As far back as I can remember, this feast far outclassed Christmas on my personal calendar. No matter that Santa brought piles of gifts like the board game version of The Six Million Dollar Man, the Shrunken Head Machine, or yet one more encyclopedia set which I had begged for. None of this could compare with the fistfuls of crunchy loot that strangers dropped into our sacks, as we trooped up and down the stairwells of our tenements. What made those gobs of candy glow with a sinister excitement was the threat that some might be -- must be! -- laced with deadly poison, our apples stuffed with razor blades, by evil old crones who were eager to kill off the children. Or so my mother insisted, and made me swear not to pop a single kernel of black candy corn into my mouth that she had not personally inspected.
Conversely, given the kind of neighborhood mine was, the threat implied in "Trick or Treat!" was not to be taken lightly. I remember pondering with military thoroughness proportionate punishments for "mean" old ladies or puzzled aliens who offered us nothing -- or worse yet, bizarre and improvised foreign items like figs or chunks of feta. The worst thing I ever did was to cover, in its entirety, some miser's apartment door with dad's shaving cream. I didn't get the belt for doing that -- I got the buckle. But no regrets; to me, a night of treats with no real threat of tricks seemed like miserable, liberal theology: a guaranteed Heaven floating pink and full of fairies over a desolate, empty Hell.
Of course, this holiday was born to commemorate the many nameless saints and prepare for the feast of holy souls in Purgatory -- that scary, fascinating middle place that only we Catholics really believe in. That makes All Souls' Day (November 2) the most distinctively Roman Catholic holiday in the calendar. The Orthodox pray for the dead, but if you accuse them of agreeing with Catholic teaching on this subject -- as on any other --they will vigorously deny it. Likewise, their liturgy and traditions affirm truths suspiciously similar to the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, which they only began to deny once Rome declared them infallible. Had I the pope's ear, I'd beg him to teach, ex cathedra, that Jesus really existed -- if only to hear the monks of Mt. Athos find ways to deny it.
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