The Origin of Halloween

There are many different tales of the beginnings of Hallowe'en. Some claim it's descended from Samhain, and others think it's associated with celebrating and honoring dearly departed ancestral spirits, but those were just made up to cover up the truth: Halloween was a failed attempt at social engineering. Yes, you see, children are getting fatter and fatter, and candy is to blame! And so, in order to try to make kids eat less candy, the government came up with a potentially brilliant solution: create a holiday where kids learn to associate candy with horrifying and terrifying monsters, ghouls, ghosts, flesh hungry zombies, witches hungry for plump children, vicious aliens, etc. And with everyone dressed-up as disturbing nightmare creatures, they hoped children would always think of this disturbing stuff whenever they wanted candy, and they'd be too traumatized to eat any. Oh, but they forgot one thing: kids love monsters! And so not only did the plan not work, it backfired, making kids want to eat even more candy than ever before. And that's why we have an obesity epidemic today: it's another well-intentioned but unintended-consequence-filled government program, accomplishing the opposite of what it was supposed to. But like with every other failed program, like the War on Drugs, they'll never admit their mistake, and they'll just keep doubling down again and again, swearing that it just needs a little more time and a lot more resources to finally work, and claiming it's "too big to fail", essentially making it another jobs program, like many military contracts for things we'll never use.