Informative Speech - Halloween

April Chabot
Bruce Hummer
COMM154-E04
Due: 11/12/14
Informative Speech Outline
Specific Purpose: To inform my audience about the History of Halloween and why it's a contradiction.
I. Introduction
A. Attention Getter - "A man must consider what a rich realm he abdicates when he becomes a conformist." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson
B. Introduce Topic - To simply do something because it's what everyone else is doing without knowing the reasons why they're doing it, is conformity. You might understand the term conformity when used as "sheeple" in the political world. Those who go with the growd, just because. Halloween and Religion seem like two natural opposites - good and evil brought to life.
C. Establish Credibility - In most things I'm a non-conformist. I trust no one and nothing without questioning and understading everything. I question everything even if it seems simple on the surface. Far too often I have found most things are not what they seem, and Religion and Holidays are no exception.
D. Preview Central Idea - The term Holiday was originally used to reference Holy Days that were celebrated and remembered with some form of ceremony or worship. Halloween, originally a day of rememberence for the recently deceased and their spirits that returned to earth on the eve of the new year, has become something celebrated by just about everyone, in many cultures, and across many religions, but most notibly in the US where it has become yet another commercialized event, causing people to spend money they might not otherwise spend, to eat food that offer no nutrition at all, and in excess at that, and to go against the number one safety measure your parents drilled into your heads - NEVER TAKE CANDY FROM STRANGERS!! This has become so acceptible in modern religious practices that it's been given a new name "Trick-Or-Trunk". This is an event sponsored by religious elders, held on church grounds, outside in the parking lot, out of the trunks of cars and more often than...