Each fall, as the trees shed their orange and yellow leaves to reveal skeletal limbs and the night creeps earlier into the day, gamboling mischief-makers take to the streets to ring doorbells and eagerly greet the answering homeowner with the ritual cry of the season, “Hi! I’d like to tell you about Candidate X’s plan for a better America!”
It is an interesting coincidence of the calendar that Halloween and Election Day occur so close together. While three years out of four our elections are about local issues and homegrown candidates, every fourth year, in addition to the questions of “What costume do I wear?” and “What candy will keep the kids from toilet papering my home?” the populace must answer: “Who will get my vote?”
Editorial cartoonists embrace this confluence of cultural and civic interests, depicting politicians as trick-or-treaters or Halloween monsters. President George W. Bush has been caricatured as a bat-eared demon, while Senator John Kerry has had his long, dour face compared to the non-vivacious Lurch of the Addams Family or, by the more high-brow, to the screaming figure in Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream.” The candidates’ faces have also been used to make rubber masks with which Halloween celebrants amuse and terrify their friends. So common is this that the Internet costume company BuyCostumes.com has created a Presidential Mask Election Predictor that compiles sales figures to compare total numbers of masks sold for each contender. Surprisingly, the candidate with the highest figure has won the election since Reagan beat Carter in 1980. Currently, Bush leads Kerry 55 percent to 45 percent in this poll, but, since no Ralph Nader mask is available, supporters of that consumer advocate may question the mask poll’s results.
Halloween is commonly traced back to the Celtic holiday Samhain, which began at dusk on the night of October 31. The ancient Celts were a people primitive in technology but possessing a complex culture, with a learned priestly class of Druid priests. Living across most of Europe some 2,000 years ago, the Celts took their name from the “celt,” a wedge-shaped axe that was their favorite weapon. The Saxons were similarly named after their favorite implement of mayhem, the “sax,” a vicious, one-edged sword (not the melodious saxophone). One can imagine that if this naming practice had continued, the Swedes might today be known as the “Coffee Mugs” and the Canadians as the “Hockey Sticks.” I’ll leave it to others to wonder what the French might be called.
The Celts, despite their beloved axes, were supplanted by tribes from Eastern Europe and by the empire-building Romans, who pushed them into what were then the remote regions of northern France, Britain, Scotland, and Ireland. The Celts left no written records, so what we know of them is mainly derived from a few Roman descriptions and folklore. Since the Romans regarded the Celts as a barbarous bunch who needed a good Romanizing, their accounts are probably rather biased. And folklore is moreover fraught with error that has crept in over the centuries as storytellers made mistakes or embellished narratives to improve their entertainment value.
According to folklorists, the Celts were fascinated by moments of transition, when a slight push or pull might completely alter the future. Samhain, the time when the cold of winter replaced the warmth of summer, was such a point. Many important events and battles were said to have occurred at Samhain time, which marked the beginning of the Celtic New Year. At the turn of the year, the Celts believed that the boundary between the afterlife and the world of the living was thin. Spirits slipped back to roam about in strange, sometimes monstrous forms, visiting relatives and pestering those they had grudges against. To aid the dead, who might enjoy a snack as they went wandering, the Celts left food and drink outside their homes. This informal buffet, if tasty, might also persuade antagonistic spirits to not make mischief.
In addition to food bribes, the Celts employed deception to counter evil spirits. A few stalwarts would dress up in horrific costumes and masks to appear to be spirits, then stage a loud procession, with shouting and noisemakers, to lure real spirits away from where they could do harm, or, more pugnaciously, to frighten off troublesome spirits in the manner of a bigger dog intimidating a smaller dog. Of course, if the phonies wanted to enjoy the offerings left out for the real spirits, why not? And why not reward the brave ghost frighteners up front with food and drink when they came by your home on anti-ghost patrol? The connection to modern trick-or-treating is apparent, and, like modern pranksters, the ghost scarers might have amused themselves by frightening their neighbors. Fear, both real and manufactured, was a part of the holiday, and this has come down to our Halloween.
Creating fear, for less amusing purposes, has also become an American Election Day tradition. In today’s presidential campaign, the Bush/Cheney camp has been accused of exploiting fear of terrorism to win votes. This charge, however, is undercut by the simple fact that we have very, very good reason to be afraid of terrorism. On the other side, the Kerry/Edwards campaign, the Democratic party, and liberal groups supporting a Democratic victory have gone to unprecedented lengths to frighten American voters with fake and exaggerated terrors. This year, the largest Democratic bogeymen sent out to scare voters: Social Security privatization, a renewed draft, restrictions on abortion, and the suppression of the African American vote.
The Democrats have used Social Security, since its inception, as a crank to turn out the senior vote. At first, this was easily done by increasing benefits. Now, however, it has become clear that the Social Security program is the world’s largest pyramid scheme and that, when the Baby Boomers reach retirement, it is going to come crashing down. Surveys show that more young American workers believe in flying saucers than believe they will ever receive the Social Security benefits they have been promised.
Responsible parties have proposed reforms, but Social Security recipients are fearful that any change will jeopardize their benefits. The Democrats have cultivated this fear, claiming that reforms are a plot to destroy Social Security. That this fear-mongering may ultimately prevent any rescue of the system is less important than portraying themselves as Social Security’s defenders to win the elderly vote.
The next big bogeyman the Democrats have trotted out for 2004 is aimed at young voters. Democratic candidates claim that the war in Iraq can’t be fought without more soldiers and the only source for these is a draft. Pro-Democratic organizations have joined in this effort. The “Rock the Vote” campaign, which has portrayed itself as a nonpartisan effort to encourage the youth vote, has supported the Democratic draft scare by circulating phony e-mail “draft notices.” One of their TV ads shows a young man happily talking about his life plans only to be interrupted by his worried girlfriend who claims these dreams could all be disrupted by the draft the Iraq war is going to bring. The ad ends with the couple looking fearfully into the camera. It’s baseless fear, however. President Bush has stated he won’t revive the draft and a recent vote on a bill (introduced by Democrats!) to bring it back was handily defeated in Congress without even the bill’s introducers voting for it. The military, which remembers how difficult it was to incorporate Vietnam-era draftees, doesn’t want a draft. They meet their recruitment goals with volunteers and don’t need unwilling soldiers in their ranks.
The third Democratic election monster is abortion. Most Americans find themselves in the middle of the spectrum on the abortion issue, acknowledging the grim fact that a life is terminated but accepting that, under certain conditions, this is permissible. Legal opinion matches this and, no matter how many conservative judges are put on the Supreme Court bench, it is unlikely that abortion will become illegal throughout America. The most that pro-life forces can hope for is that the issue will be returned to the states to decide. Some states might then choose to allow abortion under a wide set of circumstances while others might choose to restrict it. In any case, it is extremely unlikely that a woman who is able to receive an abortion today would be any more restricted if the Supreme Court had a conservative majority than having to cross a state line. The Democrats, however, have claimed otherwise. One Hollywood liberal has even announced that rape will be legalized if Bush is re-elected.
The final big scary lie the Democrats have been using to frighten voters is vote-suppression based on race. This is probably the ugliest of the monsters they proclaim. Without any facts to back it up, they say that a million African-American voters were disenfranchised in the 2000 presidential election. If this had been the case, one imagines that someone somewhere would have some proof that black voters were blocked from the polls. But proof isn’t needed for propaganda.
Claims of voter intimidation in Florida were the first step in this lying campaign. It was said that black voters were confronted by police officers, who prevented them from voting, and that black voters were purged from voter roles. After the election, federal civil-rights agencies investigated the reports and found no basis for the claims. One woman, who had said a police car had frightened her away from voting, had actually encountered the car, which was making a traffic stop of another driver, miles away from the polls. She hadn’t been stopped; she’d only seen another driver being stopped. The only way such a fearful voter could be accommodated would be if all America’s police officers were kept off the streets on Election Day. The voters purged from voter rolls were felons, who are ineligible to vote. While some confusion over names caused some non-felons to be cut, it was simple for legitimate voters to reestablish their registration. Democratic election officials participated in all of the decisions about voting in Florida in 2000–a Democrat choose the infamous punch-card voting system, for example–but Democrats refuse to accept any responsibility for election foul-ups. Instead, they promote racial hatred by claiming a Republican conspiracy stole the election.
Unlike mythical tales from the 2000 election, Democratic intimidation of Republican voters in this election year is well documented, ranging from burning swastikas into the lawns of Republican homes to gunfire. Mobs of union thugs have smashed their way into Republican campaign offices and roughed up Republican campaign workers. Republican voters lining up for early voting have been heckled, threatened, and forced to leave. While some incidents can be attributed to small groups of liberal bullies, there are several cases in which the intimidators were organized by Democratic officials. This kind of organized violence is a deadly threat to democracy.
The Democrats have lots of lesser bugaboos they trot out to scare voters, including outsourcing, tax cuts for the “rich,” jobs, and, of course, supposed flaws in the conduct of the Iraq War. Discussing these issues without distortion would be useful for America, but that’s not what the Democrats have in mind. Fear-mongering is an easier way to get votes. In the last days of the election, the New York Times and CBS News, who have carried water for the Democrats throughout the election, ran a story that 380 tons of explosives had been stolen from an Iraqi military base that had been left unguarded. John Kerry trumpeted this as a Bush failure. It was only after NBC News, looking for material for their version of the story, discovered that an embedded NBC reporter had been with troops that captured the Iraqi facility that the American people learned the truth. The explosives hadn’t been there. They had been spirited away by Iraqis before any American soldiers had taken the facility. The Times and CBS hadn’t bothered to do the least bit of fact checking before running a story meant to swing the election to Kerry.
Perhaps the Celts knew something when they identified the end of October and the beginning of November as a moment of chaotic decision with ominous portent. Perhaps the way they dealt with their fears is also useful to consider. Their masks, gifts of food, and noisemakers can be dismissed as superstition but, lacking science to dispel their bogeymen, they bravely confronted them with the few tools they could imagine. But, beyond these crude devices, they had a hopeful attitude about their fears. The word “ghost” is, according to some etymologists, derived from the Celtic geist, meaning guest. The Celts looked for the best in the visitations of the dead while taking precautions against evil.
Conservatives should do the same with liberals. Look for their better impulses, those areas where we share sentiments, and welcome even the most frightful of beings so long as they keep their feet off the table and don’t eat the cat. At the same time, while being civil, we must look for ways to protect ourselves from those who wish us ill. And remember that the best response to those who seek to frighten us is to refuse to be afraid. On Halloween, we laugh at bogeymen.
–Edward Morrow is the author and illustrator of numerous books, including The Halloween Handbook.