Welcome to a special Halloween edition of 90ways' Essay house. We will use this opportunity to run through a brief history of the event and to ask, among other imponderable, why neither the Christian Right nor the healthy school lunches contingent hasn't been more outraged by this most pagan of holidays.

First some history: Halloween has its deepest roots in the ancient Celtic festival celebrating All Saints Day. "Celts" is a term used to refer to several groups of only-kind-of-related people living in Ireland, the British Isles, and continental Europe (mostly France and parts of Iberia). In 835, when Pope Gregory the IV decreed that all subjects of the Church would celebrate All Saints Day on November 1st every year (as opposed to April 20th, when the Celts were busy celebrating), he inadvertently decreed that Halloween would happen on October 31st every year. Halloween took its strongest hold in Ireland (where they have a long tradition of mixing deeply religious holidays with good old fun) and made its move to America in the early nineteenth century during the Irish Potato Famine (before that time, the Puritans had more or less prohibited all forms of celebration, except going to church).

Since that time it has grown into America's second highest grossing holiday (if you factor out gift giving) with about $5 billion in annual sales. Even considering gifts, Halloween ranks sixth, behind the winter holidays, Valentine's Day, Easter, Mother's Day, and Father's Day. Roughly 96% of consumers will buy and distribute candy this year, and 34% will buy a costume (including 66% of people 18-24). The Swedes think this is all endlessly hilarious; the Scots are outraged (especially about the whole turnip thing).

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With ubiquity must come outrage. From someone. But Halloween has seen little backlash - surprising given its devilish nature. There was the school district in Washington state that banned Halloween because it might offend real witches. Many other districts have declared the day quasi-religious and therefore inappropriate. The occasional scientific study has singled out Halloween candy as a scourge that fattens up our children. And Nashville, Tennessee has made sure that convicted sex offenders can't participate in all the fun. But on the whole, it's been a relatively outrage free holiday.

Evangelicals have had a complex response to Halloween's popularity in recent years. While there have been movements to ban the holiday outright others in the Evangelical community have embraced the holiday as a way to convey their message to young people. Through an attraction called a Hell House, which developed in the 1970s thanks to Jerry Fallwell, Evangelicals depict the fate of unrepentant sinners with the intention of converting House visitors. Topics for Hell House performances might include a cheerleader suffering an abortion-gone-wrong or a gay man dying of AIDS or a person not taking Jesus Christ as his personal savior. Really anything that might get you damned to Hell is fair game.

In the early nineties, Pastor Keenan Roberts of New Mexico set out to industrialize the concept of the Hell House by selling "Hell House Outreach" kits to other churches. Pastor Keenan took his kit seriously, not wanting to leave anything to chance: "Pieces of meat placed in a glass bowl [will] look like pieces of a baby... purchase a meat product that closely resembles pieces of a baby." Though his enterprise "took a break" in the early 00s, Roberts made a significant splash during the 90s, appearing on the Phil Donahue Show, and in features by the New York Times, NPR, and Newsweek. In his first three years of business, he sold 300 kits and had 20,000 visitors to his own Hell House. The kits go for $200 apiece, and admission to Pastor Keenan's Hell House can range from $7 for a single admission to $20 for an all-you-can-eat seasonal pass.

Hell Houses have spawned numerous offspring, including Judgment Houses, Tribulation Trails, and Revelation Walks. Today, Pastor Keenan is back, and he's making a splash on the New York City theater scene through the Off-Off-Broadway theater troupe Les Freres Corbusier. Like the 2004 film starring Andy Richter and Bill Maher, the Freres production will take a somewhat less dire approach to the sins depicted in the production.

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So. Why not more flack for Halloween? Well, it's hard to say exactly. But here's an idea: Halloween celebrates fear. And fear is a powerful leverage tool. More or less every political and cultural group on the planet has realized the power of fear to motivate and control. Our current political climate is an extreme example. And as long as you can use something to your advantage, there is no reason to speak out against it.

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