Halloween is supposed to be scary but is it really?
Our dearly departed loved ones come back to visit us and we have a picnic in the park, or the cemetery as the case may be, with all kinds of tasty treats.
Atleast that’s the tradition around here, the Mexican style Day of the Dead. There are altars set up around town with calaveras (skulls) which sounds very close to calabaza (pumpkin). Hmm, is that a thing? Anyways, Halloween. The altars around town are really art pieces but everyone makes their own altar at home. It’s kinda like folkcraft.
The tradition for Halloween goes all the way back to the Druids in the oak forests of England 2,000 years ago. They would light bonfires and dance around in animal costumes to commemorate the end of the harvest, the end of summer and the beginning of winter. It was a time, they believed, when the spirit of death came to earth (winter) and the boundary between this world and the next was blurred. The dead also could find their way back to earth during this time so they danced around in strange, weird costumes to scare them away.
But what’s so scary about your dead ancestors? Wouldn’t you like to talk to uncle Elmer once again? Wouldn’t you like to know more about your grandmother’s early childhood? Wouldn’t you like to know who your great great great great great great grandmother was? That would be so interesting.
The Christians christened it All Saints’ Day, and the night before - All Hallows' Eve (Halloween). It was a time to celebrate the saints and the martyrs who had left this earthly plane, and also to pray for the recent dearly departed who weren’t saints so that they might find their way to heaven. That could be scary, wandering around the cosmos looking for heaven and depending on the erstwhile but inconsistent prayers of your living relatives back on earth to guide you.
What’s scary to me is living in a world where people are willing to trash a perfectly good country, hell a perfectly good earth, and for no good reason, except for downright bull-headed selfish and short sighted ignorance. That’s scary.
‘Burnin’ down the house’ as the Talking Heads put it. Maybe people just want to start over.
I feel that. I think people want to go back to a simpler life but maybe they don’t know how. Maybe not having so many things but with stroger family and tribal connections. Tribal - meaning any kind of small community where people know each other, share, collaborate and have adventures.
Having adventures and telling stories around the campfire was something our ancestors did almost every day for hundreds of thousands of years. We are built for it, biologically, thru the process of evolution, we’re designed to hunt and gather, explore and discover, pursue and kill, collaborate and have adventures.
These days we have to schedule our adventure around 2 weeks in August. It’s called a vacation. We have no adventure in our days, nothing to fulfill our need for a thrilling experience, nothing to activate our deepest instincts, our bravest heart, our cleverest mind like they had back in the day, our ancient hunter gatherer ancestors.
Well we’ve got capitalism. That’s thrilling to become a millionaire. Then you can have stuff.
But anyways, I really feel that if they came back, some of them would have some really good wisdom to share with us. Even though it’s a different era from when your great great great great great great grandmother lived, there is wisdom that is timeless and belongs to all humanity. I would like to hear that wisdom.
I guess Halloween got its spookiness from people being scared of their ancient ancestors, or the fear that some evil ghost might come across and kidnap them, drag them back to the land of the dead. Seems silly and superstitious to us in this day and age but for them, in their pre-scientific world, it was real. Hell was at the center of the earth and heaven was above the clouds.
Now it’s just play acting. We dress up but we know that the dead don’t really cross over. That’s crazy.
I used to really get into Halloween. I would rig up a surprise for the trick or treaters so they would get a thrill.
My basic strategy was to tie a string to a particular branch in the tree that overlooks my front porch. Then, from inside the house, I would watch them approach and just as they set foot on the first step I would yank the string and the branch would rustle above their head. The two or three year olds just turned around and ran. Three to five year olds, stopped and thought about it, used some objective logic, ‘Wait a minute man, there can’t be tigers here, we’re in the town.”
Oh yeah, at the same time I would let out a tremendous roar amplified and distorted by a small device I had purchased for the occasion. The six and seven year olds walked right past it, like ‘Yeah nice trick but we’re not scared. Where’s the candy’.
My house was somewhat of a legend in the neighborhood in those days. But I lost interest in the holidays. Most of them have been transformed into an opportunity for retail sales and buying things you don’t need.
I’ll go black, shut down the house and go for a bike ride. If spirits from another world can come and visit us here, then maybe we can go there and visit them. I’ll think about that on my ride tonight, whizzing thru the downtown, cutting thru the construction zone, checking out the street people hanging out in the park. I’ll think about that sitting at the street cafe on Houston, looking across the bridge at the buildings lined up in a row, all lit up.
Music: All India Radio & Josh Roydhouse - Realm from 23:35
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Halloween! Boo!