About Halloween . . .
Unpopular opinion: Halloween is the worst holiday. It isn’t even celebrating anything.
Halloween is derived from an ancient Celtic tradition where people would dress up and dance around bonfires to ward off ghosts. I’m all for bonfires - but this pagan tradition unsettles me a little. I hate that people dress up as the things of nightmares. Why would you want to pretend to be something terrifying? Or on the flip side - as a skanky anything. Although, hat wasn’t as common where I’m from since it was usually snowing on Halloween so the costumes tended to be a touch warmer.
It just seems unsettling to me that people are so amped for a day that boasts haunted houses and scary movies. I do, however, love autumn themed decor - like pumpkins, gourds and colored leaves. I even like scarecrows, I am just not a fan of bloody hand prints on windows and electronic demons in the front yard. With enough real life horror in the world, why would we want to bring in more - even if it is just pretend?
Personally I would rather have fall festivals and visit pumpkin patches all month long. Even giving out candy to kiddos is fine with me. Those parts of the Halloween season are so good-natured and fun. I just can’t understand why a sane person would want to dress up as a murderous clown and scare the neighbors. I feel like having that sort of behavior normalizes it - even if it is for just one day a year.
Now I realize that Halloween was once believed to be the day of the year where the super natural world was the closest to ours and that terrifying masks and fires would protect them from these spirits, but it seems to me that they would be scaring the kind spirits away and not necessarily the evil ones. I can’t be sure, obviously, exactly what the beliefs were or how these festivals were supposed to protect them. It just seems to me that something scary (masks and fires), wouldn’t necessarily scare something that is by nature, frightening (evil spirits). Maybe I will have to read more about it to determine what the belief was and how this festivals were thought to work.
It is strange though, how interested we can be the supernatural world while also fearing it with such gumption that we vehemently hold to traditions to protect ourselves. I suppose we fear what we don’t know, and therefore it isn’t at all strange that we fear the supernatural while at the same time are drawn to it. And we are drawn to it - the success of horror books and films are quite the testimony to that (any Stephen King fans here?) I admit, I read The Shining more than once and the Discovery Channel has a show called A Haunting that I used to watch (in the day time) whenever I saw it was on. My favorite, though, is Aaron Mahnke’s podcast, Lore. He talks about all sorts of creepy stuff - and sometimes he debunks it with science which is nice.
Odd, I guess, that I will read creepy books but still have a problem with creepy Halloween traditions. Although, maybe that’s because I can close the book and leave the story trapped within the pages. I can’t control other people’s choice of costume nor their actions. I like to leave stories of hauntings as stories. It’s when real life people start to put on these masks and dance around as demons that I get freaked out. Perhaps I think the supernatural world is, possibly, just a little too close for comfort in those moments.
In any case - I would be happier with a Harvest Festival as a holiday rather than Halloween as it is. Feel free to disagree.