< PREVIOUS ] [ 1987 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
Until the telephone rang earlier this week, I hadn't known that today might become a national holiday.
What's special about Oct. 23?
It would be best if I let Constance Fundament explain. On the phone, she identified herself as a spokesperson for Coloradans Rallying Against Nefarious Knowledge (CRANK), an organization based somewhere in Jefferson County, with branches throughout the state.
Are you the people trying to get schools to stop
holding Hallowe'en parties?
I asked.
We are part of the crusade to eliminate that pagan
ritual from our public institutions.
But Hallowe'en is hardly pagan, I protested. If you look
at the origins of the word, you find that it's a
contraction of All Hallow Even.
That doesn't mean
much to modern ears, but Hallow
used to mean saint,
and even
meant the night before, as eve
does
now. Each Christian saint had a feast day, and Nov. 1 was
the feast day for all saints. So the night before All
Saints Day was Hallowe'en.
After explaining all that, I concluded that Hallowe'en could hardly be a pagan festival.
Oh, but you're wrong,
Mrs. Fundament said. The
celebration of All Saints Day was a later addition. Under
the old Celtic calendar of ancient Britain, Oct. 31 was the
last day of the year. Like our New Year's Eve, their annual
Festival of Samhain was a night of revelry. Witches and
warlocks flitted through the crisp night air.
That is about as pagan as a celebration can get, I conceded.
Just as we did with that evil play, MacBeth, that
glorifies witchcraft, we're fighting the schools on this
one,
she said. We're also trying to organize a
boycott of businesses that promote the occult.
What businesses?
I asked. Newspapers that
print horoscopes? Bookstores that sell Shirley MacLaine's
multi-life autobiographies? New Age shops that offer
harmonic crystal-powered geomantic transpersonal
projections?
Their day is coming,
she intoned. But first
we're going after Safeway. Why, last year, all their clerks
were in costume on Hallowe'en, and they were giving kids
treats.
That makes as much sense as when you boycotted
Procter & Gamble for the crescent moon on its corporate
logo,
I allowed, or the time you protested the
display of the U.S. flag because it sported 50 pentacles --
a Wizard's Foot for each state. But aren't you going about
this all wrong?
What's wrong with the way CRANK does things?
Mrs.
Fundament's indignation was evident.
You're always against things,
I said. You
should quit being negative. You'd do a lot better if you
were to come out in favor of something.
We're mobilizing now for a campaign to establish a
new holiday. Creation Day.
Creation Day?
We have holidays to honor the birthdates of famous
men. And a holidays for the discovery of our continent, the
founding of our nation and the establishment of our state.
Isn't our beautiful planet more important than any of
those? So Oct. 23 will be Creation Day to honor the
creation of the earth.
Why Oct. 23?
I wondered.
Because the most thorough research into the matter
was done by the Rev. James Ussher in 1654,
she
explained, and he concluded that the world was created
at 9 a.m. on Saturday, Oct. 23, 4004 B.C.
But what about the latest evidence from
radioactive-decay dating that the earth is about 4.5
billion years old?
Oh, those silly scientists,
she laughed. They
change their minds all the time. There was Comte de Buffon
in 1753 with his 75,000 years, and Lord Kelvin in 1868 with
100 million years, and Arthur Holmes in 1913 with a billion
years. And that dreadful man kept revising his calendar, so
that by 1960 he was up to 3.9 billion years. It's so
confusing that way, looking at rocks. Wouldn't it be
simpler if we all just agreed with Archbishop Ussher and
celebrated Creation Day on Oct. 23?
That would be simpler,
I agreed. But how are
you going to get America to adopt a new holiday? Even when
some people took President Reagan seriously, he wasn't able
to put prayer in school or stop the teaching of
evolution.
I'll tell you,
Mrs. Fundament erupted. If we
don't celebrate Creation Day, then Doomsday will come.
Earthquakes and heat waves in California. Early blizzards
striking New England. The stock market will
crash...
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1987 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >