I have a podcast on my “favorites” list from Dr. Al Mohler, president of Southern Seminary, the flagship divinity school for the Southern Baptist Convention. I’ve heard him preach a number of times at our former church, Capitol Hill Baptist, which we attended from 1999 to our move here in 2009. He’s a great guy for whom I have great respect and is very much concerned about the direction our society is going, but sometimes this concern causes him to overreact a little. So back when the whole drag-queen story-hour brouhaha broke out (and if you missed out on that one, lucky you! I’m a committed David Frenchian on the subject), Dr. Mohler saw it as a “cultural crisis.” We all needed to Do Something About It. But the thing of it was, and is, that these events are local and non-compulsory. Giving so much attention to them vaulted the performers into the spotlight for weeks.
Well, today is Halloween, and Dr. Mohler is back at it again on his podcast this morning, pointing out the pagan roots of the holiday and agonizing over what it means that it’s now one of the biggest occasions of the year for consumer spending. We are sliding over to the Dark Side, as it were. Adults, for Heaven’s sake (figuratively, not literally) are holding big Halloween parties and buying all sorts of creepy stuff. (And drinking all sorts of creepy drinks.) And indeed there are many, many committed Christians who refuse to have anything to do with today, substituting more innocuous “harvest celebrations.” Which is completely and totally their prerogative. There’s nothing healthy about a preoccupation with death and the occult, of course, and man’s spiritual side simply cannot be excised. If we don’t worship God we worship someone or something else, inevitably leading to all kinds of problems.
But, as I point out in my excellent article over on my music website, if we have to cut out every holiday that has pagan roots, we have to cut out Christmas and Easter too. Anybody want to go back to being like England under the Puritans during Cromwell’s reign in the 1600’s? I don’t think so. And I say that as someone who hasn’t given out Halloween candy in years. Back when we lived in our own house we just left the porchlight off and stayed in the back of the house, and the facts that a) we lived on a cul-de-sac, b) we had no little kids on said cul-de-sac, and c) our entryway was pretty sheltered from public view, meant that we had very few if any doorbell rings. (That dark rectangle to the left of the garage doors is the entrance to the walkway. You have to go along some pillars and up some stairs onto a porch before you get to the front door.)
Well, since this is a healthful-eating blog, among other things, I do want to touch a bit on this whole Halloween-candy issue. I wrote about my weakness for Reese’s mini peanut-butter cups awhile ago, and I’d like to think that I’d never overindulge in them again the way I used to do, but remember yesterday’s post about the fragility of good habits! Maybe I’d better not put myself in harm’s way. But what should you do if you have children who go trick-or-treating, or you feel obligated to stock up for those adorable little door-ringers? (And no, you can’t give out little boxes of raisins. You just can’t. I’m sorry.) Part of resisting the temptation is the whole mindset-change aspect; if you’ve gotten to the point where you think of all that sugar as pure poison, then you won’t want any, or much. (I just had my little somewhat-daily ration of some chocolate chips.) You could make something healthy-but-good to hand out, or something labor-intensive and delicious, but what about the toxic inflow? It’s kind of a problem, and of course things are only going to get worse. The next two months are going to see the kind of constant treatery that leads the average American to gain five pounds. Pounds, my friends, that are usually not lost. No subtraction, just addition.
(Yes, I realize that this post should have gone out last week if I really expected you to make something from the above recipe links, but hey! There’s always next year!)
Much as I hate to admit it, there was a good analysis of the problem yesterday on Gretchen Rubin’s podcast from (sigh) Melissa Hartwig Unger of Whole30 infamy. While I totally, like, totally, reject her basic notions on food (and, as you’ll see if you read the linked article from the previous sentence and this one also, I’m in very good company), she is right on the money when she says that, after all, there’s nothing special about Halloween candy. It’s not as if it’s a once-a-year treat, which can be a problem but can also be liberating, if you think about it. Hey! I’m an adult! I have money and a car! Any time I want candy I’m perfectly free to go buy some! Which, in theory anyway, should remove some of the forbidden-delight lure. It’s all about what goes on in between your ears.
Well, I’ve gone on and on about a whole range of topics here, and I haven’t even gotten to the item that sparked today’s post, which is the book Little Witch by Anna Elizabeth Bennett.* It being Halloween and all, I guess witches were on my mind, and this adorable book popped into my head. I was so pleased to find it still for sale on Amazon, having been re-issued in a 60th-anniversary edition. I was also pleased to see from the sample text available online that I had remembered one of the scenes correctly (when the schoolteacher tells the little witch Minikin that before she comes back to school the next day she should take a bath and put on clean clothes, and the LW says, “But this is the only dress I have.”). It’s just delightful, and I’ve put a copy on hold at the library. See if it’s available at your own library, but I promise you that it’s worth the money if you have to buy it (for your kids, of course).
I think I’ve broken my own record for number of links in a blog post! So I guess I’d better quit. Next up, probably next week: making dinner without a recipe with items from the pantry and the freezer. See you then!
*Amazon Affiliate link: If you follow the link and purchase the book, or indeed any other item during your session, I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.