Happy Halloween - Don't forget the Dead

There are a few heralds to Autumn – the geese fly south in graceful Vs across the afternoon sky, the leaves turn glorious shades of red, yellow and orange, the grass is crunchy with frost in the morning and suddenly the smell of cloves or wood smoke becomes intoxicating.  In more mundane terms, it means that Pumpkin Lattes at Dunkin Donuts go back on the menu, apple cider is available at your favorite orchard and Christmas tree displays sprout with riotous abandon in every commercial nook and cranny.

Christmas trees … when the air conditioners were humming just a few short week ago.

There has been a growing outcry about the commercialization of the major holidays, how they are losing so much traditional and spiritual significance because we’ve placed such emphasis on the material aspect of them.  Yet every year is the same, and it feels like there is little done to stem the tide.  We will spend the next few months choking to death on advertisements meant to lure our children into wanting things, instead of wanting time.  Time with family, time with friends, time with loved ones - for no other purpose than celebrating a part of the great cycle that turns slowly on its wheel until it stops for each of us, and then those chances are gone.

Halloween is no different.

Halloween is suffering the same slow death secondary to commercial gluttony.  Please do not get me wrong on this, I absolutely love the fact that it has risen in popularity.  That for many people it is their hands-down favorite holiday, that they’ve turned to this to expend their energy for their own personal joy.  I know that that will mean that this holiday will retain significance for you and your family.  It will be tied in your memory to good things.  But this shift in culture always comes at a price and with each year I see some of the beauty inherent to Halloween slip away, buried under an avalanche of brightly wrapped candy and a deluge of horror icons.

All Hallow’s Eve represents a thinning of the veil between worlds, it has been viewed for centuries as a brief span of time when there is an overlap between the spirits and living – but it is more than that.  It is the Celtic New Year, it’s correlation with death is only in part due to the deceased and the remainder is symbolic for the death of another year.  It is a holdover when agriculture dictated the survival of a people.  The earth grows cold and sleeps until spring, the growing cycle is over.  The harvest begins along the culling of the livestock to support a people through the long cold dark.  It is thanking the land and praying for a future.  It is a time to put away the negative from your year and prepare to move forward, clean and ready for new life to come again in the spring.  You cannot embrace Life and ignore Death, they are what defines each other.

Halloween represents a time to acknowledge and honor your dead – your ancestors, your loved ones who are either newly or long-departed.  The grandmother who taught you to sew, your father and his strength, your friend for the love they gave you while they were here.  Because it is in remembering that we grant them immortality, that we incorporate what they were into what we are and what we want our children to become.

Most of all the “traditions” you see or hear about on Halloween derive from this concept, to remember the dead.  The costumes, the pranks, the gifts of treats, apples, pumpkins, they are all meant to tie us back to those that came before.  To protect us from those who would wish us ill and grant for us a safe winter.  Take a look at how the UK still celebrates Halloween, spectacular bonfires and family traditions handed down for generations – they look to us and shake their heads.

In all the spectacular orange glitter, so much of that gets lost.  The irony is that there are still many Christian families who view Halloween as a Pagan holiday and choose not to celebrate or participate in any way.  That is their right and I might agree, except that the average Halloween in the U.S. it is not afforded any spiritual significance and is thus more of a cultural holiday than a religious one.  So they are protesting something without substance.

It is supposed to be fun, and spooky and a night marked with laughter and shrieks of fear and delight.  It is a dark, delicious celebration of life and death.  It is not just about how much candy one will get, or who has the best decorations.  There is a layer beneath the masks and candlelight that I would hate to see lost forever.

I’m not trying to be a great crusader or change anyone’s mind about anything.  Celebrate however you see fit, because in celebrating at least the day is marked and you get enjoyment out of it – this is often more than enough.  Make your own traditions, ones that will carry to your friends and family and give you your own immortality some day.

But perhaps at some point, when you hear the happy laughter of children scurrying from door to door, or that tendril of wood smoke and dead leaves reaches your indrawn breath, you can take just a minute to acknowledge the lives that came before you.  The mélange of history and souls that resulted in who you are today – just acknowledge that some of those souls may still be around you.  In fact they likely are this night.

After all … it is Halloween.