Halloween hits a bit different in a pandemic

Halloween, Hallows Eve, Samhain, or October 31st is the day when the veil between the world of the dead and the living is at its thinnest. Those departed, walk the earth once again. Ghosts among us as days become shorter and darker and we slip into the cold months of winter. We are all the more surrounded by the dead this year amidst the pandemic.

Of course, this is if you ascribe to any sort of pagan, witchy ideas about today. For many, it’s a day to dress up in costumes, treat or treat, and watch scary movies.

But one does not necessarily have to believe in “witchy” things to connect with the holiday.

Pagans holidays follow the progressions of the natural world, which for my reference is the northern hemisphere. In winter, hibernation, quiet, and appreciation of solitude and loved ones. Seeds are planted for the following cycle, Spring is rebirth, the buds burst through and germination occurs. The summer, celebration of fertility and growth, sun and wild. The fall we harvest the growth. Then the days grow shorter, and darker. Trees die and leaves fall, we enter death and the underworld.

It is getting darker and colder. The leaves are falling and earth is dying to create the fertile soil of spring life restarted.

This year I took Halloween felt more … literal. We are surrounded by far more death than normal with Covid. Everyone likely knows someone or has someone in their life who has been impacted by Covid.

I have often been worried about what it means for children, my children, to grow up in this environment. Adults wearing masks and hiding their expression and not seeing loved ones nearly as often. Isolation. Instability and degradation. Death. What hope do we give our children at this time?

In many ways I understand that my fears of my children growing up in this environment is a projection of my own fears and discomfort of “getting used” to all of this. I don’t want to get “used to” all of this, nor was I okay with the prior status quo. But this is all they know. And in many ways it is getting all the more acquainted to a world, and really a country, exposed as incredibly weak and ill-equipped to serve its public in any meaningful sense.

So I think about all of this on Halloween. The costumes, the death, the veil, the coming winter and even worse second wave. What this world, a new world really, will mean for my children.