OLD SCHOOL RULES FOR GHOULS

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (11-04-21)- Please remember small business in your town during this coronavirus pandemic

 
     When you're out trick-or-treating do you ever think about WHY you're doing it? For the candy, of course, is the short answer to the $100,000 Bar question. The longer answer is a mish-mosh of religious ritual, superstition and modern embellishment. Some of the traditions that we now celebrate as Halloween can be traced to Samhain, a Celtic observance dating back to the 10th century. Held on November first, it marked the beginning of the "darker months," a day when communion with the netherworld was thought to be easier.

     When the Romans conquered much of Europe, All Saints Day was already on November first and their version of Samhain moved up a day to become known as All Hallows Eve, or Halloween. Dressing up as ghosts or fairies was a way of bridging the distance between this world and the next, and honoring the dead. How we got from that to the "sexy dentist" costume is just America working its magic.

     The practice of trick-or-treating possibly evolved from the practice of leaving food or gifts in a sacrifice as thanks for a successful harvest. A recent poll found that "Sour Patch Kids" is the most popular 2021 Halloween candy in six states. Here I'd like to point out that if I were a god, I would not be thrilled by that as a gift, and you should expect to see some wilted crops next year, and possibly a plague of locusts. Did you happen to notice that the cicadas came this year? This should prick up the ears of anyone who gave out Sour Patch Kids as a Halloween treat last year. I feel a certain responsibility to inform the public about things like this.

     Some of what we do around holidays seems pretty random. Bobbing for apples? I just don't see me putting my whole face in a tub of cold water and the prize is a wet apple that already has the teeth marks of someone with worse aim. Maybe if the payoff was a little more in line with the possibility of ruining my hair I'd give it a try. What about bobbing for magnesium-alloy wheel rims, or bobbing for insurance vouchers?

     Yes, there are some new rules about Halloween, like you shouldn't appropriate other peoples' ethnic identities by dressing up in goofy versions of their costumes. If you're not Native American, it's not as nice these days to traipse around in a headdress waving a tomahawk at people. If you ARE Native American, then it's not exactly a costume so you shouldn't wear it on Halloween either. Trick-or-treating is tricky these days. Once I dressed up like one of the Beatles, but I wasn't actually one of the Beatles, so it was probably culturally inappropriate and I hope I didn't hurt anybody's feelings.

     You're probably wondering how all this relates to the fact that my next-door neighbor Dave's parents made him this great "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" costume out of a refrigerator box, and I hounded my parents day and night but they refused to buy a new refrigerator just so I could have a really great Halloween costume. I don't know why, because our refrigerator was so old that there were fossilized spare ribs in the back of the freezer from the Cretaceous period. I was left to fashion my usual "hobo" outfit, which was basically whatever I wore to school the day before with a few extra rips and more dirt than usual rubbed into the knees. Dressed thus you really could believe that we were the only poor people living in Chappaqua who could not afford a new refrigerator.

     Halloween has definitely done a 180-degree turn over the centuries, evolving from a dark, pagan observance in service of the dead to a light-hearted excuse for a party with people whose identity you won't find out until they either remove their costumes, or you read about them the next day in the police blotter.

     Appropriately, there are at least two black cats that live in my house, and I can see why people are superstitious about them. If you consider something that throws up on your newspaper fairly often to be bad luck, then I sympathize with you. In their defense, a lot of what I read in newspapers makes me want to do the same thing. I wouldn't waste your time being afraid of them, though. If they cross your path it only means you're standing in front of the food bowl.