Day 30, It's Almost Halloween

The Frightening is almost upon us!

If you were to walk into our local large Christian-based craft store (naming no names), there's hardly any Halloween gear. Unlike other craft stores in the area, there's no large section of impossible skeletons of spiders, holographic pictures, or shrouded specters. There's some generic costume-making supplies, but that's it. Autumn is largely represented by "Give Thanks" written on various party supplies, turkeys, cornucopias, and the colors brown, orange, and red.


You'd think this would be pleasing to me, and it is refreshing to see Halloween overshadowed by another holiday for once. It isn't, really. I may be a Thanksgiving fanatic, but I've always deeply enjoyed everything about Halloween, excepting the following:

•  Excessive gore
•  Anything that smacks of the occult- demons, ouija boards, and the like. That's just asking for trouble.

Halloween and Thanksgiving to me are a beautiful dance. Halloween, or All Hallows, is the preface to the Christian feasts of All Saints and (on Nov 1st) All Souls, where the faithful ask the intercession of the saints and pray for the departed. The entire month of November is the month of the dead; the month that people wear poppies in remembrance of fallen soldiers, and Nature winds down and goes into hibernation. And how is this all capped off? Just before the month of reflecting on loss and death ends, we celebrate... with food, with our families and friends. So go put on a costume and play at being spooky. Because death is coming for every one of us for real one day. As for living well and loving others well, that's on us to try and make sure that happens.