Commemorating holidays is tricky business when you are devout, have kids, and need to walk the line between respectful acknowledgement of the holiday and not having those kids be bored to tears. The competition for airtime between Santa and Jesus has it challenges but both are exciting and celebratory, so it does not have to be mutually exclusive. Christmas lasts forever in the US these days so you have plenty of time to shoehorn both manger scenes and a fat stack of wrapped gifts into the season. Single day holidays are tougher. I present the issue of Halloween’s less exciting, stodgy step-cousin, Reformation Day. If Halloween and Reformation Day were potential romantic partners, Reformation Day would arrive on the first date with his mom’s photo album and insist that the two of you leaf through together while he whistles classic American folk tunes. Halloween is totally parked outside in a classic roadster with tickets to something awesome and totally underground that sold out 6 weeks before someone like you had even heard about it. In other words, Reformation Day is Channing Tatum in Dear John as played by Ben Stein. Halloween is Channing Tatum in Magic Mike with a pizza and body wax.

Here is a brief overview for anyone who has somehow managed to remain unfamiliar. Halloween began as a Catholic holiday which was at times associated with Samhain, a very old Celtic tradition relating to the barrier between world of the dead and that of the living. At some point, a very long time ago, the Catholics built some sort of celebration around a day dedicated to the saints on the same day. Everything you associate with Halloween in the US now is a partied out, mass produced product inspired by pieces of Samhain and perhaps bits of the Catholic tradition as well. Reformation Day celebrates (I use that term very loosely) the day that Martin Luther, a medieval monk who had issues with the Catholic Church, posted a list of his issues. To Luther’s credit, it was widely seen as the catalyst for the Protestant Reformation in Europe, so, definitely important in the grand scheme, but if the Protestants know about anything beyond complaining, its how to keep you from enjoying yourself.

There are a couple of strategies you can use to keep your kids from wanting to participate in something. The most obvious one is just pretending that it does not exist. This is the strategy my parents use on a summer vacation when I was a kid when we showed up in San Francisco in the middle of gay pride weekend in the late 80’s. They did a pretty solid job of creeping down side streets and parking our giant blue station wagon as far from anything fabulous as possible. However, if you watched the home videos they made, you’d see banners and marchers in the distance in a few shots. Points to them for sheer force of will. Reformation Day does not really have much in the way to selling points while Halloween has candy, costumes, and a fun motif. A concerted effort was made to pretend Halloween did not exist. At the tiny school all we all attended, we were not allowed to even say the word “Halloween” in earshot of a teacher least they give us a stern look and correct us firmly, “You mean Reformation Day.” It was not a question. We all knew that no kid ever really meant Reformation Day. No one ever MEANS Reformation Day. Perhaps the whole holiday would have had more traction if we dressed up as Martin Luther and went about pointing out other’s flaws. Dressing up in a big brown bathrobe and listing my complaints about the powers that be regardless of whether they asked me to sounds like something I would have been all about as a child. Alas, a missed opportunity.

Nothing spruces up a holiday like music. Christmas is awash in terrible covers of classic tunes and each year more tired, mediocre songs are shot down the wind tunnel of pop culture at an audience who cannot possibly hide. Halloween has a bit less of this, although The Monster Mash has a campy charm of its own. Reformation Day arrives on the scene with zero musical accompaniment to liven it up. Well, almost. I had the same teacher for 3rd-5th grades and he fancied himself as some sort of musical aesthete, but also, somewhat creepily, he also had a thing for children’s choirs. Each year, toward the end of October a poorly Xeroxed music sheet with wobbly, hand-scored penmanship would show up on our desks. The music itself was lifted directly from a familiar songbook we often used. The lyrics were simplistic to the point of being jejune, and, unsurprisingly, it was all about Martin Luther nailing theses to a church door in Germany and how thoroughly awesome that was. I was convinced the teacher created the piece himself especially since he dodged my questions about authorship with all the fancy footwork and obfuscation of a North Korean news agency. Regardless of the missing writer credits, I helped perform the song for years with all magic and mystery we were allowed to summon, which was none. Remember that scene from Harry Potter and the Prison of Azkaban when the choir was singing a creepy and fantastic musical rendition of Macbeth’s “Something wicked this way comes”? Yeah, it was absolutely nothing like that in any way. Reformation Day is about as magical as a trip to the DMV and has the musical fascination of a elementary school band made up only of recorder flutes and kazoos.

When push came to shove there was always one last time tested strategy for making sure no one enjoyed Halloween and that was filling the time with actual church. That’s right, I spent most Hallow’eens parked in a church pew hearing about terrible Halloween was. This strategy was also applied successfully to New Years Eve and New Years morning as both had church services to make sure you did not have too much fun and attempt to earn or sleep off a hangover. During prime Halloween time, your butt was in church. At this point there was not a whole lot of point plugging the mystique of Luther (as they were more a John Calvin crowd, the conflict between whom was the inspiration behind that Team Edward vs Team Jacob nonsense, I bet). Rather than having fun, we focused on how erroneous the Catholic faith was and how wicked the world was for being so gosh darn wicked. Between rushing to get to church on time, the service itself and the trip home after, there was nary time to go out trick-or-treating or hand out candy. At best we watched a movie when we got home before it was done. We lived in the country and what few festivities existed were generally wrapped up by 9 pm. Luther was just banging out those victories over the evils of free candy and fun.

Things have changed a bit since then for me. I have definitely dabbled in the Halloween nonsense a few times and ended up in an ill-fitting Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz costume that had to be cut off with box cutters. That is a story for another time. Halloween has hardly shown itself to be the festival of wickedness I was raised to expect. I am still holding out for it though. While I have not yet donned a brown bathrobe and started nailing complaints to things (I’d probably opt to use scotch tape instead of nails) I can’t say I have not mulled it over a few times. Anyone who identified me as the original bad boy of Reformation Day would definitely be someone with whom I’d want to share a stein of beer. And maybe talk some trash about that poseur, John Calvin.