The Skarry Skelly 2023 Halloween Message

From ghoulies and ghosties And long-leggedy beasties And things that go bump in the night, Good Lord, deliver us!

W hy is this Halloween Night different from other Halloween Nights? Because. War in Eastern Europe. War in the Middle East. A House of Representatives that has, until last week, been not only rudderless but headless as well. They vacated the old guy with no plan of succession and no broadly acceptable successor.

The 21-day gap marked the longest Congress has been without a Speaker since 1962. There was a temporary leader, the Speaker pro Tempore, but the only things he could really do were open and ajourn sessions and hand out bathroom passes to members who had to make. The House was closed for business.

He also could, and did, call for votes on a new Speaker, but they couldn't come up with a guy they agreed on. The chamber that is supposed to come up with spending and legislation that Republicans and Democrats can agree on couldn't decide on their own leader. They went through 15 different candidates in four rounds of nominations, and no one could clear the 217 vote bar.

After three DNF rounds, one candidate finally made it across the finish line in the fourth. Oddly enough unanimously: Mike Johnson (R.-LA), not a household name, but not unknown.

One suspects the Democrats will come to wish this fellow hadn't finished either. The most conservative politician in the entire state of Louisiana and then some. Evidently with some brains; he got out of that squirrel cage after all. A climate sceptic, strongly anti-abortion (advocated for a nationwide ban), wants to cut Medicare and Social Security, opposes LGBTQ+ rights. Believes the problem isn't weapons but the human heart. Once advocated for making homosexuality illegal.

He voted against certifying the 2020 election. But didn't they all? That's kind of a pre-requisite for membership in the House's Republican Conference these days.

Other than all that, an interplanetary visitor might conclude a.) Congress had no leader they could take him to, and b.) things were going pretty much okay nonetheless. Unless he happened to ask a member of the Freedom Caucus, in which case he'd learn the country is in a disastrous economic freefall, spending like a drunken sailor, with the southern border overrun by hordes of aliens (the other kind), pro-choicers running wild in the streets ripping fetuses out of wombs right up to the moment of birth and elementary school teachers recruiting trans kids into homosexual cabals dedicated to surreptitiously stealing state and federal elections. And then, of course, there's Florida.

But in broad strokes the picture looks like this ....

  • 3q GDP was 4.9%, up, surprisingly, from 2.1% in the second qtr. and 2.0% in the first.
  • The unemployment rate hovering around 3.8% with steadily, if not spectacularly, persistent job growth.
  • Twelve-month inflation at 3.8% headline, 4.0% core (excluding food and energy); better than last year's peak (7%), but still twice the Federal Reserve's target.
  • A federal deficit that sooner or later will have to be addressed by the new Speaker of the House. Let's see him build some consensus around that one.
  • And, always, persistently lingering concerns about the possibility of a looming recession.

Why the latter looming lingering?

Professional recession contemplators look not just at data like the above but also at where we are in the business cycle (which must always end in a recession, by the way; that's what makes it a cycle), what's going on with the U.S. Treasury (the yield curve is at present inverted, which really doesn't augur well), and PMI surveys (data compiled from Corporate Purchasing Managers) for insights into not only where the economy is over the last quarter or two or three but where it might be headed. Predictive stuff. (Like picking winners at the track after reading The Racing Form.)

(Yield curve inversion (if you can stand the pain) occurs when longer term government bond interest rates fall below shorter-term rates, as often happens, for instance, when the Federal Reserve steadily raises interest rates sharply. This may be a phenominon not fully understood by breathless journalists and other market commentators.)

The New York Fed's recession probability indicator currently sees a 56% chance of one in the next 12 months, down from 66% in August. IncidentlyForbes Magazine notes recessions are fairly common things. Since World War II, there has been about one every five years or so. The average duration is 11.1 months. The last, the Covid-19 recession in early 2020, lasted two months.

Marc Cohen sings, 

Don't know where you're going' 
Don't know what you're doin'  
Hell, it might be the highway to heaven
And it might be the road to ruin.

See if you can figure out how a politician's allegiance leans based on how he or she talks, a priori, about those two possibilities next time you're watching the news. Cohen, notably, winds up on a different note entirely, so to speak. 

But this is a song 'bout strangers in a car.  
Baby, maybe that's all we really are.  
Just strangers in a car.
("Strangers in a Car," Marc Cohen)

It's early yet, but the neighborhoods seem to be decorating a little sooner, and more ambitiously, this year. Last Halloween left the distinct impression there were fewer houses showing out than in prior years, at least in Milton. Stuff went up late and it came down fast. Maybe the mood is merrier this year.

The National Retail Federation’s annual Halloween consumer survey revealed that total Halloween spending in 2023 is expected to reach a record $12.2 billion, exceeding last year’s record of $10.6 billion. A record number of people (73%) will participate in Halloween-related activities, up from 69% in 2022. They say that every year.

Have fun tonight, guys. But this is a good night to remember the old adage about religion and politics and polite conversation in public. Like in bars or parties on nights when the other party stands a good chance of having already overshot his legal booze occupancy. Bartenders call New Year's Eve and St. Patrick's "amateur night," but Halloween comes in a close third.

Johnathan Swift once said “You cannot reason someone out of something he or she was not reasoned into.” Never truer than on a festive night when people have ingested excessive amounts of intoxicants. Feathers can start flying. And glasses. And bottles. Even chairs.

Very little of what we believe is based on reason anyway. We tend to believe what we were told to believe growing up. Remember that I told you that. You're always in my thoughts on this nite. Every time I hear the doorbell ring, my mind conjures up images of each of you through the years in your little costumes with your trick or treat bags in hand. And now? Now I have to buy my own candy.

And they don't even run "The "Rocky Horror Picture Show" on TV anymore.

Love, Dad
PS: just foud it on Hulu.

(Click for enlarged image)








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Halloween Through the Years: A Timeline
Ancient Times: Halloween Begins as Samhain
Celts believed that the barrier between the physical and spirit worlds was breachable during Samhain. It was expected that ancestors might cross over during this time as well, and Celts would dress as animals and monsters so that fairies were not tempted to kidnap them.

10th Century: Samhain Gets Christianized
In the 7th century, the Catholic Church established November 1 as All Saints' Day, a day commemorating all the saints of the church. By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church declared November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.

The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-Hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. ("Hallows" is Gaelic for Saints")


The Middles Ages: Trick-or-Treating Emerges
In England and Ireland All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day celebrations included an early form of trick-or-treating they called "souling." Poor people would visit the houses of wealthier families and receive pastries, called soul cakes, in exchange for their promise to pray for the souls of the homeowners’ dead relatives. The practice was later taken up by children, who would go door to door asking for gifts of food, money and ale.

19th Century: Jack-o-Lanterns Take Shape
Carving faces into vegetables became associated with Halloween in Ireland and Scotland around the 1800s. Jack-o-lanterns originated from an Irish myth about a man nicknamed “Stingy Jack,” who tricked the Devil and was forced to roam the earth with only a burning coal in a turnip to light his way. People began to make their own versions of Jack’s lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits.

19th Century: Halloween Comes to America—and with It Mischief
With the exception of Catholic-dominated Maryland and some other southern colonies, Halloween celebrations were limited in early America, which was largely Protestant. In the mid-19th century new immigrants—especially Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine—helped popularize Halloween nationally.

The immigrants celebrated as they did in their homelands—which often included pulling pranks. Common Halloween tricks included placing farmers’ wagons and livestock on barn roofs, uprooting vegetables in backyard gardens and tipping over outhouses. By the early 20th century, vandalism, physical assaults and sporadic acts of violence were not uncommon on Halloween.


1930s: Haunted Houses Become a Thing in the US
Haunted or spooky public attractions already had some precedent in Europe. In the 1800s, Marie Tussaud’s wax museum in London featured a “Chamber of Horrors” with decapitated figures from the French Revolution. In 1915, a British amusement ride manufacturer created an early haunted house,complete with dim lights, shaking floors and demonic screams.

By the time of the Great Depression in America, violence around Halloween—no doubt exacerbated by dire economic conditions—had reached new highs. Parents, concerned about children running amok on All Hallows' Eve, organized “haunted houses” or “trails” to keep them off the streets.


1950s: Halloween Costumes Go Mainstream
Costumes and disguises had figured into Halloween celebrations since their earliest days. But it wasn't until the mid-20th century that costumes started to look like what we know them as today. Mass-produced costumes became more affordable in the 1950s, and more kids began to use them to dress up.

Around the time neighborhoods began organizing activities to keep kids safe and occupied, costumes became more important (and less abstract and scary). And take the form of characters from popular radio shows, comics and movies. In the '50s, mass-produced box costumes became popular, and trick or treaters began to dress up as princesses, mummies, clowns or more specific characters like Batman and Frankenstein’s monster.


1980s: Fears About Poisoned Halloween Candy Reach New Heights
While in general the fears about poisoned Halloween candy have been overblown, crimes involving poison have occurred. The most infamous case took place on October 31, 1974 when a Texas man gave cyanide-laced pixie sticks to five children, including his son. The other children never ate the candy, but his eight-year-old son did—and died soon after.

The paranoia reached new heights in the early 1980s after a rash of Tylenol poisonings in which cyanide-laced acetaminophen was placed on store shelves and sold. After the Tylenol murders, which are still unsolved, warnings about adulterated Halloween candy increased.


1980s: Halloween Becomes a Holiday for Grownups
This shift can actually be traced back as far as the 1970s, when Halloween street festivals in several gay neighborhoods in the U.S. began to transform into adult parties featuring lavish and over-the-top costumes.

In the mid-1980s, the Coors Brewing Company ran an ad campaign featuring TV horror host Elvira. It helped make the ghoulish night a “beer holiday” in the mold of Super Bowl Sunday and St. Patrick’s Day. Today Americans buy enough Coors beer at Halloween to increase seasonal sales by 10 percent.

Capitalizing on the party mood, retailers began pushing theatrical costume offerings: pin-up pirate, naughty nurse, even sexy Big Bird. Skimpy Halloween get-ups have long been available but in the last decade but now the prevalence of sexy costumes has exploded, according to Lesley Bannatyne, author of “Halloween Nation: Behind the Scenes of America’s Fright Night.”

Why the desire to flaunt so much skin for a celebration that comes around just when temperatures are taking a downward turn?“ Whatever box you’re in, Halloween is when you get out of it, and for some, sexiness or outrageousness is their expression of getting out of it,” Bannatyne says.

(Sources: The History Channel,CNN)