In America we have Thanksgiving, which has evolved into a day to be with family and give thanks to everything that we have: family, food, life, and everything the word etcetera has to offer. We have Independence day. A day where we shoot off fireworks and have fun to remember when America declared it´s independence and it truely started to be America. Surely Spain has a day where they commemorate their country such as this (I´ve been told yes by some and no by others, so if they do have it, it does not seem to be as big a deal as ours). So why? Why Halloween? I asked someone this and all they had to say was, ``No sé. ¿Porque tú celebras Halloween?´´ Why do I, no, why do we celebrate Halloween?...I had no clue! So, I went into research mode.
I started the research determined to find the cause for Halloween and what I found surprised me...NOBODY KNOWS FOR SURE WHY WE CELEBRATE IT! What am I to tell the students here in Spain when they look at me with there earnest eyes ready to learn and ask, ¨Why do we celebrate Halloween, a holiday that has become the second biggest commercial holiday (I´ll let you guess what´s the first) in America?´´ I´ll look at that student completely confused. Once the teacher in charge translates to me what that student said though I will then have no excuse not to answer! So, what am I to tell them?
``Well kids, Halloween, just like the American language, is a deformed combination of several other cultures. The date may have Celtic roots because the Celts celebrated New Years on the night of October 31st. You see this was when it usually got very cold for them and they associated the cold with dead people trying to come back to earth.
``Trick or treating maybe came from the English´s All Soul´s Day where families handed out snacks (a.k.a. bribes) to other people asking them to pray for various deceased family members. It may be that or another Celtic tradition where people put a bowl of food (BRIBES!) outside their doors in order to beg the dead and the ghosts not to enter their homes and do bad things to them.
``As to dressing up in costumes? Meh, we´re unsure about that too. It likely came from the Celts, as well as some other European peoples, who were still terrified that the dead came back at this time. Due to this, they would wear masks in order to trick the ghosts and monsters into thinking that they were a ghost and monster too. This way the monster, or ghost, would not be stab them in the back (and sorry Marshall Grey and Lauren Reynolds of Late Night Spookline, but this is the explaination for a great deal of monster and ghost sitings during this time. It was actually people dressed up as monsters who were terrified by other people dressed up as monsters who were terrified as well...wow, say that run on sentence ten times fast.).
``Then, when people started realizing how awesome America was, they came over and continued their traditions there.´´
The students will look at me with a blank stare and when the teacher translates what I said to them the same student raises his or her hand, ``So, Halloween wasn´t normally a fun holiday but one about blackmail? It was a tradition to fear and not to celebrate? A day where everyone felt their life could end at any moment due to an unseen horror?´´
Me, ``......Yes.´´
The student, ``So how did America make it so fun.´´
``Well,´´ I reply, ``Well, you see Americans are notorious jerks. I can only guess that while all the new people were dressing up in costumes and terrified for their lives, Americans, I suppose, just made fun of them. Then some corporate brain for...I don´t know, a Wal Mart must have said, `You know what? We can make money off of this.´ And then a superstitious and extremely feared holiday became the marketing scheme it is today.´´
...Can I really have that conversation with a student? Do I really want to. Knowing how the holiday came to be actually makes me want to celebrate it less. However interesting it is that it exemplifies how America is a melting pot...it also shows that what the melting pot cooks can sometimes leave a sour taste in your mouth and make you wonder, ``If it smelt so funny, why eat it?´´ ...But then I remember my Mom helping me in my first costumes. I was a ghost one year and then the Blue Power Ranger the next (even when I was little I knew I was a nerd...and if you do not know who Billy Blue is then you did not watch Power Rangers. No, the 50 spin offs do not count!). I remember how much fun we had. I remember shopping for costumes and candy with my family and going from door to door to get more with my parents and sister. I remember going to my first dance dressed as Dracula. I remember going through my very first haunted house (casa de miedo), being scared half to death and then going back into the line to go through it again. I remember neighbors and friends that I have lost touch with dressing up in costumes ranging from Frankenstein to Buzz Lightyear. I remember being blown away by my first massive group showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show and learning how do to the Time Warp with my friends, who are now spread out in different states. Then, in college, I remember making close friends through creating our own haunted house for four years and scaring other people half to death with it (seriously guys, you do not run backwards in a haunted house, that is just stupid).
Now I am in Spain. A place where Halloween is not traditionally celebrated...and yet, I will not be able to forget having a Halloween party and watching scary movies with my new American, Scottish and Españoles friends (we saw ``Rec,´´ a Spainish film which is officially my favorite scary movie). I will remember going to the disco and seeing zombies along the way who were badly singing the music (not the lyrics) to Michael Jackson´s thriller (``dun dun dun thriiiillerrr, thriller nocheees). I will remember classes being so curious about this Halloween holiday and yes, I will most likely remember writing this blog, which, when I started it, originally had nothing to do with what it turned out to be (I was going to do a cultural analysis on how different societies view zombies...maybe next year...or on the season finale of AMC´s newest show The Walking Dead, WHATCH IT!).
So...What do I tell the class? Do I want to tell them the real reason America celebrates Halloween and spoil the fun? Or do I tell them the reason we as a people celebrate Halloween. We do not celebrate it with the Celts in mind. We do not hand out or dress up because we think are lives depend on it. We do not think about how the holiday (if it can even be called that) started when we egg or teepee a person´s house. Heck, pretty much no one knows for sure how this annual celebration even started. So I tell them the truth, I tell them why we actually celebrate it.
``¡Because it is freakin´ egg smashing, sugar coma enducing, crazy, unadulterated fun!´´
===================================================
I used two souces to write this amazingly perfect article/essay on this confusing Spanish keyboard. The second being this link http://ezinearticles.com/?Why-
The first and most important source is my supreme intellect....that is all.
"I never realized before that I didn't know why I or anyone else celebrated Halloween. And I agree sugar-fun and dressing-up as other people is reason enough to celebrate." (Wow! Deja Vu!)
ReplyDelete