As a tutor, you’re interested in the holidays and events that are relevant to your students.  An issue that hangs in the air at this time of year is the fascination about Halloween.

I’ve always loved Halloween. When I was a kid, living in farming places, it was a big deal. We’d make Halloween crafts in school and put them on the walls of the classroom. As you walked to gym or music class, you’d see Halloween adornments lining the corridors. Halloween was a kids’ celebration that was encouraged.

An interesting point about Halloween is that while it was promoted by the parents and teachers, the children agreed.  Rarely was the community so successful at directing the children’s interests.  Halloween was an occasion in which virtually everyone wanted to participate.  Even the “un-crafty” liked making Halloween crafts.  Halloween didn’t only resonate with children, either: even a “stick in the mud,” with no children, would buy a pumpkin and carve it into a convincing jack-o-lantern.  They’d have treats ready for the children whom, most other times, they’d rather not tolerate.

Perhaps one appeal of Halloween is its non-judgemental aspect.  You can’t choose the “wrong” costume or carve a jack-o-lantern “wrong”.  When people go out for Halloween – either trick-or-treating or supervising – they enjoy the variety of costumes and jack-o-lanterns they see, rather than just pointing out the best and worst.  Since Halloween has a grim dimension to it, you don’t have to seem happy while you’re celebrating it; you’re not expected to smile.  After all, with disquieted spirits everywhere about, doesn’t it make sense to be on guard?

Without a doubt, Halloween stokes the imagination like no other holiday.  It encourages people to imagine what they can’t see – and even encourages them to believe that it’s really there.  Perhaps above all, humans are imaginative creatures.  Halloween invites people to bring forth their spookiest conjurings.  It’s a labour of love for minds that are too often suppressed.

To be sure, Halloween’s connection with death makes it resonate with people.  Human beings constantly struggle with how meaningful life is in the moment, yet how fragile it is – and the certainty that it will end.  Yet, does it end entirely?  Halloween offers an endless array of ghouls who seem to relish being dead.  Although we might fear them, we find them reassuring as well:  it they have survived death, can we yet do the same?

Even without Halloween, the feelings would manifest.  Farmers’ fields, harvested and laid waste by frost, show the inevitability of death.  Yet, something seems to remain there, waiting to be visited.  People know they likely will not go there, but can’t help but wonder what they might find if they did….

Happy Halloween.

Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.