"Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead." -G.K. Chesterton
Halloween shouldn't be happy. Happy is the wrong word. Traditions culminate in the ideas of remembering the dead. The longer you live, the more dead you will know.
The feeling I would describe getting from All Hallows' Eve, is a magnified feeling that the time of year itself gives me - the turning of the leaves, a storm approaching, the wind picking up, energies that excite, yet are tinged with an anxiousness. A sense of adventure, and danger. Almost as if you were being compelled, prompted, roused to awaken to something... Something powerful. Happiness doesn't describe it. Standing next to huge electrical pylons and having your hair stand on end begins to describe it.
Our culture hates to think about death. Americans, more than any other culture I think, are in denial about it. Could it be this is why Vampires and Zombies have become so popular - this is our collective unconscious, dealing with death, in a way that we will allow to manifest in our culture? Of course we then market, capitalize and turn it into a sexy party.
I just got through reading Ashen Chassan's entry for The HGA book, published by Nephilim. His carrying out "The Wild Hunt" as a teenager reminded me of the magic that Jean Craighead George's "My Side of the Mountain" contained for me in its pages as a young boy.
Courage and bravery cannot be measured in any other way, but in the face of actual fear. A testing of the will. How can we test our will in postmodernity?
To me, this is what All Hallows' Eve is about. Remembering those ancestors who went before, who showed tremendous force of will, tremendous courage, in the face of adversity, in the face of second thoughts, anxiety, panic. Remembering those who knew that remaining in the comfortable surroundings of ego would never bring satisfaction nor fulfillment.
If you are sitting in that comfortable center-of-the-Universe of ego reclining chair, I pray that your dead would not allow you to remain there.
"Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us..." Hebrews 12:1
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