Well, I hope you survived Halloween and the leftover candy blood-sugar spikes. Now bring on the Christmas decorations. (Please don’t!)
We already have massive overlapping of the major sports seasons. We’re now doing that with holiday marketing as well. Halloween is big in our family as both my spouse and I are of Celtic descent.
Halloween is derived from the Celtic pagan festival Samhain (pronounced “Sow wen”). Samhain means end of summer. It celebrates the harvest, and the transition to the coming darker winter season. It was also a liminal or threshold festival when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld blurred, making contact with the spirits more likely.
The souls of dead kin were thought to revisit their homes seeking hospitality, and a place was set at the table for them during a meal. Mumming and guising were also part of the festival, whereby people went door-to-door in costume reciting verses in exchange for food.
The old Scottish children’s prayer attributed to Robert Burns says: “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us.”
That about sums it all up.
My wife and I had a recent real experience with this after having our wood floors refinished. We didn’t know that there would be popping and cracking, bump in the night sounds from the refinishing job. It startled me enough to get up and go downstairs to investigate. I really think the refinishers should inform you about that.
We miss our now adult children most during Halloween and still reminisce about their early costumes and reactions. As a child, my daughter couldn’t decide whether to be a bunny or a witch. So, of course she was a bunny-witch. Try to imagine that costume.
My son, who is now a successful entrepreneur, showed his destiny early on. As I walked him around the neighborhood on his first trick-or-treating, he suddenly realized that all he had to do was ring the doorbell, say “trick or treat,” and people would give him candy. He came off the second house and said, “Dad, you go to that house, and I’ll go to this one,” thinking that he could increase efficiency and double production.
My artist wife has the greatest collection of Halloween figures in the Western world. These old-style figures are truly creepy and much better than today’s emphasis on cute or sexy. She would also put very scary dressed-up mannequins on the front porch and play creepy music. I watched from inside as little children would come halfway up our walk, turn and leave, clearly thinking it was not worth it. We saved more candy that way.
If you really want to experience Samhain visit Edinburgh, Scotland. Your visit doesn’t even need to be during Halloween. The city is medieval spooky even in the daytime. We went on every midnight ghosties tour we could find. They were effectively enhanced by a local guide reciting stories complete with that wonderful Scottish accent.
The two best were descending into the vaults that was the original city underneath current Edinburgh. Being there in total darkness with the realization that there was once an entire population living there was an unnerving experience.
The other was staying in our rented apartment overlooking the Greyfriars Bobby Kirkyard cemetery. This cemetery has well over 100,000 bodies buried in it.
Try sleeping with that thought in mind. Thank goodness they had not recently refinished their floors.
Jim Cross is a retired Fort Lewis College professor and basketball coach.
