Well, I guess I must be getting older because these days I seem to get all religious around the holiday season, and I start reading Isaac Bonewits' Homepage for little bits of the spiritual.

Well, as in the spirit of the old year, where lying was the vogue, I'll link you to Isaac's Halloween Errors and Lies, a compilation of fun facts and stories to make you feel better about Halloween, the Day of the Dead, etc.

Anti-Halloween propagandists use these claims to disrupt or prevent our religious rites, slander our beliefs, and blaspheme our deities, despite the total lack of evidence to support them:

• Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, including
  the Federal Bureau of Investigation, have never found even one example of a “Satanic cult human sacrifice.” What they do occasionally find are budding psychopaths killing small animals in what a psychiatrist would call a “ritualistic” manner. As that link just cited puts it, “FBI expert K. J. Lanning defines a satanic murder as ‘one committed by two or more individuals who rationally plan the crime and whose primary motivation is to fulfill a prescribed satanic ritual calling for the murder.’ Using this definition he has been unable to identify even one documented satanic murder in the United States.”

• Similarly, the urban legends about “Satanic cults looking
  to kidnap blond blue-eyed children for sacrifice” (presumably
  by evil “non-Aryans”) reveal more about racism than
  crime in America because here, too, there is not a single
  real incident recorded by law enforcement agencies.

• All those stories of poisoned candy and razor blades in apples
  — which some Christian Fundamentalists would have
  us believe is how modern Witches and Druids now “sacrifice”
  kids — turn out to be more urban legends with zero law
  enforcement backing — see Curses! Broiled Again!: The Hottest Urban Legends Going, by noted folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand for details.

• Claims are made that “the ASPCA reports the evidence of animal mutilation and destruction is ten times more available on the week preceeding and the weekend following Halloween.I've been unable to get the ASPCA to back this up. Apparently, some pounds and animal control facilities may not adopt out black kittens to scary-looking teenagers just before Halloween, but the evidence on which they base these policies is unclear. It may just be another urban legend based on teenaged sociopaths killing animals in years past. See Wren Walker’s article on The Annual Halloween Scaredy Cat Ban for details.
  

-Read more at Halloween Errors and Lies

Anocht Oidhche Shamhna! Happy New Year!