Happy Halloween folks!
interesting how this holiday has lasted for so long. it's one of the big folk traditions in America. people get real fired up over it. i think a lot of the appeal is just folks wanting to party. women can dress up extra slutty, everyone indulges their power fantasies. i have lots of memories of going to awesome huge parties, everyone in costume, and people drinking and making out, dancing to
Thriller, all that shit. CLASSIC AS FUCK.
it is interesting how a holiday so based around death happens nears the start of the fall. each year this is the start of things dying, of cold weather, of earlier and earlier nights. it makes so much sense, all the iconography, combined with the seasonal changes, and the traditional rhythms of life. we might have entirely removed from our ancestor's day-to-day, sitting in front of screens in air conditioned rooms, but we still feel these traditions.
it makes sense in a Christian-pagan syncretic framework as well. it is a sort of "death" that the entire planet goes through each year, we literally watch leaves die and fall from trees all around us. then we enter the cold winter. Christmas arrives, the birth of hope, the North Star, the reverse from coldness back to warmth. culminating, ultimately, in Jesus's death and rebirth at Easter. Halloween acts almost as a yearly Sodom and Gomorrah that plunges the world into darkness. you get the sense that back in the day, it was the last time all year to really party down before the weather got unbearable.
lol people bitching about it being commercial. nerds. who cares? it is all about pagan idolization. all about fantasy. nowadays that includes a lot of corporate super heroes and mascots. so what? you still see them mixed in with traditional ghouls like vampires and zombies and historic characters like pirates and ninjas as well. it's pretty rad tbh.
