Here’s a roundup of the best Chick tracts to hand out on Halloween. You know you’re an awful person when you think these are a good idea.
Everyone knows you’re supposed to hand out full-size candy bars — none of this ‘fun-size’ nonsense, and no, candy corn is not a treat — because we’re supposed to fatten up children with gluttony and sloth, both so they’re juicier for the barbecue and because they’ll meet our Dark Lord Satan even sooner.
Hmm. Now I have to think. What would be the most sweetly lethal kind of candy I should give out on Halloween night, that would most thoroughly serve the Evil Atheist Agenda? If feminist candy were richer chunks of chocolate, that might work.
It looks like most of what Chick wrote about Halloween is just his fantasy.
There is one glaring error in his nonsense.
Last panel.
In exchange for the victim they left a jack-O-lantern.
They being the Druids.
This is all impossible.
The Druids were pre-xian and slaughtered by the Romans during their British occupation.
Pumpkins are a New World crop and never made it to Europe until nearly 2 millennia later.
There was no overlap by roughly 1500 years.
Maybe druidic jack-o-lanterns are made with turnips?
You can also get Sithrak tracts
https://topatoco.com/products/og-sithraktracts
Instead of letting people come to me, expecting candy, I am going to put on my Sithrak priest costume and go out, and go to them.
Marcus:
I *love* that costume. I demand someone follow you with a camera.
I love Wonkette. They are currently touring the west coast, I’ll be meeting them next Monday.
The swallow may fly south with the sun, or the house maarten or the plummer may seek warmer climes in winter, but these are not strangers to our land!
Are you sayin’ pumpkins migrate?
Femnazi candy: Chocolate Dildos.
For extra subversion, go for the “dark” chocolate also, too.
The custom of carving Jack O Lanterns for Halloween appears to be no earlier than 19th century in origin – the point at which traditional Samhain customs that had been handed down for centuries in Ireland gave way to the more formal, commercialised, artificial trappings of modern Halloween. Hollow gourd lanterns do go back earlier, but not as an autumn festival custom.
The association of Druids with human sacrifice is also highly problematic – mostly it comes from credulous Roman sources with an obviously anti-Celtic agenda (Caesar) or who never had any contact with Celts (Diodorus, Strabo), and from very negative 10th century Christian interpretations of traditional Irish poetry and myths. Romans who had no particular animus against the Celts, such as Cicero, tend to describe the Druids as philosophers, astronomers and oral poets. Cicero once spent a very agreeable evening discussing philosophy with a Massilian Druid in Greek. In Irish literature Druids tend to appear as prophets and magicians, rather than sacrificial priests.
Not as such, but by carefully choosing the right Jack or Jill (make sure they aren’t prone to falling down hills), the lanterns can be carried quite far. And the swallows do a good ghost impersonation, even bringing their own coconuts for the horse effect.
Possibly. Stonehenge was an earlier prototype. Whilst it made a bloody impressive “Stone’o’lantern”, there were some obvious practical problems.
(Yes, I know druids-built-Stonehenge is historically inaccurate.)
A druid with an ankh? How ignorant is this Jack Ch… oh.
For your amusement: The War on Halloween
New age mumble-jumboism likes ankhs, so I presume modern pseudo-druids also like them, which is far too much evidence for Jack Crick to comprehend, and besides, is an attempt on logic, ergo, anything he says must be true! And he’s not even a four-star general!! Checkmate, athesit meanies!!!
Note, for bonus points, the distinctly stereotypical crooked nose popular in Jack’s works. Clearly, this is the rare JEWISH Druid. (Cue Spaceballs references.)
As a Brit ,i have never heard of this nut .We have Marrows over here ,they would be better
suited than Turnips .
Seems to follow the pattern I’ve always seen in “Christian” (originally RCC) interactions with previous “pagan” religions they try to replace. Adopt several of their practices while declaring the source a “work of the devil” with the rival deity another incarnation of Satan. As explanation for the myriad of names we have for the fallen one: Lucifer, Beelzebub, Satan, Ole Nick, blah blah blah….
Druids worship Nature, as far as I know, so “human sacrifice”, to me seems inconceivable. My imagination CAN conceive of Druids leaving pumpkins behind as charitable contributions with donor’s name engraved by scraping of the orange to leave the white pulp as the inscription. Overtime this “feature” would be continually embellished to become the current hollowing and carving and candeling the interior to illuminate the carving.
To present this tradition as a Satanic Ritual including blood slaughter is SICK.
so glad never encountered actual Chick Tract of Shit.
Clearly the people handing out those tracts do not realise the danger they put themselves in. Atheist / Druid / Heathen / Pagan children will probably inspect their bounty on receipt and might be inspired by it in an unanticipated way.
Human sacrifice would be a great trick and since the treat received was no treat at all, our good christian might find themselves caught in the middle of some ungodly ritual. To add insult to injury this would disqualify them from entering heaven at the ceremony’s conclusion. Doubtless anyone party to idol-worshipping or pagan rites can no longer be considered a good christian regardless of what role they played. My advice to christians: Don’t risk it, stick to massive chocolate bars.
Hey, candy corn was a treat when I was a kid, because you could only get it right around Halloween. Now that it’s available year-round, meh.
The Druids’ victim appears to have been kidnapped from a Disney versioin of a fairy story – or just possibly, a Mills and Boon.
What is it with all the hate candy corn gets? I think it’s pretty good.
Candycorn: refined sugar, concentrated into *SUGAR* and dyed colourfully
who the fuck could have a problem with that?
Why do you hate Hallowe’en?
@#20, emergence
I think it may be a cilantro-style perception issue. Then again, it may simply be that most people don’t like eating what is literally just sweetened wax.
The BeeKeepers who sell honey and candles at the weekly Market sometimes sell honeycomb.
@#23, chigau (違う)
And if, when you snapped candy corn in two, something sweet and not-made-of-wax seeped out which you could then eat on toast or in coffee, then candy corn would probably not get so much hatred. As far as I know, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, most people who buy honeycomb do so for the honey inside, not because they particularly want to chow down on the wax.
Seeing as how the Celts proudly brag about their head-hunting prowess in many of their own tales, I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume they practiced human sacrifice. Also seeing as how we have found the actual preserved corpses of sacrificial victims too, I’d say that kind of clinches it. I’m not saying Caesar’s account of the Wickerman is accurate, but it would be ridiculous to think of the ancient Celts as gentle, meek proto-hippies.
Druids didn’t use the ankh. *facepalm* This sounds like someone took all the spooky things and “weird” (read: non-Christian) symbols they could find and just crammed them all together under Halloween and Druids. -10000 points for historical inaccuracy.
The one point I will give for this tract is getting Samhain right. It’s the name of the holiday, not the name of a god. So, +1 there.
And finally, +1 for pleasantly surprising me by getting that right.
Final score: -9998
cartomancer wrote:
Thanks, I’d like to add some clarification from “A Brief History Of The Druids” by Peter Berresford Ellis.
The druids were a hereditary caste with privilege for various educated professions – the two other main castes in Celtic society were warriors and peasants. Druids were best known as philosophers, legal scholars and physicians, but also as historians, astronomers and astrologers. Bards and seers were sometimes considered types of druid. To be a druid you had to have both the right birth-caste and education (both men and women could be druids, although women of the druid caste were often housewives).
To stereotype the druids as “priests” or “wizards” is quite inaccurate, although they did have a central role in preserving Celtic religious tradition, and they were believed to have some magic knowledge. There isn’t much evidence of Roman suppression of druids, except inasmuch Celtic cultures were generally assimilated by the Romans and Germans. There also wasn’t very much conflict between druids and Christianity in surviving Celtic societies. “Druid” as a concept just disappeared with the gradual decline of the old caste system, and the pagan religious tradition associated with the druids was suppressed, while most of the other scholarship survived.
The extent of human sacrifice in Celtic religion is highly controversial. Berresford Ellis argues that the evidence for Celtic human sacrifice is thin, the Romans did it too, and the practice seems to have generally declined before Christianity came around.
‘Put the ‘hell’ back in Helloween!’ Stop the war on Helloween.
Pete Seeger sang:
Give me that Old Time Religion, give me that Old Time Religion
Give me that Old Time Religion, It’s good enough for me!
Let us pray with Zarathustra, let us pray just like we used’ta
I’m a Zarathustra Booster, It’s good enough for me!
Let us pray with those old Druids; they drink fermented fluids
waltzing naked through the woo-ods, It’s good enough for me!
Let us pray with those Egyptians, build pyramids to put our crypts in
cover subways with inscriptions, it’s good enough for me!
Let us pray with Aphrodite, let us pray with Aphrodite!
She wears that see-through nightie, it’s good enough for me!
I will rise up in early morning, when my Lord gives me the warning
that the Solar Age is dawning, it’s good enough for me!
I