by the Apache Editorial Staff
As an excuse to dress up, act silly, and eat candy, regardless of your age, Halloween gets high marks from most IVCC students and staff.
As an originally pagan celebration, however, the holiday is a problem for some who object to its connections with witchcraft and Satanism. (See story below on the origins of the holiday.)
Over 80 percent of the students, faculty and staff surveyed said they will celebrate Halloween this year by dressing in costumes, attending a party, handing out candy, or helping their children celebrate.
"I love Halloween," said Melissa Buckley. "I enjoy seeing all the kids dressed up. We always decorate our house and play spooky music."
A 19-year-old from Earlville said "it’s one day out of the year that everyone dresses up looking pretty stupid...so during Halloween you and your friends are all dressed up looking stupid together."
Nursing instructor Frances O’Brien described the celebrations as "all make believe," and then she added, "The more serious our work, the more we need it."
Calling the night "exciting and thrilling," a Mendota student said "The Halloween holiday brings out some people from a shell."
To some students, like Dean Spradling of Streator, Halloween "gives people a chance to show who they really are."
Expressing a common sentiment, a 21-year-old LaSalle student described Halloween as "a good holiday to get closer to children and the child-like person within ourselves."
Christie Krogulski agreed. "It’s like being a kid again for one day."
A number of people said they used to enjoy Halloween, but now feel it is a holiday for kids. Seventeen-year-old Jenna Hammerich said "I’m too big, and we don’t live in town."
A 35-year-old from Streator is "just not into it anymore---too old?"
The sense of freedom from convention that Halloween provides, however, is a problem, according to some students and staff.
A 20-year-old from Utica, who admitted to enjoying the holiday, added, "I do not approve of the recklessness that sometimes goes on on Halloween night."
Kristie Filipiak of LaSalle said she likes the holiday, "and I approve except for those older kids who make it unsafe and ruin it for the little kids."
One staff member objected to the waste associated with Halloween: "Most of the candy taken home is eventually thrown out anyway; why not have kids collect food or the Food Pantry or some other worthy cause."
Although most people admitted to knowing very little about the history of Halloween, some who are aware of its pagan origins have problems with the holiday.
Nurse instructor Alice Hunter enjoys Halloween without approving.
"I like seeing the children have fun; I do not approve of the origins of the holiday," she said, "If I could, I would eliminate this holiday from the calendar due to the origins.
"Since I am not that influential, I just adjust to it and eliminate the options for who or what my daughter may dress as on Halloween. My child is not allowed to dress as a demon, bad witch, dracula."
Student Tom Parcher of Streator expressed a similar sentiment: "I don’t celebrate the evil of Halloween, but I enjoy the fun time being a kid with my kids."
Student Jamie Oquenda said, "I think it is not godly, but I was raised celebrating Halloween and find it difficult, even impossible, to take it from my children."
For accounting instructor Alice Steljes, current social problems are affecting her previously positive feelings about the holiday.
"I used to think it was harmless fun and a good family activity," she said. "But that was when the world was a more innocent place. With so much evil apparent in the world, I’m uncomfortable playing with anything remotely Satanic."
Dorene Perez, engineering design instructor, does not approve of the holiday "because of its beginnings but mostly because I know of the Satanic rituals that are even being practiced here locally."
Perez said she usually does hand out candy as "a way to reach out to neighborhood children." She added: "No light on your porch on Halloween doesn’t necessarily mean they will get the message that you don’t approve of Halloween; it just might be mistaken as cheap or grumpy."
The history of the holiday does not, however, affect the fun most people have.
One instructor described Halloween as "a pagan seasonal festival, co-opted by the Christians, just like Easter and Christmas, and now co-opted by secular society, just like Easter and Christmas."
An 18-year-old student from Sheffield said: "It’s a holiday -- pumpkins, ghosts, candy, etc. Christmas—Santa, trees, gifts. Same thing."
10/29/98 the Apache