Since I left elementary school, the anticipation of Halloween has grown thinner and more distant with each year. For my twenties and most of my thirties — living in urban apartments, a block without streetlights and, for two years, a rural village in a Muslim country — the holiday would often be upon me before I realized it. I’d dash out for some candy if I had the time; if I didn’t, I’d keep my lights low so trick-or-treaters would pass me by. I rarely carved a pumpkin.
Until this year. When you have a kid in daycare, anticipation of Halloween starts well before October. Our son is still a little young, at two, to be aware of the day, what it means and why he’ll be dressed as a dragon. But his daycare, which is connected to a Christian church, sent home a note saying they wouldn’t be observing Halloween but, instead, celebrating “the harvest.” Here in Los Angeles — a desert city of 10 million people — this seems a little silly to me: What’s being harvested here, and who’s doing it? Still, I was amused that they shunned the modern holiday — and one with costumes, no less: what could better spur the child’s imagination?! — but then chose to honor a traditionally pagan value in its place.
Many people, apparently including our daycare administrators, are aware that Halloween is a derivative of an ancient pagan holiday. Lots of people even know that the ancient rites involved rituals meant to stave off evil spirits — including, sometimes, dressing in costume to trick the spirits away.
But that tradition is by no means the basis for the holiday. The observation of Halloween actually stemmed from the date’s significance in the cycle of the year — in the turning dance of the Sun and the Earth. In the ancient Celtic tradition, Halloween marked the final phase of dying that begins with the shortening of days at Summer Solstice. After a worthy fight, the Sun has finally succumbed to the darkness that started its gradual takeover when summer began.
If you have ever sat with a peaceful dying person, you know the moment on a human level. There comes a certain point when a long or labored
breath — the breath of life, the intent to survive — gives way to a softer, shallower rhythm, to an acceptance of the next stage. The energy of the room shifts as the space makes way for the transition to the unknown. Quiet may come instinctively to the still-living who occupy the space, as if any noise will disturb or upset the journey now underway. Communion happens silently but assuredly.
This time of year, the gathering darkness and the energy of harvest’s end is referential to sleep, unconsciousness, death and dying. During such times, we are subject to the whims and decisions and values of others: We must trust them to do right by us. This tends to make us quite uncomfortable: We’re not in control. Forces beyond our reckoning may have their way with us. So we devise rituals to fight the dark with jack-o-lanterns, trick the dead with ghoulish costumes and throw the spirits off our scent. These obstinate and devious ways are often associated with Scorpio — the sign during which Halloween falls. They are attempts to regain control over the will of others, the will of unseen forces, the will of the universe itself.
Yet in its higher register — when it’s not clenching its fists and fighting the inevitable — Scorpio can tolerate the most unbearable changes with fortitude and courage. At its finest, when it can finally let go and acknowledge the power of the universe, Scorpio acts as the eye of the storm, bringing silen
t stillness to the center of chaos. Scorpio is skilled at sitting with the dying — because it recognizes that death is followed by renewal. In death, in darkness, in destruction, Scorpio recognizes the seeds of renewal. People with strong Scorpio energy are often misunderstood or mischaracterized as negative or upsetting because of this perspective.
But Scorpio instinctively knows that it is followed by Sagittarius, a distant light that, paradoxically, leads us to the deepest dark of winter — our first guide past the throes of death, the light at the end of Halloween’s tunnel. It is Scorpio’s job to get us to Sagittarius, a task even the most hardy soul may understandably shy away from.
This is why the ancient Celts observed Halloween as their New Year. Rather than being the apex of experience and wisdom signified by Capricorn (during which our modern western New Year is observed), the Celtic new year is grounded in Scorpio’s instinctive knowledge of the cycles of death and renewal. The Halloween traditions of scaring off death-spirits and building fire against the darkness may remind us that, most of all, we are afraid of our own powerlessness in the face of the grand changes that life has in store for us, death or otherwise.
So…Happy New Year?
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