Howl Ween
If you’re a kid in North America, one of the highlights of the year is Howl Ween, a festival celebrated on October 31 in which your parents go to insane lengths and expense to dress you up in preposterous costumes and send you out into the neighbourhood to collect loot. At the same time, your parents have also made preparations for your colleagues to arrive at their door to receive copious amounts of sugar-laden goodies calculated to add pounds to their girth and cavities to their teeth.
Hallowe’en is actually Holy Evening, the night before November 1, All Saints’ Day in the “Christian Calendar”. The notion in ancient mythology is that all of the ghosts and goblins (whatever goblins may be) would come out and frolic the night before the reverencing of all of the saints. But truth be told, in modern times we’ve kind of lost track of all that mythology. What we’re left with is thousands of Asian kids toiling in sweatshops to bang out chintzy plastic costumes so that North American kids can go from door to door to get too many sugary treats. I guess that’s a win-win for somebody.
But cynicism aside, let’s acknowledge the importance of ritual, even silly ritual, in our lives.
Ritual marks the passing of seasons. Ritual allows us to celebrate solidarity with our own kind. Ritual speaks to us of an acknowledgment of the unreal as a symbol of deeper meanings. We need ritual.
So as the ghosts and goblins and princesses and Darth Vaders come to your door, enjoy a laugh, celebrate the joys of childhood, help them understand that reality and fantasy are really not all that far apart. There’s enough hard reality ahead for them, tonight they can just be knights and princesses. And you can be the light that shines upon them.
Happy Howl Ween!