 33rd annual Village Hall

AP – 8 minutes ago WASHINGTON -Two-thirds of parents say their children will trick-or-treat this Halloween, but fewer minorities will let their kids go door to door, with some citing safety worries, a poll shows. The survey found that 73 percent of whites versus 56 percent of minorities said their children will trick-or-treat. That disparity in the survey is similar to the difference in how people view the safety of their neighborhoods, according to the poll by The Associated Press and Ipsos. Lower-income people and minorities are more likely to worry that it might not be safe to send their children out on Halloween night. Overall, 86 percent of those questioned in the survey said their neighborhoods are safe for trick-or-treating. Ninety-one percent of whites, compared with 75 percent of minorities, said they felt their kids would be secure when they went out seeking candy in their area. Similarly, 93 percent of people earning $50,000 or more said their communities are safe for trick-or-treating, compared with 76 percent of those making less than $25,000. Even many people who view their neighborhoods as safe take precautions. Nearly two-thirds of the people in the survey said their households will distribute Halloween treats to children who come to call. Seventy percent of people in the poll who consider themselves liberals and 67 percent of the moderates questioned said they would hand out treats, compared with 55 percent of conservatives. Of those adults whose children will not trick-or-treat this year, one-quarter cited safety worries and about one-half said they do not celebrate Halloween. “It’s demonic,” said Donna Stitt, 37, a nursing aide from Barto, Pa., with four young children. “People are celebrating the dead. I’m not into that.” The poll involved telephone interviews with 1,013 adults conducted from Oct. 16-18. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.  ******************************************************************************************* ******************************************************************************************* Because of the pagan history of Halloween, (and, not mentioned in this news article is that the Celts/Druids burned animals and human beings as sacrifices), and that many parents fear that their children may be harmed by drug or poison-laced candy treats received from strangers (does anyone remember years back when psychotic people put razor blades into fresh fruit or candied apples?), and the fact that parents fear that strangers out and about, may do any and all kinds of harm to their children, it is not unreasonable that many minority parents do fear for the safety of their children. A little history on the holiday known as Halloween. Around 1500 A.D., the Druids, who were in power in Western Europe, were a cult of male and female priests. They presided over bloody sacrifices that were abominable in their cruelty, barbarity and in the kind of majic they practiced. Humans captured as slaves, combat captives, etc., were flogged, tortured, and sexually molested before they were killed, by having their hearts torn out while they were still alive. The victims sexual organs were cut off and conserved to be used in so-called “black masses”. Oftentimes, the poor suffering victims were skinned, and the skin was used in different rites. The burned remains of the victims were used to read the future. The Druids had an autumn festival called “Samhain,” (pronounced “sow-in”) which marked the end of summer. It was a fertility festival thanking the spirits (demons) for the crops of that year. During the night, black masses were conducted. The custom of using leaves, pumpkins, and cornstalks as Halloween decorations comes from this Druid festival. By  1000 A.D., Christianity had spread to the celtic lands. The Roman Catholic Church made November 1, “All Saints’ Day” and the old pagan customs and the Christian feast day were combined into the Halloween festival because the people refused to leave the old customs. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints’ Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints’, All Saints’, and All Souls’, were called Hallowmas. Another particularly repellent fact of Halloween, at least in the memory of many Texans at the time, was the trial, conviction, and execution of Ronald O’Bryan, or as he is more commonly known among Texans, as the “Man Who Killed Halloween”. Thirty-three years later, the crime still haunts Halloween. Ronald O’Bryan, on the night of October 31, 1974, took his two children, Timothy O’Bryan, 8, and little sister Elizabeth, 5, out for a night of trick or treating.  Later that night,  after the children divided up their candy treats, Timothy complained that some Pixy Stick candy he ate tasted bitter. O’Bryan gave him some Kool-Aid to wash it down. Timothy complained of more stomach pains, vomitted, then passed out. By the time O’Bryan got Timothy to the hospital, it was too late. Timothy was dead.  A few days after the O’Bryans’s buried their son, an insurance agent tipped police that Ronald O’Bryan had taken out twin $20,000 life insurance policies on his children not long before Halloween. The agent said O’Bryan was oddly secretive about the transaction, insisting that his wife be kept in the dark. O’Bryan was in financial straits and needed money. The police in their investigations found evidence that he killed his son to gain payment for the $20,000 insurance policy he took out on young Timothy.  O’Bryan was arrested and the evidence during the trial indicated that he had earlier bought potassium cyanide and had put it in his son’s candy (as well as two other children’s candy who went out that night with Timothy and his sister) to try and cover his tracks. O’Bryan was sentenced to death for the murder of his son. He was known on Huntsville, Texas’s Death Row as the  “Candy Man”. On March 31, 1984, he was executed. Halloween has a long history of being associated with the evils that humans are capable of doing to each other (the festival of Samhain, O’Byran the “Candy Man”), but, it is also associated with the coming of Christianity to Western Europe. There were many brutal paganistic rituals of Western Europeans that were combined with Christianity, and Halloween is just one type of celebration that even though the ancient Romans tried to bring and instill Christianity to the pagan Europeans of Western Europe, the pagans still clung to their superstitious, barbaric ways (Halloween) and their benign ways (Easter). Which is why many people who learn of the true history of Halloween are more than ready to not celebrate a holiday which honored the brutal, sadistic torture of human beings as sacrifices. Many parents are afraid for the safety of their children in this day and age. There are many dangers that can take one’s children from them whether in the urban metropolitan cities, or in the rural areas. The celebration of the festival of Samhain, Halloween, is something that many parents of today are distancing themselves from, and one celebration they see no need to continue. http://www.history.com/minisites/halloween http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=115051