I live next door to a church. Really, I could throw a rock from our balcony and hit the steeple... not that I am suggesting anything. Anyway, the church provides endless hilarity as I drive past it to get to my parking lot, what with its Harvest Festival pumpkins festooning their lawn and large banner advertising the harvest season. I suspect this vaguely pisses off all the pagans, though really they should be used to having their holidays hypocritically pilfered from them ever since Yule went the way of Christmas. I wonder what would happen if I went over there with a magic marker and decorated their pumpkins with pentacles...

Well, it seems I'm not the only one to live near enough to a church to notice this happy irony:

I find it personally amusing. The "Harvest Festival" is actually much closer to how the pagans actually celebrated the holiday than the secular Hallowe'en (the eve of a Christian holiday) that the church is trying to avoid.

I get annoyed at the over-commercialization of Hallowe'en, but, unlike the people who are annoyed by the commercialization of Christmas, I keep it to myself. My undies get in a bunch when I walk into a store the day after Labor Day and find the candy, costumes, makeup and decorations already on the shelves.

On the other hand, all that dirt-cheap candy in the discount bin on November 1st isn't shabby!