Halloween

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I'm fond of Christmas, too, but in more of a consumerist, product-of-pop-culture-society sort of way because who doesn't love presents, the Charlie Brown Christmas Special and 31 days of unbridled gluttony? (I'd go on a tangent here, but I'll save it for December) Christmas, I am not entirely ashamed to say, is not a holiday I celebrate for its significance. Given my typical reaction on the atypical occasions that my mom has suggested, "We should go to midnight mass" -- shrinking back in mock horror and scoffing, distastefully, "Church?!" -- it's no surprise that Halloween is my favorite holiday.

The truth is, it's mostly thanks to commercialization and the omnipresent church that Halloween is perceived as being at the opposite end of the holiday spectrum. In some narrow minds it's referred to as the Devil's holiday because it "celebrates" and "flaunts" Satanic themes. (I actually heard this at a Sunday youth group service I attended in high school, right after... "God, doesn't care if you get bad grades.") Basically, if you look back at the history of Halloween, the Christian church tried to exert its power early on and now is bitter because it obviously failed.

Okay, here's a Reader's Digest version:

Halloween was originally a Celtic Pagan holiday that often was referred to as Celtic New Year. It started as a festival called Samhain which celebrated the end of the harvest season (the Light Half of the Year) and the beginning of winter (the Dark Half of the Year). Because it was "between" seasons, it was considered a magical day when the veil between the worlds was lifted and the dead walked among the living. This was a time when the dead were honored as living spirits of loved ancestors and guardians of wisdom. The Druids (Celtic priests) would attempt to make contact with the spirits of the departed because they were considered sources of guidance and inspiration, rather than as sources of dread. Then when Christianity spread, the church was unable to get the people to stop celebrating this holiday. So, in order to make the celebration "church sanctioned," two pope dudes decided to move their celebration of good, dead people -- the Christian Feast of "All Saint's Day" -- from May 13th to November 1st. Back in that time days were measured as starting at sunset, thus Samhain became All Hallow's Even (hallowed = holy = saint) and soon "Halloween."

In some ways, Halloween is not so different from Christmas (besides the whole birth of a savior bit, Christmas is another Christian holiday all tangled up with Pagan tradition, by the way). It's got the unbridled gluttony and its own Charlie Brown special (The Great Pumpkin, if you've been living under a rock). No presents, but I think Halloween offers a much more worthwhile gift: the opportunity to be whoever I choose for a day. I'm obviously not the only one that loves Halloween for this reason. It's become an annual excuse for all us sexually repressed females to get in touch with our inner trash-tastic whore. Other than 8th grade -- when Natalie and I eschewed the norm of using "slutty" as an adjective to a generic profession and literally went as SLUTS (despite our best efforts we looked less like hookers and more like Fly Girls) -- I've always been into more ethereally pretty mythical/magical personas. Fairy, witch, Greek goddess, vampire...

Which brings me to the main reason why I love Halloween: I believe in magic.

And, literally, magic is in my blood. My family has a moderate history of experience with phenomena. Things like some great-great-great-great etc uncle being able to stop horses in their tracks (yeah, that far back) or make them charge off using his mind. And another ancestor on her deathbed seeing a black cat that no one else could see right before she passed. And my grandmother's prophetic dreams of a litter of kittens that they actually found hidden in a shed in the backyard and of a plane crash that was announced on the news the next day. And my grandfather, whose best friend appeared to him at his mechanic shop at the exact moment he was pronounced dead in a hospital across town. Given that my grandparents are two of the most staid, traditional survived-the-depression Germans you'll ever meet, the fact that they tell these stories with amused reverence and believe in their significance is pretty cool.

As for me, I've always had a strong affinity for the occult, the idea of a supernatural world beyond our own. I believe in reincarnation, psychic abilities, and obviously, inexplicable phenomena... That's why I've never been a fan of horror movies. Slasher flicks, eh, I just think they're stupid and unnecessary. Movies like Poltergeist, The Shining, The Exorcist... they scare the crap out of me, because I believe in their possibility. By the same token, I believe that Halloween is a day for celebrating the possibility of another world existing alongside our own. There's never been a Halloween morning when I haven't stepped outside with a feeling of giddy anticipation. It sounds crazy, but I always can feel a stirring in the air and it puts a swagger in my step. It's like, I finally feel that I'm part of something bigger, something beyond and my part is just as important as everyone else's. It feels like a celebration day for MY people. Magical people. People who believe that anything is possible.

Who knows, maybe I was a Druid in a past life?