Nobody’s spine tinkles at the thought of Halloween, despite the “festival” being ghostly.
Perhaps, that is why Halloween is there. A superstition-turned-celebration, Halloween is not to promote scare but to demote and tweak the same into a funny affair.
Just take a look at some of the customary elements that play their part in Halloween: carved pumpkins aka jack-o’-lanterns, goofy costumes, spooky masks, haunted houses, mischief acts and suchlike. None of them are scary! In fact, the whole thing is damn funny, especially when innocence comes knocking on the door wielding the question: “trick-or-treat!”
That makes your day, right?
Of course, everything would have been really scary, had there been a single person (witch or wizard) or a pagan group that is believed to go through all the Halloween rituals, in a scary moonlit night. Then the public would be fearful. There would be rumours: people would experience scary pumpkins floating in the air, haunted houses coming alive, vampires, banshees and goblins doing rounds in eerie silence; (silence that is punctuated with vigorous growls!).
Even the snap of a twig or shambles in shrubbery can stop your heart beat for a second!
Now for a change over: imagine the person/ pagan group fading away into the horizon, getting replaced by the image of your neighbourhood people, whom you know very well. On a Halloween day you would see some of them throwing costume parties, some of their children in crazy attires coming down asking for treats and performing you-name-it sort of fun, some cinemas running Evil Dead; and all and sundry. It is likely that, only an insane person would dread such funny and engaging situations!
Setting aside all those intellectual hullabaloos, this, I believe, is the idea behind Halloween: Be the fear you have and you conquer it! Once you see your fear manifested in an odd costume on a person trying to make you fearful of it, and you being knowledgeable of the true identity of the person who is trying to make you fearful; you begin to appreciate it--the person, the event, the fun, the scare and fear. In fact, it will interest you to be a part of it!
When this Halloween idea is put into practice and imitated on a massive scale, things happen: dream catchers run out of business; mothers lose their grip (inculcated through scary stories) on children; people become less superstitious and light hearted and may even be a bit more courageous--what an idea Sirji!
No doubt, Halloween is a social catharsis! "Getting scared is fun" can be its motto!
Now, an odd thought: will Halloween ever be celebrated in India?
Chances are less, because:
1. We revere the spirits of deceased people. For us, what is revered is holy and what is holy, un-fun.
2. Already, we are taxed with celebrations and we have most of the days in calendar marked red, when compared to West. We simply don’t have the money and time!
3. We don’t know to carve pumpkins!
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