It started with a story about candy. That’s really all we cared about. There were conditions and rules and precautions, but we were 4, everything went very mwa-mwa-mwa a la Charlie-Brown after the mention of sweeties and bonbons.By early grade school the ‘Costume’ had found some importance, and acted as an expression of one’s self. Don’t be too cute, or too classic, or too Not-Cool. We began to create and mastermind our costumes, or rather conduct our parents in the orchestrating of these outfits. The Day-Of became the show-and-tell of the year. Like most aspects of peer-to-peer childhood, we were judged. There was laughter, tears, fighting; all the usual good stuff that make the memories last.
Hop-skip-and-jump a few years to a time where there had always been cards and arts-and-crafts and orange-black construction paper accidents, but along with our graceful entrance into adolescence came the pride of decorations. It was no longer good enough to simply dress-to-impress, our house needed to join the masquerade ball. Cob-webs, lights, spookiness, ghoulishism, jack-o’s and stuff to go bump in the night; the haunting of your house was a chance at greatness.
As high school scarred the awkward and praised the popular, ‘Parties’ joined the scene replacing the treats with the tricks. Word of Captain-QB’s epic blowout would scorch the masses like wildfire, shuffling the priority of even the most academic’s to-do list. Whether it was the Grade-12-Royalty Rager or an Underground-Art-House Affair, our plans told a tale and our shindig shuffle was school gossip. They are the best years of your life, unless of course they are the worst.
Before we were too old to be young and after the retirement of the fake-ID, plans for The Night took precedent. Bars, clubs, house-parties, soirées, themed events, great galas, spectacles, festivals, fêtes, and grand celebrations were traded in our schedules like Pogs of the old school yards passed. It had to be the right venue, with the right friends, for the right price. Drinks, contests, music, and status were always priority when it came to evaluating the specs. There was also a resurgence in the impact of the Costume. Along with quality came ‘cleverness’ and ‘creativity’. The usual suspects were too easy when it came to the Costume, now more than ever ‘unique’, ‘topical’, and ‘fantastic’ were the goal.
When ‘Too-Old’ joined the equation, the cycle was reborn. We became the support-crew. The end of a second round of Hallowing from the ‘Tinny-Trick-or-Treater’ to the ‘Masked-Miscreant’ brought us to one of two characters: the Old-Recluse, with his dark ‘fun-is-bad’ house, offering candy of the kind that falls into either the ‘garbage’ category or the ‘none’ category, and the Old-Neighbour who juggles flavourful memories of costumes and chaos gone by as they fill the trickster with the treats. Unfortunately this late in the game the ‘Old-‘ is a guarantee.
It’s Legend, it’s Lore, it’s Christian history masked in Pagan Past. From its Celtic birth as the festival of Samhain to the eruption of décor that covers our calendar, October 31st is never a Sunday or Tuesday or any part of any day of any week, it’s always just Halloween.
So now I ask: What happened to you on the Eve of the All Hollows? Were you tricking for treats, carving up characters in pumpkins, pub-crawling, bar-brawling, finding frights in flicks in the dark, or did you drop the duties all together and power through another Saturday? Was October 31st simply the day before a new month of more of the same? I’ve always been intrigued by those who question a Holiday. Those who are above commercialization and don’t buy or sell the hype. I’ve wondered about the ‘whys’ and ‘what-fors’ that people use to criticize and condemn a good anniversary. It seems that no matter the celebration, the commemoration, the tradition, or the religion, there are always those who ignore and dismiss and battle the buzz of the day. Those who find fault in the fun. Those who argue and discuss and debate. Those who rain-on and wreck and pooh-pooh the parade. Those whose love is to hate and whose hate is the game.
I have worried that this misery is something that one develops, something that can’t be combated with the smiles and laughs that fuel me today. So with the hope of avoiding the ‘bitter’ that too often takes the lead in ‘bitter-old-man’, I have asked the question of myself: Why get wrapped up in a Holiday? And the answer for me is festive-universal.
St. Valentine’s Day has trouble recruiting Singles, Easter highlights the Christian calendar while trying to explain its Egg obsession, Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving are a month and a half apart, Christmas feels the pressure of its marathon run through November and December, and then there’s Memorial, Martin Luther King, Family, Victoria, Canada, Independence, Labour, Columbus, Remembrance, and Veterans, all wanting a Day, all wanting a card, a commercial, some calendar space, and some attention. So what? Who cares?! What day of the year doesn’t suffer from a little quirk here or a fault there? It’s easy to set up a platform and begin rhythm-and-rhyming off reasons why the tragedy is in the gift giving or the TV specials or the distractions that take away from the truth and the origin. But why? So that we curb the fun? So that we educate the Casual and demand ‘better’ from the Committed? Or is it so that we can ignore what we have created?
The complexity of the 21st century Holiday allows for so much more than a celebration for the target few. While Christmas is still the birth of Christ and St. Patrick’s remains the Irish’s Day for the Patron Saint, gifts and music and new tradition have opened up the calendar to allow for community. Devout Catholic? Celebrate Advent. Not Irish? You can still drink a green beer. To some it’s the harvest, to others it’s football, to many it’s a feast, and yet because of this acceptance, to everyone it’s Thanksgiving.
And it’s this flexibility that in itself should be celebrated. Give a valentine, sport the green, wear a poppy, haunt-up your house, and don’t just participate, enjoy it. Because it’s an excuse to find unity. In a time when a person can live for weeks without face to face interaction, sometimes a custom is exactly what we need to feel the warmth of connection. So when the countdown to December’s 25th crosses paths with a good Morning-After smashing of a pumpkin, I say embrace it. Let a holiday distract you from the 9-to-5. Feel free to plan ahead and get carried away. Take advantage of this world that encourages celebration. Because in the witty words of the wise Wilder, Van: “Don’t take life too seriously, or you won’t make it out alive… write that down”. So again I ask, ‘Why get wrapped up in a Holiday?’ easy, Why Not.
Here's hoping you had a Happy Halloween, will Remember Remembrance, are thankful that we give thanks, and get ready to prep for a New Year’s Eve 10-count with a little Christmas cheer or Chanukah happenings. I’m not condemning Grinchery or suggesting you bottle up your inner Scrooge, I’m saying harness the Whoever that your Holiday character is and don’t drive around the calendar without site-seeing a little.
Just a couple of crazy Cats that had an award-winning time at the Uptown's Halloween Howl.
No comments:
Post a Comment