The Paxton Pundit - by Stacey Youdin

Holy Crap (It's Up To Six Aisles Worth at Wal*Mart)

In the doors, past the couple dozen registers, the pharmacy and all related drug store products, then you come up on the "seasonal" section. Our hometown supercenter had geared up with over six aisles of the commercial trappings of Halloween.

It's become one of those holidays where the religious origins or surrounding folklore aren't the meaning any longer. The meaning is everybody gets a fresh costume, you load up on candy to give away while your own contribution to the swarm goes around and collects from as many houses as possible.

Ironically, when All Saints Day appeared in the liturgies in the late Middle Ages, víspera de Todos los Santos (Allhallow-even) was marked by a day of fasting. The lemming march to sucrose induced hyperactivity is a modern and wholly secular creation.

Two weeks ago, we were in town late into the night for a band's reunion and, coming home, we saw a first for us: strings of orange lights decorating a house. Halloween lights? Yes sir; they'll be on aisle 31 next to the air blown lawn goblins.

We spend five billion nationally on this vaguely Christian holiday, showing its pagan roots. Averaging fifty bucks a household, that means for every one like mine weighing in at zero, there are some very indulgent ones for whom the retailers are more than ready.

From a curmudgeonly distance, it all looks so ripe for a put down. Aren't we the country where, on any street corner, you can get that torso-only obesity footage you need within moments.

Hmmm. It's bad for us in the first place, seems to take forever to undo the aftermath, is conveniently packaged for us like anything we've come to expect from Wal*Mart, and makes us anti-capitalist and unpatriotic if we don't go along. Where have we seen that before? Wait, wait; it's coming to me. It's what Frank Rich encapsulated in The Greatest Story Ever Sold.

So just who is this American citizen? It always seems that the brainwashers du jour know this person better than I. There's always that "at the end of the day" summation by these perverts which dares invoke this average American. I have way too long a list of folks I just know would make me throw my hands up and shout "this is impossible!" to believe anybody could be that cocksure that they know this American. Unless the yardstick is that they share me as their problem. (I hate that but it's like, pfffft, high school!)

The waitress at the café in Forks, WA, whose husband used to pull in a hundred thirty grand harvesting trees. Until they got to the last old growth. She's on the list. The fan who brought his family, at enormous expense, to a car race in North Carolina, while others worried about his lack of health insurance. (I can go on.) The guy who tells his buddies that all you need to do is kill every last Arab. (But you wouldn't want me to.)

So many who are pre-conditioned to react to my particulars: it's a long list, yes, but it borders on merit badge, I think. Honesty compels me, however, to tell you that I haven't a clue about the average, at the end of the day, American.

Holy crap! The truth! I thought it would be more assuring. (Must be listening to the wrong people.)

Next week: Adhesive Tape

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