Thread: The Need for Halloween

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The saying goes that if you aren't scared, you aren't paying attention.

Paying attention can lead to some terrifying revelations, make no mistake. Whether you worry for your family, your friends, your nation or your species, there are hundreds of potential horrors threatening the daily grind of our lives.
Pick a predicament;
the economy, medical care, war and international tension, terrorism, food and drugs, the climate and the enviroment, corporate control, the governance of your nation, the governance of all those other nations, the morality of society, the mortality of man, the future of your children, the opinion of your friends...

The phobias that trouble our lives are endless, and endlessly profitable to many.

Lots of organizations and business interests are happy to fling fear in our faces, so that we buy, we invest, we join, we vote and we donate. Commercials establish the lack of something in out lives, magnify the danger of that lack and offer salvation in the form of a product, a membership card or a warranty.

We spend most of our lives worried.
Concerned.
Fearful.

So for one night of the year, we laugh it off.
We tromp though faux graveyards guarded by foam tombstones.
We wear the clothes of the damned and giggle at the dread they represent.
We mock the devil.
We grin back at the reaper.
We revel in shadow and mystery, turning night and darkness into a celebration.
We joke about our mortality with ghostly sheets, weathered skulls and ragged coffins.
We tame our bestial inclinations with furry, fanged masks and rubber weapons dripping painted blood.

We give ourselves a break.

We let go of the crippling fears of everyday life, just for a moment.

We take an annual breather, a respite from anxiety, to taste candy and kettle corn.

We relax and smell the chimney-scented air, listen to the crackling leaves and drink deep of apple cider content in this one night of ease, of laughter and shouts and squealing kids.

We hold a grand funeral for the warmer months by abusing and bullying our phobias, pushing our fears around for a change, and seeing how much they like it.

It is an evil thing to allow fear to dictate our lives, and a good thing, a healthy thing, to free ourselves from it, even if only on the thirty-first of October.

This isn't a practical soundbite
It doesn't work as a bumper-sticker.
But if any doubt the value of Halloween, or falsely describe it as wicked, this is the answer they will receive - that Halloween is fear conquered, not coddled.

Well said!!

Lovely and I agree.

Very nice

very well stated

You make a good point, Spats

Wonderfull!
I have a very strange life going by your assesment of dailey worriments. I have my haunted house open every night of the year and have been doing such for these last 23 years! I laugh all the time, making fun of the dire predicaments out there breathing heavilly in the dark at the top of the stairs for each of us.
I don't use gore, blood, Hollywood monsters and really don't like the possibility that whatever I did or say could install a new phobia into any other person's pyscheeeEEEEE!
Gain their attention, engage their minds with unusual discussion set them up for the "scare", then they laugh because what got them is so silly or simple, cheap...
Time to stop! More people are here now!

Thanks, gang.

I hope I didn't come across as self-righteous, I'm just trying to find a way to summarize what Halloween is these days.

So many people see the horror, the death imagery, the gore and the supernatural and they leap to the conclusion that it's being venerated.
They don't seem to make the connection that we're reducing our real, everyday fears to a caricature, an entertaining joke.
I'm still trying to figure out how to effectively commicate that, and you guys strike me as the best sounding board for the issue.

I think this sort of discussion would go a long way toward encouraging a celebration I consider psychologically healthy.

Perfect, perfect, perfect!!!!

Very well said indeed, you sound like a college professor.