Halloween

This is the beginning of the Holiday Season. (Note caps.) The tradition of opening the Season is about as old as marketing, that inexact science that helps sales drive culture. The Holiday Season was once Thanksgiving Day through New Years' Day; Halloween was hooked on, around 1980, to prolong the excitement. I don't mind because I like the Holiday Season.

There is an automatic tension between the positive and negative values of using holidays to drive commerce. The negative is obvious, and maybe even cliche: events with religious basis spoiled by the urge to celebrate by purchasing junk. Turning the temple into a money changing site. One can see the Lords of finance storming through the temples, overturning altars and destroying liturgical pieces, angrily demanding the priests "shall not turn my money's house into a den of faith!" The negative makes perfect sense.

The easy response is a positive, that every culture can ascribe its values on anything. What's wrong with Christmas carols by Percy Faith? (Sure brings me closer to the true meaning of Christmas.) Would you rather stand in church all day as they did in the 8th century? Nevertheless, we become patsies for retailers, spurred to buy stuff so our kids and gods will love us. The positive is the easiest response because it's true, as true as the negative.

Can they fuse somehow? Can they run parallel, with bridges crossing the vacuum between?

That's the idea behind Leading Opinion. To open up the stinky clam. You know, those unanswerable questions that make the human condition both interesting and maddening. Like why Alex Rodriguez went to the Yankees in the first place, only to scrap them—and likely return? Why can't he just go to Detroit and start a 21st-century dynasty there?

Because that's what I want. Of course, there are positives and negatives in what I want...