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| I remember the Salem days! |
As
the years have passes I have become less and less a fan of the morbid sugar
filled celebration that fills this frigid evening. And, as I have said before,
while I have a number of memories about this evening when growing up, I can’t
recall ever anticipating this day with much fervor as many of the people around
me. It was always more of an excuse to be out late at night and get a big bag
of candy… given my size when growing up that carried much more weight than it
should have. However, one thing I do remember is not being an idiot like many
of the kids around me by running into the street despite the headlights.
Over
the years, both in my maturation and my growing devotion to my faith (albeit in
a variety of different ways), the minimal enthusiasm that I had for the day has
dwindled to the point of complete indifference to the day. Honestly, the most
that I have celebrated this day is in the words that I have written on this
blog and looking up the history of the day on Wikipedia. For those of
you who are also curious, here is a little bit of that listing:
Halloween or Hallowe'en, a contraction of "All
Hallows' Evening", also known as Allhalloween,
All Hallows' Eve, or All Saints' Eve, is a yearly
celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October, the eve of the
Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It initiates the triduum of
Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the
dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed
believers. Within Allhallowtide, the traditional focus of All Hallows' Eve
revolves around the theme of using "humor and ridicule to confront the
power of death."
According to
many scholars, All Hallows' Eve is a Christianized feast initially influenced
by Celtic harvest festivals, with possible pagan roots, particularly the Gaelic
Samhain. Other scholars maintain that it originated independently of Samhain
and has solely Christian roots.
Typical
festive Halloween activities include trick-or-treating (or the related
"guising"), attending costume parties, decorating, carving pumpkins
into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted house
attractions, playing pranks, telling scary stories and watching horror films.
In many parts of the world, the Christian religious observances of All Hallows'
Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of
the dead, remain popular, although in other locations, these solemn customs are
less pronounced in favor of a more commercialized and secularized celebration.
Because many Western Christian denominations encourage, although most no longer
require, abstinence from meat on All Hallows' Eve, the tradition of eating
certain vegetarian foods for this vigil day developed, including the
consumption of apples, colcannon, cider, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.
So,
for those of you that enjoy this day (especially the night) have a blast. Just
don’t dart out into the street without looking as I have already come too close
to making modern art on the asphalt in recent years. As for me, I think I will
wait for Purim to dress up and ask strangers for candy.
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