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Too Scary for Halloween
There's no fun in pretending to be scared this Halloween. There are apparently real witches in Wasilla, Alaska that need to be cast out. Alan Greenspan looks like the Night of the Living Dead as he testifies before Congress. If this financial crisis continues unabated until Christmas, he may acquire chains to drag behind him like Marley's ghost in A Christmas Carol. Vampires on Wall Street have drained the blood of the American financial system and when people open their retirement fund statements, they have been known to scream like the next batch of victims in Saw V.
Candy apples, fake cobwebs and pumpkins carved with frightening faces can't compete. This year, it's not about the candy corn.
This is a good time to remember the origins of Halloween and its deep symbolism of the thin boundary between life and death, a boundary that becomes almost permeable as the days darken and become colder. This was certainly the Celtic view. The Celts are credited with inventing Halloween. They believed that on October 31, the boundary between the dead and the living actually dissolved. The dead then became dangerous for the living; they could cause sickness or damaged crops. In a modern idiom, they could perhaps continue to wreak havoc on financial markets and cause credit to stay frozen.
Christians adapted this ritual, as they did with so much of ancient pagan culture, and made it into "All Hallows' Even," the night before "All Hallows Day" or All Saints Day. All Saints Day is a celebration of all those who, in the Christian tradition, whether known or unknown, were exceptionally blessed in their lives. All Souls Day, traditionally the next day, remembers all the departed. The life/death theme is continued, but in a religious context the departed saints are more important than the threat from the dead.
The shortened "Halloween" has become far more a cultural than a religious holiday in the U.S.; it is a time for dressing up and acting out and pretending to either placate the spirits of the dead or scare them away. Hollywood does its share with blood and gore and digital ghouls. But mostly Halloween is for kids, and it's usually about getting candy.
But this year, the boundary between employed and unemployed, homeowner and homeless, and secure and panicked about retirement is too thin. It is no exaggeration to see the financial losses as the reminder that the line between life and death can be razor thin.
Like the Celts, we need to light some bonfires and drive away the shadows. We need to prepare for the long winter to come and not presume the light and the warmth will return any time soon. But we also need to celebrate the harvest we do have and the fruits of all our labors that still endure. We need to hold tight to family and not give in to the fear and the shadows.
Happy Halloween.
By
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
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October 27, 2008; 7:43 PM ET
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Posted by: mokey2 | October 30, 2008 3:55 PM
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Always loved Halloween. My favorite holiday. It's been so disneyfied, but when i was a kid on Halloween eve I couldn't sleep for the spirits in the room. It jsut seemed more beautiful and sad than scary.
Posted by: sparrow4 | October 30, 2008 1:25 PM
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I'm not scared.
The boundaries between employed and unemployed, etc., have always been thin. None of this is new. I've been job-hunting when the newspaper had 2 pages of want ads and when the paper had 22 pages of want ads. Times change and that's life, you keep moving forward until something comes along and kills you - hopefully old age :-)
I'm making jack-o-lanterns tonight and taking my kids trick-or-treating tomorrow evening and it's going to be great, whether you're busy scare-mongering in the paper or not.
Posted by: ZZim | October 30, 2008 12:42 PM
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This was a nice article. It's sorta funny how when the real *boogeymen* come out of hiding and trash our country that the stuff of regular Halloween seems not so bad. :)
As a Pagan might say, Blessed be this Samhain. :)