Why Halloween is a Lawyer Holiday

WASHINGTON - Oct. 27, 2024 - PRLog -- Halloween is so very different from other popular holidays, and in many ways a kind of celebration of lawyers and what they do, suggests public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa all involve the giving of gifts to loved ones, and stress peace on Earth.  Easter celebrates the rebirth of spring, and playful childish fantasies about rabbits and chicks.  And Thanksgiving reminds us how wonderful it is that different races and cultures can cooperate and celebrate together.

But in stark and dramatic contrast, Halloween venerates if not worships the dead and the undead: witches symbolized by ancient crones who eat children, zombies who rise from moldering graves to feast on all of us, and especially vampires who suck out our blood while keeping us alive as long as possible in order to keep satisfying their greed.

But many people with experiences dealing with lawyers would argue that this description of bloodsucking vampires applies equally well - or perhaps even better - to many members of the legal profession, suggests Banzhaf, perhaps only partly tongue in cheek.

For example, on Halloween night, children dress up in all manner of frightening disguises and go to homes demanding "TRICK OR TREAT."

In other words, we begin teaching them at a very early age to use deceit, deception, trickery, and cunning, as well as threats, fear, coercion, intimidation, and extortion, to take what they want from others.

Yes, that's how, some might say, we teach our children at an early age how to act just like many lawyers who also use threatening and often misleading lawyers' demand letters, and threats of terrible but unlikely lawsuits, etc. to extract money from their helpless victims.

By the way, the AboveTheLaw (https://abovethelaw.com/) website once suggested: "Isn't just being a lawyer scary enough?"  Another suggestion on the same lawyer website reported: "Career Alternatives for Attorneys: Vampire?"

http://banzhaf.net/   jbanzhaf3ATgmail.com   @profbanzhaf