HALLOWEEN

I am not a great lover of Halloween. I hate the color combinations of orange and black. I wonder how the idea got around that witches wear all black rags and ride around on brooms. Maybe they got that one mixed up with Cinderella, what with cleaning out the chimneys, having a daily workout with a broom, and no shoes. Pumpkins and squash are pretty decorations inside and outside the house, as long as you don’t actually have to eat the pumpkin when you, and it, are done. It takes a sharp axe, or sword, or machete to cut a pumpkin (and it’s pretty easy to do yourself in while you’re doing it), then you have to scrape out a huge amount of seeds and disgusting goo before you bake it for about 24 hours in a slow oven. After you’ve scraped it out of there, you get to eat, or use in baking something which tastes exactly like water and has the consistency….you get the idea. I really don’t like pumpkin. The seeds are nice, especially if you have small children. You can save them and plant them in the spring, and the kids can watch their own pumpkins grow. I am a dyed-in-the-wool locovore most of the time, but this really is a case where if you want to make pie, or whatever, it’s much better to get the kind in a can.

It used to be fun, dispensing candy to cute little kids in pirate and ghost costumes and ballerina outfits, but that seems to be a thing of the past, what with razor blades in the apples and anthrax in the chocolate bars being held out as a threat to parents who like their children to stay alive after the day. Most places have events instead, which is probably fun, though I’ve never been to one. The idea of getting into a costume and going to a party with other people in costumes doesn’t appeal either. I’ve been in enough operas for it to lose it’s appeal . Actually, I stopped doing it some years ago when I went to a party in a suburban town made up and dressed up as Georgia O’Keeffe, and no one knew who Georgia O’Keeffe was. Would they have known if I went as Sylvia Plath, or Virginia Woolf? I’ll never know. I look a bit like Virginia Woolf anyway (if she had lived to be my age), so maybe I could just go as myself and say that I was dressed up as her.

But what Halloween is really, is All Hallow’s Eve, the Eve of All Saints Day, when the veil between the living and the dead is most permeable. I like that idea. I like the quantum idea that past, present and future aren’t as well defined as we think they are. This year, there's a time change from Daylight Savings Time to EST. It'll be a looong night. I'm a member of the Church of St John the Evangelist on Beacon Hill, an Episcopal church with a wonderful High Church liturgy and a liberal attitude. On All Saints Sunday we bring in pictures of people we love who have died and put them on the side altars with lit votives and icons. It’s very beautiful, and every year I bring pictures of my mother and father, Larry, Andre, Ray, Ralph. If I didn’t think that everyone would think it was stupid of me, I’d bring pictures of my old dogs, Missie, Wingfoot and Patty, and my beloved cats Nimrod, Tux and Boo. I’d love to think that they’re all near to me on the eve of All Saints, and that maybe they have something important to say to me. That’s when I love Halloween.