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Holiday Season Begins With Ghosts & Goblins

By Tom Anselm

    The official ‘kick-off’ for this year’s holiday season has come and gone. Halloween, the night of ghosts and goblins, ghouls and zombies and the occasional homicidal clown, was a cold one. Fitting, I suppose, given the emphasis on dead things.

    The present-day celebration has its origins among the ancient Celtic religion, brought to America by the Scots and the Irish. It found its way into the stores in the 1930s, went booming in the 1950s (of course!), and today rings up sales in the multi-millions.

   However, in many-a mind, the candy notwithstanding, it is a weird holiday, one that seems to get more out of hand and gruesome each year. Now, those in the Hispanic culture seem to have more of the right idea when it comes to these mid-fall festivities. Originating in Mexico, El Dia de Los Muertos honors family who have come before and gone on to their heavenly rewards.

    Catholics and some other Christian denominations have All Souls and All Saints Day, which place emphasis on respect and commemoration with special Masses and services. In life, we will always have death. ‘Crossing over.’ ‘Going to the Promised Land.’ ‘Shuffling off this mortal coil.’ ‘Meeting St.Peter at the Pearly Gates.

   ’So what a juxtaposition this first holiday of the season offers us. Blood and gore on one hand, solemnity and remembrance and honor and prayer on the other. Like many things in our American culture, commercialization and the opportunity for profit can cast a taint on the real meaning. Costumes and lawn ornaments and 3000-ft. retail pop-ups filled with every imaginable form of mayhem-themed outfit and tool, sexy this and sexy that.

   I even saw a costume for Sexy Nun. Yep. Over. The. Top. In my day (old man talk, friends), we’d find some old clothes from dads bottom drawer, put on a stupid hat and grab an old pillowcase and out the door we went, not to be seen again for hours.

  Today’s kids do have fun, though, eat a lot of crap, maybe puke in their beds later, and generally don’t get too caught up in the commercial side. That’s for us adults to dive into. 

   At least with El Dia de Los Muertos, they combine the love and respect with the party and the costume, having memorial altars and face-painting and traditional clothing, even some places celebrating on the actual gravesites of their ancestors.

   So I guess there is a place for both the dastardly and the divine in this season when the trees are dropping their colorful adornments and the temps already trending downward. Time to get a little silly, time to take stock and remember those who gave of themselves for us all. It is up to each of us to pick the better parts of all aspects, according to our disposition.

  And to eat a butt-load of them Fun-Size Snickers, of course!

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