Hilloween
A holiday is one of the best ways for a group of Americans to forget how lousy their everyday lives are. Instead of bemoaning the same old banalities of work and family, holidays allow us to take a break and enjoy something silly.
During Christmas we either celebrate the birth of Christ, or commercialism, and oftentimes both.
Easter is a celebration of eggs, chocolate, and the literal belief in resurrection from the dead.
St. Patrick’s Day is about drinking, and the color green, and maybe something historic somewhere in there.
But Halloween is different. It might be the only holiday that we get right. By that I mean, we keep the holiday’s importance set in metaphor. Halloween is a masquerade of our own self-awareness. Instead of being ourselves on October 31st, we become someone else. Masks and costumes represent a knowledge of the individuality we don’t reveal 364 days out of the year. Frankly, Halloween is a celebration of symbolism—metaphors and representations of deeper truths.
Anybody who takes Halloween literally as an “evil” holiday is fooling themselves. King of the Hill satirizes this type of individual in Hilloween, one of the best episodes in the entire series. The one-off character named Junie Harper is a Christian woman with self-righteous pride. She sees Halloween as a holiday that celebrates nasty things like witches and devils. She hates the Holiday so much that she even gets the town to cancel trick-or-treating.
Not only is Junie Harper wrong, but she’s just no fun. Her replacement for a haunted house is a hallelujah house, where children come to learn about the horrors of non-christianity (evolution, premarital sex, hell, etc.). It’s not surprising that her view of Halloween is misinformed, because once we see how literal she takes Christianity it’s clear that Junie Harper is incapable of thinking in any sort of allegorical terms.
Hank Hill is the proponent of Halloween, and Junie Harper is his enemy. But Hank himself may not have the proper understanding of what this holiday means either. He believes that Halloween is all about ghosts and monsters and TP’ing the neighbor’s house. Even though he doesn’t take the holiday literally, his values are slightly misplaced.
The most important character in the episode is Bobby Hill. Bobby doesn’t know what to think. He wants to go trick or treating to get candy, but he doesn’t want to go to Hell either. This is his dilemma. What path will he take? Which is the correct choice?
Throughout the episode, we hear arguments for both sides. Hank assures everyone that Halloween is just fun. But Bobby is never sure.
In the end, Bobby decides to go trick or treating, but not simply because he wants to have fun and get candy. Bobby correctly sees the holiday’s true value—the value of tradition. He says, “I just want to be with my dad.” And this is why Hilloween is one of the very best “holiday specials” ever aired on television. Holidays are never just about a historical event or initial purpose, but about the way we celebrate through traditions.
Here’s how we could really view holidays, if only we’d see below the metaphors/symbolism:
Christmas is a time to exchange love with our friends and family, through gifts and good company.
Easter allows us to celebrate the hope that comes with a new season.
And St. Patricks Day… well… I guess that one is still just about wearing green and getting drunk.
But Hilloween shows us how misguided it is to make a holiday into something less or more than what it is. All holidays are cloaked in metaphors, but many of us prefer to celebrate on the surface instead of the deeper meaning.
In celebration of our fully-accepted mortality, let’s raise a glass for all those afraid of ghosts. Death comes to us all, but we mock it by dressing like grim reapers. We are not afraid of Halloween, but we remember our own evolution as creatures capable of celebrating even the things that keep us on our toes from generation to generation. Watch out behind you though, there’s a literalist with an opinion.
