Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, along with Christmas. There’s something about the atmosphere – that mix of giddiness and darkness – that is super fun. I’m taking my kids out trick or treating in a little while and wanted to post this before it got later. What are your Halloween favorites? Could be movies, novels, TV shows traditions, etc.
I always try to watch Halloween episodes from “The Simpsons”, and listen to some shock rock, and some metal/punk music from the 70’s-80s. I’m also a big fan of B-horror movies from the 70s and 80s.
Like this music video featuring a clip from a 1980 movie called Ms .45 (the song is modern)
This movie was brilliant in its execution, while being based on a simple premise, the joke that the marketing of Christmas keeps getting pushed earlier and earlier into the culture.
Samhain: It is a transitional festival, it celebrates the start of the new year, as well as the transition from the light season to the dark season (end of conquests and raids for warriors and the end of agrarian work for the farmers-breeders). The festivities last four days. It is an obligatory festival which gives rise to Druidic rites, assemblies, libations and ritual banquets; its religious character places it under the authority of the priestly class of Druids.
In fact, it is an Indo-European reference. The gods representing the plant cycle descend into the underworld from where they emerge on May Day.
It is also the night during which the borders between the world of the living and other worlds, that of the dead and that of fairies, become porous. In Celtic countries, people would put saucers with milk and a little food for the elves who would pass by, to prevent them from playing pranks or taking away babies. The children who pass by asking for candy while threatening pranks are their descendants.
In the France of yesteryear, once the agricultural work was finished, the crops had been sold, it was the time when we paid the year’s debts.
