Into The Dark

Perhaps I’m a little slow on the uptake. I just never understood why we hunted eggs in Spring or put skeletons everywhere in Fall. Like most kids I just went along with the fun because… well, candy.

But as I’ve gotten older I’m realizing the connection with these mosaic holidays and Earth’s rhythms. As life renews itself in the Spring we celebrate symbols of new life and fertility. And as we travel into the dark of Fall, our symbols turn dark as well.

Halloween has been slow to win my favor. As a kid I remember it as a holiday that promised sugar and the fun of dressing up, but also held an underlying terror. Terrible things felt more possible on Halloween night and I was always glad when it was over. Ghouls and desperate hands reaching up from the soil of death – not really my thing. When my kids have asked about those kinds of decorations, I’ve always responded – “why would we celebrate fear?”

But I’ve been seeing Halloween differently. I see the monsters and ghouls not always as a celebration of fear, but as a coping mechanism for it. If we become the things that haunt us maybe we aren’t as afraid. If we laugh about death by exaggerating it, maybe we rob it of a little of its terror. A haunted house isn’t real – but it gives our fear expression by proxy.

I still don’t care for the creepy side of the holiday, but I’m appreciating it as the season it represents. Trees are shedding their leaves and the flowers of summer have drooped and faded. The darkness presses in as the days rapidly shorten. Everywhere are reminders of our mortality.

And it’s good to remember. Doesn’t that remembrance add a sense of victory to the winter solstice when the dark begins to shift? If you don’t feel the sting of death, can you fully rejoice in the resurrection story of Spring?

So about my house go playful skeletons, and as we travel into the Dark, I’ll let it remind me that life is but a vapor.