By John E. Carey
Peace and Freedom
February 12, 2007
This from the department of useless information: Americans will spend $17 Billion on cards, flowers, chocolates, Teddy Bears and sexy underwear to support people’s Valentine’s Day needs this year.
At “Party City,” a worker told me, ““It’s probably the second busiest holiday for us behind Halloween.”
Halloween?
At a large social event we did an informal opinion poll by asking our friends and relatives to compare and contrast Valentine’s Day and Halloween.
I asked people to fill in the blanks of the sentences: “Valenine’s Day is about_______. Halloween is about_________.”
Here are some of the off the wall ideas we heard:
“Valentine’s Day is about coming. Halloween is about leaving.”
“Valentine’s Day is about getting wet. Halloween is about drying out forever.”
“Valentine’s Day is about ‘getting lucky.’ Halloween is about being scared.”
On this Valentine’s Day: Viagra will be available over the counter.
On Halloween you bob for apples.
“On Valentines, if you are lucky, you get candy. On Halloween you also get candy….”
The speaker was too sexy not to have equated candy to something else. Then she leered at me.
My wife pulled me away. CANDY ALERT!
“Notice that we seem to spend more on the ‘silly party’ (he made quotation marks with his fingers in the air) holidays like Valentine’s Day and Halloween than we do on the truly religious holidays like Christmas and Easter. And, in our society, we are constantly devaluating the religious nature of Christmas and Easter. Last Easter, at the mall, we didn’t have an ‘Easter Bunny’ but a ‘Celebrate springtime rabbit.’”
Hold it right there, pal. You seem to have missed the light hearted and good natured theme of our discussion here.
“Oh. I teach philosophy at the university….”
