Exorcising our demons by celebrations

Social Studies - Published Monday October 27th, 2008

I remember when I went to High Kennebecasis High School in Quispamsis, while living in Hampton that Halloween was the absolute best time of the year. First off, you got to dress up.

There was freedom to be someone else for a moment. Secondly, you got candy!

I also remember that cars were lit on fire, houses vandalized, and a lot of small town angst was worked out by us unruly teenagers.

I do not know how it changed, but Halloween traces its origins to a completely different beginning than candy corn and vandalism.

Some 2,000 years ago the Celts celebrated the New Year on Nov. 1, the day which marked the end of the warm, growing, harvesting season; and the beginning of the cold, dark, dying season.

They also believed that on the night before the changing of the seasons the veil between the two worlds, physical and spiritual, was weakened. This made it easier to see the future and to determine where fate was leading you. So they built bonfires, wore animal skins, danced, prayed, sang and celebrated.

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honour Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated Nov. 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honour saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make Nov. 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honour the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the Eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.

I am fascinated by history, which I believe we ignore at our own peril. But history also allows us to see that even when we have forgotten the origins, all of the things that we do come from somewhere.

Although the roots of the festival of Halloween began in an agricultural way, there was always that aspect of the unknown, of the scary, of believing that this was one of those times when ghosts might just walk the earth.

I believe that we need moments like that to take seriously the darker and more mysterious parts of our psyche.

Humans have certain innate qualities and we have a certain balance to us. If we are going to end up being happy, then we have to make room for sadness, and if we are going to feel safe, there has to be something to compare it to; so we need to feel afraid.

Fear seems to be one of those things we are born with, babies develop a sense of fear around seven months whether they have anything to be afraid of or not. According to Leon Rappoport, professor of psychology at Kansas State University, we need to be afraid for the same reason we all want to go to amusement parks to ride roller coasters.

"It goes all the way back to sitting around the campfire telling ghost stories and folk tales," Rappoport said. "It's a very prevalent, deep-seated, human characteristic to explore the boundaries where they can tolerate fear and anxiety, and then master that fear and anxiety by working through it."

Rappoport says that Freudians and analytical thinkers believe that the more we develop and progress as a civilization, the more repressed problems we have. "The more civilized we get the more we repress our sort of uncivilized nature," Rappoport said. "And one way to release that is through festival occasions, vicariously enjoying horror movies and all sorts of related things."

So, I would like to argue that it is necessary to indulge in a little fantasizing about the dark side every now and again. It helps us to recognize ourselves for what we really are and to not push everything below the surface.

So go put on a mask, go watch a creepy 1950s movie about a haunted house, go and believe, at least for one night, that there is more to this fear of the dark than we are letting on. Sometimes we need an excuse to explore those darker instincts. It is not an excuse to do things you would never normally do, nor am I talking about hurting anyone, or vandalizing anything, which does not accomplish the real goal of Halloween.

Halloween is a very real way to let out some of the demons that this stressful world forces us to keep locked inside. So have fun, stay safe, and get scared.