As I publish this, the sun is setting on Halloween around the world, and I am sad. Like the Mayor of Halloweentown* I am devastated – 365 days until next Halloween!
Wait, 2020 is a leap year.
366 days until next Halloween! Agony!
See, I love Halloween. It’s my favorite holiday season. Christmas is a wonderful holiday – don’t worry, I’ll give Christmas its due when the time comes.
Halloween is a wonderful time of year. The drab, boring, every-day suburbia gradually transforms into cobweb-ridden neighborhoods ridden with creaky old houses, ghouls lurking behind every corner, scraggly old trees, and the promise of mystery in the air.
In a nutshell, that is the glory and the beauty of Halloween.
Halloween doesn’t exist everywhere. Korea, for example, doesn’t really celebrate it. And that is a shame to me. We need Halloween. Halloween is one of our 3 most important holidays.
Halloween is a time of fun and frivolty. We decorate. Stores, normally so strait-laced and conservative, get in on the fun. People compete with each other for the best carved pumpkin, for the most creative costume. Children excitedly pick out their own costumes and count down the days til trick or treating. And all the while, the trees slowly turn from green into a blaze of red and yellow and orange, the air grows crisp and then chill, and gradually the natural world recedes and prepares for winter.
There’s no deeper meaning to Halloween. Not anymore. We no longer believe the world of spirits are threatening the world of the living. We don’t need jack o’ lanterns to frighten off wandering ghosts. It marks no important or solemn occasions.
In short, Halloween is about nothing important – which is precisely why it is important.
Humans need fun in their lives. We need an occasion to play, to scare each other for no good reason other than the joy of it. We need to indulge our flights of fancy, to shiver in delighted fright as we contemplate horrible things from the cozy safety of our living rooms. Halloween is a time for our darker sides to come out – but also our lighter sides. Halloween is a time for fear, but also joy.
Imagine a world with no Halloween! Imagine a world with just a bit less joy in it. Instead, we get a world that’s just a bit brighter, just a bit happier, just a bit weirder, than we otherwise might have. And I think that’s a wonderful thing.
Happy Halloween, everyone.
*
Gwangju Dreaming 