You can learn a lot about somebody by the things they are willing to jump up on a soapbox about. Now that we’ve hit the end of September, the adverts for the “Spooky Season,” what most folks call Halloween, is upon us. And I have a soapbox to get on about…..not getting on a soapbox.
The pumpkins are now everyplace, and being carved into Jack o lanterns of every description. People are planning their Halloween parties and their costumes. My workplace has already announced the costume contest, which will have prizes. Lawn decorations and lights (orange and purple) are starting to go up in the neighborhood with the same kind of zeal that used to be reserved for Christmas. There are bats and black cats and skeletons and witches everywhere on TV, in shops and magazines.
There are horror movie marathons happening everywhere. If it involves gore or a lot of jump scares, it’s on the schedule or in the Netflix recommendations.
Ask a random average person what Halloween is supposed to celebrate and you’ll get lots of answers. Google it and they do correctly identify modern Halloween celebrations as being rooted in the ancient Samhain festival. Google will tell you that all the to do with monsters and costumes and jack-o- lanterns is designed to frighten away the dead, who apparently return to their old houses to haunt them.
That’s not quite right, of course. And if you have the misfortune to click on any of the Christian websites listed in the search results, you’ll get even more misinformation and straight up bullshit. It should go without saying that the pagan celebration of Samhain has absolutely nothing to do with Satan, who is part of the Christian pantheon, and bears no relationship to Celtic cosmology or the Celtic pantheon. Lots of fearmongering about witches and spells and the danger that Samhain poses to the devout Christian soul — it’s all wholly unnecessary. Samhain has nothing to say about Christian gods or devils .
Samhain has plenty to say that might be worth listening to, though. Samhain is the end of the harvest season, the last opportunity to enjoy the fullness of the earth’s yield before the snow comes and the darkness falls. As the veil thins, our ancestors and others from the Otherworld walk among us, delivering messages and visiting with us. It is a time to commune with those who are departed, and contemplate both what has happened and what is coming. It is a time to decide what you will not take forward with you into the dark time. Pagans and witches will host dumb suppers, to commune with ancestors, set up ancestor altars, carve turnips and stay close to the hearth fires.
I have to admit that sometimes, as “Spooky Season” starts to ramp up, part of me cringes inside. So much of what comes with the mundane world’s celebration of Halloween is a rather strange parody of the actual holiday. Kids running around begging for candy from their neighbors. Big costume parties with lots of drinking and lots of people behaving in ways they never would if they were not masked and dressed in unfamiliar clothes. Make no mistake, it’s fun. And I won’t lie, it’s the only time that I can find witchy home decor and t-shirts that (for the most part) celebrate my identity. For a brief 3 week period, being a witch is almost normalized. I can’t say it’s all bad. \
There’s also the fact that I have no desire to be the “Samhain Police.” Much in the same way Christians will complain that people forget that “Jesus is the reason for the season” at Christmastime (not realizing, of course, that really it’s a co-opting of the Norse holiday of Yule), some pagans want to get salty that people “don’t really understand what Samhain is really about.” I will admit that when no matter where you turn you see all the Halloween stuff literally EVERYWHERE, it can be frustrating. It can feel like no one has proper respect for something that has a long history and deep meaning.
And then I check myself.
Because when has the mundane world ever really understood the ways of witches and pagans? When have we ever publicly been offered acceptance and respect instead of fear and persecution? I have never needed the general public to provide approval of my spiritual path for it to feel real. I don’t need that kind of validation.
In fact, there is an extent to which our lack of ready availability in the public realm is actually a feature of our path. It’s not required that our practices be something that everyone everywhere knows about or partakes in. There is even a certain amount of power in secrecy and sacredness in selectivity. Pagan practice is there if you want it, and if you don’t want it, it has no need to convince you otherwise. Proselytizing and policing are just not part of the pagan worldview. What you want to do with your gods, what you want to believe about the Universe and what you do with your holiday celebrations is none of my business.
And the fact is, the kids trick or treating and the parents erecting giant inflatable black cats on their lawns and the young adults dressing up in costumes and bar hopping until 3am really have nothing to do with Samhain. Whatever the purported origins of the modern Halloween traditions are, and whatever connections people might have been drawing from initially, the fact is that that connection is stretched so far from its origins it might as well be a cobweb. And it was long ago swept away by the broad hand of commercialism.
Most ordinary people don’t celebrate Halloween for spiritual reasons — they just want to have some fun. The bold caricatures, the effusive efforts to decorate, the flamboyant costumes are all meant to be a distraction from the ordinary. And they are meant to be fiction. No one is sending their kid trick or treating in a Captain America costume thinking he’s going to battle Hydra. No one is seriously thinking that their haunted house that they are erecting is a real way to scare away evil spirits. And it’s not happening at anyone’s expense. Folks enjoying their Halloween celebrations are not making fun of pagan Samhain traditions. Most have no idea what real witches and pagans do for Samhain. And they don’t care to. They are having a good time doing their thing.
And yes, there are a lot of companies making money off of their desire to have fun. But witches don’t own images of carved pumpkins or ghosts or black cats or even the haggard images of witches. Much of that was invented by outsiders for their own purposes, and they can have it. I’m not crazy about crass commercialism of any stripe. But the modern notion of Halloween is no more or less of a capitalistic grab than Super Bowl Sunday, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day or any other jacked up commercial holiday. Your Halloween decorations are not a persecution or an appropriation. They’re just stuff you bought because you thought they would make your house look festive.
As I set a cup of chamomile tea on my ancestor altar, and prepare for the Samhain holiday with my coven and my family, it has nothing to do with orange and black decorations of cartoon witches and pumpkins. And the crowds that will fill the bars and attend parties across my town on Halloween night will not have anything to do with my rituals and rites. The ancestors are not confused or impeded by their antics, and I shouldn’t be either. I do not need others to witness, understand, validate or join me in my Samhain observance for it to be acceptable to my gods or to my ancestors.
The Spooky Season isn’t a problem to solve or an affront to be railed against. It’s a bunch of people having some fun with images that have been commercialized and which have no real relationship to Samhain. And to get up on a soapbox about it doesn’t provide much satisfaction to the ancestors, or increase reverence for the gods, or celebrate the end of the harvest and the coming of the dark time.
Sometimes the best thing to do with a soapbox is to let it stand undisturbed.