Halloween is perhaps the silliest of our holidays, a good example of following tradition just because it's tradition, like the woman who always cut her turkey in half for Thanksgiving baking.
One day her daughter asked her, "Mom, why do you cut the turkey in half?"
Her mom said, "Hmm, I don't really know, that's just
what my mother always did."
So her daughter called her grandmother: "Grandma, why do we cut the turkey in half?
"Lands, dear, I don't know. You'd have to ask my mother."
So her granddaughter wrote to her great grandmother: "Great Gran, why do we cut the turkey in half?"
And her great grandmother replied: "Oh, sweetie, our oven wasn't big enough for the whole bird."
That's my treat for readers today. And you didn't even have to put on a witch's costume and come out in the dark to knock on my door.
November 4:
Follow-up on the silliness of Halloween
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Thanks to William B. Ross, MD, for the anecdote, which he told me in about 1973 in order to illustrate that just because something is a tradition doesn't mean there's a sound basis for continuing to observe it. It has continued to instruct and guide, reminding me to look for reasons for doing things rather than to follow unsound habits.
