Posts Tagged ‘Halloween’
Halloween Musings
Folks, as I write this, it’s two days until Halloween. Three days until All Soul’s Day. And the official Day of the Dead ceremonies go from October 31 to November 2, 2022.
As this is a time where we’re not quite to winter, yet it’s colder more days than not, there’s an awful lot of personal reflection going on. (I don’t think I’m alone in this.) What have we done this year? What would our loved ones on the Other Side be proud of, and maybe not-so-proud of?
When I was young, I was like everyone else. I wore cute costumes (I think I went one year as a pink fairy; Mom and Grandma helped me make a “wand” with aluminum foil that looked a bit like a Star of David), went out to get Halloween candy, and possibly went to a few minor parties. (They were all very tame parties. A “lock-in” at the local Aladdin’s Castle, a place to play a ton of video games, was one of them. Another was at a good male friend’s house; I knew he was gay, but we didn’t talk about it then, and I had a huge crush on him anyway.)
As I got older, I read a great deal about the significance of Halloween. It started out as Hallowe’en — as in, the evening before All Soul’s Day. (All Hallow’s Eve got contracted to Hallowe’en.) It was a Christian religious observance that happened around the same time as Pagan Samhain (“Sow’en” is the pronunciation), and it’s possible — I think likely — that the early Christian church kept the day and most of its rituals in order to help people convert without having to “convert” people by taking up arms against them.
Of course, Samhain this year is on October 31. (Many years, it coincides. But not always, to the best of my recollection.) It is celebrated from dusk to the dawn of November 1. It is thought by many, particularly those in the NeoPagan community, that Samhain is when the veils between this world and the next are the thinnest. (Note the similarity with the Day of the Dead celebrations. I’m sure it’s not accidental.)
For me, as a NeoPagan, what I do is very similar to what I did as a Catholic, earlier in life: I light a candle, and think about my loved ones. I have several that I think about in addition to my beloved husband, Michael…I think a lot about Grandma, great-grandma on my father’s side (called “Aiti”), my uncle Carl and aunt Laurice, my best friend Jeff Wilson, my good friend Larry (dead for over thirty years, now, via suicide, but not forgotten), and more.
If I can find it, I will buy a Mountain Dew (diet, even though that’s not what my husband drank; he drank the regular stuff, thank you very many, and he preferred Code Red or the orange Livewire if he could find them), and sip it slowly. (I don’t know what foods would appeal that much to any of my relatives or to Jeff, but I know for a fact that Mountain Dew and a few specific candy bars and such are what Michael would like, if he could taste them through me.)
But most of all, it’s about reflection. What have I done? What can I still do? Would my loved ones approve of what I’ve done or what I’ve at least tried to do?
So, yeah. It’s not all about the candy and the costume parties for me. Not anymore.
What are you planning to do this year for your Halloween/Samhain/Day of the Dead festivities? Let me know in the comments…and if it’s that you’re going to a costume party, that’s good (so long as I don’t have to go!)
One Curmudgeon’s Opinion (a Halloween PSA)
It’s Saturday, October 31, 2015…All Hallow’s Eve, or as we Americanos call it, Halloween (with or without the apostrophe between the two “e’s,” my recalcitrant Editor Voice insists I point out). We in the United States tend to think of Halloween as an excuse for dressing up, revelry, eating a lot of candy, and (if you’re over 21) drinking a whole lot.
In other words, it’s all but a bacchanalia for adults. (Kids, mind you, are engaging in much more sedate enjoyment — they dress up, their parents make much of them, they get immortalized in pictures that will embarrass them for the rest of their lives, and then they take their candy-booty home.)
Was Halloween always like this? No, it was not.
“But, Barb,” I can hear you saying. “In my lifetime, it’s always been this way!”
Ah, but before your lifetime, things were different. And centuries ago in the Western World, Halloween was much different.
Why? Well, holidays, like words, elide over time. So a holy time, where spirits once were said to walk — good ones, mostly, but beware of the bad ones! — is subsumed into revelry and near-bacchanalia.
This annoys me, mostly because I figure if you’re going to have a bacchanalia, you should admit it to yourself and be done with it.
But the commercialization of Halloween annoys me even worse.
Look. I like candy. I even like to dress up — though for me, dressing up mostly means I wear concert black attire when playing my instruments — and have been known to throw a good party, complete with liquid refreshment and plenty of vittles.
But I don’t like it that every advertisement you see, starting in midsummer, is for candy. You have to stock up for Halloween, you see, or it’s bad for the kidlets. Because heaven forfend, we cannot possibly allow those kids to go out and not get candy on the one day of the year they’re allowed to ask for it from strangers…that would be inhuman!
In other words (in case you missed the sarcasm), I have a problem with every advertiser on the planet trying to make me out to be a bad person if I don’t buy a humongous stockpile of candy to give out to the kidlets on Halloween.
Anyway, I tend to observe Halloween in the older form — I think about my deceased loved ones, wonder if they can indeed break the walls between the worlds, and hope they’re doing well (as I believe the soul is eternal, they must be alive somewhere in the cosmos).
But if you observe Halloween in the newer form, please do me a favor: Don’t drink and drive.
In fact, do me two favors: Don’t text and drive, either. (Especially don’t drive drunk and try to text; that is a recipe for disaster if I’ve ever heard one.)
In other words — enjoy yourself, but be safe. And watch out for the kidlets during trick-or-treat time.
(This concludes today’s Halloween public service announcement.)
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As for a CHANGING FACES update: I am about three-quarters of the way done with my work. I will continue to work on it, and hope to have it in to my publisher in another week or two. (I feel like I’m wrestling alligators — big ones — but maybe the longer I go, the better I’ll become at alligator wrestling. Such is my hope, anyway…)
Oh, and as for book reviews? I’m hoping to review a couple of books next week. I may actually review them first here at my own blog, and later review over at SBR…we’ll see. (Books in the queue include N.N. Light’s PRINCESS OF THE LIGHT and PLANTING THE SEEDS OF LOVE and Rysa Walker’s TIME’S DIVIDE and TIME’S MIRROR, plus several books by E. Ayers.)
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