thoughts of halloween

This is one holiday where I have long pushed the season. The months long ramp up to Halloween doesn't seem as troubling as the designation of November through January "the christmas season!".

I'm wondering why. Bear with me while I explore it. I think to me Halloween is one of the few organic holidays we have left, although it's certainly been er, whatchacallit, over processed in recent years. I guess some time between the mid 80s and late 90s the liquor companies realized it wasn't just a holiday for kids. Which is a real pity because with the level and type of over processing intensive booze ad campaigning entails comes the over-popularity of what I call the personal fantasy (usually involving sex) costume or possibly just the sexy costume. Sometimes those can be amusing and fun when such a costume is worn by someone whose inner hotty is not too at odds with the rest of the individual's persona and who has explored this facet of his or her personality enough to have a sense of humor about it. However, such a costume or more specifically, the non-introspective individual in such a costume can be creepy and just plain old skanky.

E.g., the brides. They were students from Spain in a department which shall remain nameless. I was having my (then) traditional halloween party in a month or so and had invited these two women along with most of the department - some faculty included. Because I'm that person, the one who if she's going to bring cupcakes for one person makes them for everyone. Yep. Ok, well mostly everyone. I do draw a line at people who plain old suck. Anyhow, these two women were not really what you'd call friends but weren't what you'd call people who suck so they were invited. Let's call them Marta and Lucia.

Lucia had been to a US Halloween party before but Marta had not. Both were very excited. And I should mention both were interested in this german student who I had invited, "Hans". I don't know which of them initiated the bride motif. Possibly both of them were struck with the same type of image when they saw the rack of used wedding dresses when we entered the Salvation Army store. Although I didn't see either Marta and Lucia buy the dresses that night, they had swooped on them. Apparently they returned later and bought a couple.

Marta and Lucia showed up at the party, both in white wedding gowns and both with long black elvira like wigs. Marta had done up her face vampircally, Lucia hadn't. I don't recall what Hans had worn - I may have blanked it out. I think his costume was where Marta got the riding crop she had been brandishing for much of the night until she was overcome by the fruits of her man-dilemma induced binge drinking (her boyfriend from Spain had flown in to visit that week, adding another point in the already unruly Marta, Lucia, Hans love polygon). Pre-puke, Marta had spent quite a bit of the evening running after people, gown hitched up, swinging the riding crop and announcing "I am going to BITE you!" (for the most authentic effect, you have to imagine this said in carefully articulated English with a hint of a Spanish accent). Pre-puke, Marta, Lucia, and Hans had been smarming all over people at my party, including me. Somewhere there are pictures of me and one of the brides taking turns feeding each other grapes. I heard later that they had gone further than such coy flirtations here and there, going so far as to group sex-proposition a friend of mine. Ewwww.

Like I said, creepy.
But I digress. I was talking about the lead up to holidays and whether it is justified by the holiday being truly seasonal.

Halloween is, christmas I'm not so sure about. With christmas, there is little to no apparent connection between the nature of the celebrations/festivities and the reason for them. Let's see - Jesus was born (in a desert) so this fat guy in a red suit comes along and sneaks into your house to give you presents. Yeah. And stockings full of stuff? Where does that come in? Stockings maybe go with the whole winter season thing, but then we go back to Jesus being born, and while we do celebrate "chirst"mas instead of the proper pagan holiday which late December should be (you know, seasonally speaking and all), we're all part of a big fat cultural denial about the real purpose for this holiday in the northern climes. Winter. Cold stuff. White for what's on the ground, green for what we hope will be one the ground, and red for what probably needs to be spilled for that to happen.

I remember I had a christmas song book when I took piano lessons as a kid. I never got to the point where I could readily read music, but I'd open it up to whatever song I was pecking out by ear on the keyboard , "First Noel" was easiest for me. The picture was of a child shepherd with a lamb set against a background of snowy desert with the town of Bethlehem looming in the distance. Snow and Bethlehem? Maybe I'm wrong but I didn't think the middle east saw a whole lot of snow.

Even on a more basic level, there's fuckall that red and green and white have to do with Jesus? Like I said, pagan. But you can't discern that from the festivities. Yes, Santa wears red and white. But aside from Santa also being somewhat removed from the "real" point of CHRISTmas, the color choice in a christian context at least is apparently arbitrary. Santa could just as well have worn orange and purple for all that red and white symbolize now (i.e. not much in a modern context because we are very busy with marketing symbolism - bet you can id a pepsi sign even if the word "PEPSI" is nowhere near it).

Then there's Halloween. The holiday colors are the same colors you see around you in the Fall and they are the colors of death. The celebration entails images of death, dead things, and things which are beyond death (i.e. magical). Hell, there's even candy corn. What do we have at christmas? Candy canes - red and white again, this time in the shape of something which I have a hard time automatically associating with anything santa or jesus-like. I can stretch it to see some relation of canes and winter but usually the broken and twisted limbs which would necessitate the use of a cane come a bit later in the season.

Why candy at halloween? It's not an uncommon notion culturally that special food is served when the dead are celebrated. Then we have lanterns for the dark, gourds because it's a harvest holiday, costumes because we are trying to confuse the dead who might otherwise take us back with them when their time to walk the earth is over. It all makes sense, more or less, symbolically speaking at least. And seasonally speaking. It's a seasonal holiday with symbolism, but that symbolism isn't too far removed from the actual season itself. Unlike christmas.

Have I justified why I get psyched for Halloween starting in mid August? Not really. For me there's something about the light change. There's usually a late afternoon in mid to late August where it's a little cooler and I realize soon it will be Fall, which is very close to Winter. It's not at all a long stretch from watching a riot of reds tumbling out of trees against a sparkling blue sky to watching those same bare trees scratching at a blanket of gray on gray sky which is darkening even now while there is far too much of what we call "day" left in the day...so I'd better enjoy the hell out of this golden safe feeling sun while I have it. And that makes the sunlight, which was already beautiful, seem even better. It makes food taste nicer, people look more attractive, and life feel fuller.

While I don't party much these days, I still very much look forward to Halloween. My yearly traditions still include watching bad old horror movies, handing out candy if not from home then on campus (I call it "reverse trick or treat" when I'm on campus giving candy out to my colleagues), and taking at least one day to dress up even a little - maybe wearing my purple glittery horns or spider boinger-headband and my dracula socks which have a button you can press that makes dracula's LED eyes flash red while a spooky sounding midi plays (although I've learned not to wear the latter when I need to attend a lecture or talk of any sort since one careless leg cross can set it off and once it goes off it's going until it stops, there's no kill switch).

What made me think of this was seeing a hit on my blog from someone looking up killer prom queen on google. Somewhere I have those pictures of me in that get up. I'll scan them if I can find them.