The jack-o-lantern in the mirror
Depending on your background or beliefs you may or may not love Halloween. You may not even like it. But like it or not it’s creeping around the corner, bringing parties, music, decorations, haunted houses, corn mazes and trick or treating. If you hate Halloween it’s probably because of the gore, the prurient costumes, the pagan vibes or the celebration of dark things. Much of the rancor toward the day comes from well-meaning christians who simply misunderstand the actual purposes of the day. Halloween, like any other entity, is simply the product of what people make of it.
Halloween’s origins go back to a Celtic holiday called Samhain, when it was believed this world and the spiritual world collided. The Celts would wear costumes and light bonfires to ward off any evil spirits crossing into our world. Jack-o-lanterns have a similar history that comes from the Irish, who would carve out gourds and turnips to ward off evil spirits. In the eighth century Pope Gregory III designated November 1st as All Saints’ Day to overshadow the pagan celebrations. The evening before became known as All Hallow’s Eve (which eventually was colloquialized into Halloween) and people over time adopted secular and folk traditions into the day, becoming the holiday we know today. The Mexican holiday Dia de Los Muertos, which falls on November 1st and 2nd, also added a heavier religious tone to the end of fall.
The gore, the mischief, the slutty costumes, the celebrations of evil, all of these things miss the mark. Halloween at its core should be a time of reflection on family, of respect for the dead and a celebration of the harvest in preparation for the winter. The grotesque things adopted by commercial America are not Halloween. In fact, they are the results of a society that loves to mutilate anything it can into money making, crowd pleasing filth.
Not that all modern traditions of Halloween are bad. Trick-or-treating, scary movies, costumes, corn mazes and haunted houses are fun and are a part of the season. But too often these things are polluted by over-the-top features designed to shock or stimulate. If you want a good barometer for what Halloween should feel like and represent, there are two things you should watch: “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and “Over the Garden Wall.” Whimsical and occasionally grim, these two films are Halloween personified: dark yet warm, eerie but pleasant, terrifying but funny.
If you think the holiday is too grotesque or not worth celebrating make some new traditions that focus more on the family, religious or more fun personality of the day. Who knows, maybe you’ll start something new. For me, being LDS but born on Halloween, I am nowhere near stopping the celebrations. But I do plan on adding to them. This year I plan on doing some genealogy and family history work before I dress up, to honor the dead who share my blood.
In the end, the meaning behind any day comes from those who celebrate it. So go ahead and carve your jack-o-lantern however you please, or don’t carve one at all, but don’t go and burn the 31st at the stake.
— Mike Burnham
@mikeburnham31
mikeburnham3@gmail.com