Anti-Social Register [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Alfred HitchcockI SHOULD LIKE to preempt this space to promote a pet project.As everyone knows, I'm the last soul to balk at anything that advances the gory, the ghastly, the ghoulish or the gruesome. Whenever called on to endow a new horror magazine or endorse a hideous new product, I've virtually bled myself white with generosity. As high as my fortunes have risen, I've never hesitated to offer a word or two of encouragement to some humble hatchet murderer or stomp killer along the way.This being the case, it will come as a surprise to my disciples to learn that I favor the abolition of Halloween. But surprise or not, I have powerful lobbies in key places urging that it be stricken from the calendar and another occasion substituted. For no right-thinking adult can help but agree that it has become a crashing bore. Only Father's Day surpasses it for sheer tedium and hypocrisy.Although Halloween's origins are obscured in the murk of prehistory, it is generally agreed that it has its roots in Roman and Druid harvest festivals. The reaping of summer's bounty signaled the onset of winter, which, as anyone with a poetic turn of mind can tell you, is another way of saying the death of nature.