Halloween

Halloween, or the evening before All Hallows, has been a tradition in western culture that goes all the way back to the Celts almost 2,000 years ago even though the name was not used until about the 16th Century. It was believed that the evening before All Saints Day (All Hallows) on November 1st, the spirits of the deceased, both good and bad, were allowed out for one “merry romp” in the real world before sunrise on November 1st. Probably one of the most inventive depictions of this yearly event is the animated segment, “Night on Bald Mountain,” from Walt Disney’s 1940 movie, Fantasia.

Souling, or the carving and lighting of a hollowed out turnip in commemoration of deceased loved ones, is maintained in the tradition of carving out pumpkins, far more plentiful in the New World. (Thank God! Could you imagine hollowing out a turnip today? Especially with all that wax!)

Family members wanting to attract the souls of their loved ones, while frightening away the evil spirits that were also on the loose, would dress in costume and hang out in front of homes, collecting food from passersby for their efforts. Bonfires lit in the night, once used for the offering of animal bones to satisfy these spirits, lent their colors of orange and black to the holiday. I guess the inclusion of witches, werewolves, black cats, ghosts, goblins, vampires and all manner of bats, were added later.

I looked over poetry about the celebration of Halloween and was not particularly inspired. It seems that holidays just don’t inspire poetry beyond the banal and predictable. Maybe it’s the orthodoxy of our own traditions that cause us to look at holidays in this way. Particularly this holiday. For our own fears are rarely inhabited by stereotypic characters of witches, werewolves, black cats, ghosts, goblins and vampires. Our own fears are usually far more terrifying. And if there are ghosts, they are the ghosts of lost love, of people we have known and loved. Or hated now with guilt. And our vampires suck our blood more metaphorically through our bank accounts than Count Vlad the Impaler ever did. Or maybe it’s because the type of Halloween demons we envision on this holiday are more fun to be scared of, like a ride in an amusement park, when they are not rooted in our deepest of fears. Who knows?

Halloween has become more the social ritual of custom than the religious belief rooted in life and death, good and evil, innocence and guilt. If it still were, what fun would that be?