Happy Halloween

Ok so for our final Halloween themed post I thought we should explore Halloween itself. Please enjoy.

Halloween marks the midpoint between the autumnal equinox and the winter solstice, the time many regard as the true beginning of fall. Many of our Halloween traditions are derived from Samhain the Celtic harvest celebration. As time passed it became influenced by Christian and secular worldviews. At its root, this day, however, we identify it (Samhain, All Saints Day, Day of the Dead, Halloween), is a preparation for the darker half of the year. A day where it is thought by many the veil between our world and the spirit world thins. A day where spirits are permitted to roam among us. This belief led people to leave doorstep offerings to these spirits to win their favor which evolved into our tradition of trick or treating. This is one of many traditions we partake in that is a combination of many cultures.

When Rome colonized the Celts they brought with them apple trees, which led to the custom of apple bobbing, another tradition born out of cultural fusion. I want to pause here and reflect a bit on this practice from a public health perspective. A bunch of people trying to bite apples out of a barrel of water. Could this be a low-fi version of a flu shot? Apples are rich in sugar that would be released as they are assaulted by our clumsy jaws. No doubt that water would be full of spit by the end of the festivities. All sorts of germs would be floating in this barrel, feeding on the sugars that are also in the water. Anyone who participated in this game would be exposed to all sort of local bacteria that could prove more fatal if they were exposed to them later in the season because of nutritional and solar deficiencies. I also wonder if being inoculated while in a state of mirth would be more beneficial than being exposed to the same pathogens while in a state of stress. Emotions are not just the feelings we have based on our current hormonal balance, but our hormones are a chemical expression of our emotions. Whether we are happy, sad, angry, or whatever we are feeling will change the chemistry of our bodies. It seems to me (and this is speculation as I haven’t seen any research on it one way or another), that being in a happy state, where the body was most at ease, would allow more biological resource to be spent producing antibodies for these pathogens.

But Halloween is more than scrounging for candy and party games that may have evolutionary components to it. Halloween is about exploring who we are as people. The word person is derived from the Latin word persona meaning mask wore by an actor. These masks or personas allowed for theatrical emotions to be highlighted, as well as actors to become interchangeable. One actor could play several parts, or conversely, a part could be played by several actors. In daily life, we all play and dress different parts to various extent. For many of us, there are strong cultural regulations as to what we are allowed and not allowed to be. Often many of us our personas we wear are handed down to us straight from the cultural thought factory. Often these masks can be ill-fitting, and outdated. Halloween is the one chance many of us get to try on other identities. We can explore what we may have been, good or bad, if our life circumstances were different. We can let out a part (another theater term) of ourselves we normally repress. There is permission to explore disturbing aspects of humanity where we can learn about these taboo perspectives in a way that is safe and cathartic. Through this process we can come away with a clearer understanding the cultural demons that haunt us.

Many people do not like dressing up for Halloween as they feel self-conscious not being themselves. In reality, for this one day, we are just less limiting as to how we define what “ourselves” actually means. For instance, we can dress like a pirate, or a cop, but in truth, there are no pirates or cops or anything. These roles are just social fictions that we pretend to believe in order for us to function as a society. Anyone who is a cop, or pirate or whatever is obviously so much more. Likewise, everyone at various times fall into the archetypes of pirates and cops. Our costumes are merely culturally recognized uniforms. They provide a shorthand way of unspooken communication. When we see a person dressed as a cop, or pirate (less likely though) we know how to act not because we know them personally but we know their persona. The role we play is based on the social role they embodying . For one day a year, we allow ourselves to parody these tropes. Through this blasphemy, we are able to re-remember the greater truth that we are all unique individual, and that our social roles are largely arbitrary and interchangeable.

I don’t think this is a coincidence that this mask unveiling, is how we commemorate this season festivities. This is a time of celebration, a time of extroversion, where we literally knock on our neighbor's door and give treats to strangers, but it is also a time of death. Our gardens have been gleaned, and the trees have ceased photosynthesizing. We too begin our version of this collective hibernation so we too can conserve energy as the days darken. But with knowledge of this instinctual burden, that everyone may not survive the winter come a grim beauty. There is the foliage. We see the trees naked of chlorophyll radiating their brightest most authentic colors before they fall to the ground. We too are at the end of our cycle become less saccharine and are giving the strength and / or maybe the not giving any fucks anymore, to express ourselves to the world in a more genuine way. A way that's purer than many of our social constraints would allow. And for the rest of us, this can often be a time when we pick up a mask of the ones who fell so the show may go on for another season.

Anthony Bruni