Another Halloween has come and gone.
Six words, which for me carry a certain weight of sadness. I love Halloween, and I love the whole two month build up to it. And despite the fact that November is, in itself, a peculiar month regarding breaking up the routine, and Christmas is pounding on the door like the masked stalkers I've been spending so much time with lately, it's sad to say goodbye to the ghouls and vampires.
Why is that? What makes it so special? To try to answer that, let me relive the season in one fell blog and see what happens
1. Pumpkin Carving
It's the ultimate, yet surprisingly understated, Halloween tradition; putting a face on the holiday's soul. Does anybody else feel like Michael Myers when you plunge that knife into the crown of that faceless vegetable (or fruit, I can never keep that straight). Word is that the tradition of pumpkin carving originated as a means of warding off evil spirits during this particularly unboundaried time of spiritualness. Perhaps that was once the case, but today the jack o'lantern serves the opposite purpose, to welcome the very denizen's of death into one's home.
2. The Television Specials
It's with that sentiment I turn my attention to Linus, and his perpetually wires-crossed comprehension of holiday legacy. His faith in the unseen is unshakeable, and while his insistence that the Great Pumpkin leaves presents for good children in the most sincere pumpkin patches may venture one step into selfishness, it's ultimately witnessing his belief incarnate which drives him forward. Comparatively, The Simpsons has spent the better part of four decades serving up their annual non-canon tales to the delight and/or disgust (and/or discouragement) of even the fans who abandoned the show years ago. It's not easy to do horror/comedy, much less great horror/comedy, but you have to respect the show for continuing to try. And there's always the classic episodes where they really hit it out of the park.
3. The Decorations
Akin to the pumpkin carving ritual, neighbors compete for the singular honor of being the coolest house on the block. Inflatable witches mark the lawns that are paradoxically safe spaces to set foot on to do some controlled exploration. We live in an awful world, by the way. When I was growing up, children would play on everybody's lawn until the owner said something to us. Today, there's a real fear of being shot at, because we live in an awful world where this doesn't feel out of the question anymore. Halloween decorations are like the polar opposite of Passover; a welcome signal to the living that for at least one month it's okay to linger for a little while, and admire.
4. Trick or Treating
Yeah, this is what it's been building up to, right? Free stuff. Do you ever go trick or treating as a teen or an adult? There's a whole different layer to the why behind the ritual when candy isn't your ultimate goal. Sometimes it's about nothing more than to drop in on neighbors, who you've never dreamed of speaking to, just to say hello, and how great the shark ornament looks. And it's here that the theme of the season really makes itself evident, for the walk that you take this night is one of connection. Even as simple as connecting the dots of illuminated porch lights creates a kind of picture from the sky that tells of a journey that took place. One that could only have happened on this special night. I love Halloween because it brings out the best in us. How strange that it includes depictions of death, but perhaps it's our own mortality that we're celebrating.
5. Halloween Parties/Ghost Stories
It's not the season of connection without facing down that little monster known as social interaction. And no party is complete without a decent tale of depravity. Usually we don't tell our own stories anymore so much as throw on a horror film, but the spirit is inherent in either one. When you see your co-workers again the first question is always going to be "How was your Halloween?" I hate most variations on this question; how my Labor Day, my weekend, my depression-laden life in general is, but I love being able to say with pride "I got together with friends and we watched Horror Film X". The moment I turn into an extrovert is the surest sign that a magic spell has been cast somewhere.
6. Haunted Houses
I'm of the opinion that to really sell the product, to REALLY stand hand in hand with the Whos and sing welcome to Halloween, a blood sacrifice is required. Manifested not in literal blood, but in the time and money spent in venturing away from self-comforts and into one or more of those walk-through attractions where you are the target of trap doors, suspended skeletons, chainsaws, and the occasional silent pursuer on stilts. It's an odd quirk of human nature to be attracted to things that scare us; I don't know if this is a concept recognized anywhere else in the Animal Kingdom. I don't particularly enjoy being afraid, but I love these attractions. Maybe because by the time I've exited the series of Jigsaw traps I feel like a survivor. It's a nice and much needed release.
7. Seances
The word on the street is that seances are popular on Halloween because the barrier between the living and the dead is at its thinnest. I myself have never done a seance so I can't speak to the scientific validity of the claim, but in the spirit of spirits let's take it at face value. Why do we want to talk to the dead? Is it because we attest messages from the dead with a certain degree of importance that we don't feel towards the living? If so, why? Perhaps it's because we're not just contacting the dead, but the eternal. If the dead talk, then there's a comforting reminder that something in us will outlast our own death.
In the end, it's probably not one simple thing that gives Halloween its cultural identity, but a collection of things. It's fun, certainly, to throw on a M3GAN dress and do the dance, or join a Thriller flash mob. But for me it's about those connections to to others in a uniquely macabre manner that gives the fun its humor and its soul. People long to become part of something larger than themselves, and it's likely that in those connections we have a taste of touching the divine. And we all want experiences. Halloween provides all of these things. Maybe I'm reading way too much into a simple festival at the turning of the leaves. Or maybe the shared experience with souls on this side or the other is what truly grants us some much needed solace from feeling alone.
Happy Halloween everyone.
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