Already seeing the decorations in the stores, so it’s time to trot out my treatise on the holidays and talk turkey. The winter holidays are important life lessons that we must pass on to our progeny (that is our kids, if you haven’t heard the word). Halloween is the grand opening of the holiday sason, when we as children get the opportunity to face our fears, and a chance to be brave. Thanksgiving is our celebration of our successes and achievements, like farmers having a good harvest in prior times. Finally, Christmas and New Year's are the pinnacles of the holiday season, it is where we celebrate our hope for the future.
The controversy of Halloween being a satanic celebration, as framed by the religious establishment has always been disturbing to me. I understand the marketing ploy the religious establishment uses to hopefully drive-up attendance at their churches, I just hate when a person or an organization tries to manipulate me through fear. As a kid, Halloween was always just fun, getting dressed, getting candy, and getting scared with a bunch of other kids. It was also a community thing. People decorated, made haunted houses, mazes, had carnivals. As I’ve grown older, I now see it as a chance to give kids a chance to be brave and face their fears. We reward that bravery with candy or other treats.
Honestly, Halloween is no longer the only occasion we have to get dressed up and celebrate heroes and villains and stories we love, just go to any Comicon, Mardi gras or Carnivals (the Brazilian variety) and you will see. The true difference between these events and Halloween is that these events are a celebration while the observation of Halloween has that ingrained fear factor. Halloween is the first of the holidays and for me the most significant, developmentally and diversionally.
So, what are the things we (including kids) all fear? Death, getting lost, monsters and then the unknown. Skulls, skeletons and tombstones are so identified with death that they have become the symbols of death, one of our major fears. But death is also a fact of life, one all of us have to face. Why are corn mazes and haunted house so popular? It might just be our ability to conquer the fear of getting lost. Making your way out of a maze is always a sense of relief. What about monsters, we define monsters as that which is different from us in appearance which creates apprehension in us and learning how to deal with that is a critical life lesson that Halloween provides us. We all don’t have to become adrenaline junkies who get a thrill from facing danger but it is good for all of us to learn how to face our fears.
The next holiday would be Thanksgiving where we celebrate our achievements and successes. Thanksgiving may actually be disappearing as a recognized holiday. Thanksgiving is generally done as a feast with a big banquet of food for friends and family. In our agrarian past we focused on the success of the harvest and gathering of family and friends to share in it. In our current state with so many have problems with obesity and food disorders we may need to change the focus of this holiday. The holiday has also been evolving into a sports holiday. Also in the millennial generation growing up isolating and communicating via social media, and are adverse to verbal and face-to-face communication and gathering in groups. That is another fear factor that older generations may not understand, that the young may not relate to the nature of communal celebration and fellowship especially growing up during the Covid Pandemic. The other big fear of Thanksgiving is the performance anxiety for putting on a successful celebration of the holiday.
The culmination of the holiday season is Christmas and New Year’s, where we celebrate the hope for the future. I know that there will always be some that are disparagers but I hope that everyone can find optimism and positivity in the holiday season.
