When I think of Halloween I think, horror movies, Trick or Treaters, pumpkin carving with the kids, spooky decorations and mainly how it's the only month of the year where it's acceptable by yourself and the society you live in, to expose your innocent child to all the brutality sadistic and morally questionable imagery your country has to offer 🤣 I say a 'month,' because I'm including the ghoulish build up to Halloween 🎃 shops have got to make their money somehow, right? So why not profit from our joy of the macabre.
Here in the UK this Fearsome Festival of Feel-good Fun seems to appear in the shops as early as the beginning of September nowadays, as soon as our summer holidays are over.
As for the horrific imagery of it all, I found it noticeably funny at the time when I was raising my children, like all good brand-new parents do, to not worry about monsters, witches, demons and devils; you-know so they'd go to sleep at bedtime and we grownups could get our much-needed Mummy and Daddy time. But that's not really the case, is it? Halloween is unavoidable in our society, and eventually, willingly or not, you'll have it squished and smeared George A Romero style into your aghast, slack-jawed faces, every September/October time. Thinking about it now, I'm pretty sure my love of horror comes from years of celebrating this gruesome time of year. It's like reverse Christmas to me! 🤣
Halloween is an interesting concept, and was a bit of a learning curve for us as a new parents, and once we'd realised there was no avoiding this Crazy Carnival of Costumed Creepiness, we decided to embrace it and explain to our innocent, wide-eyed, cliché Disney children, that we actually do this crazy shit for... *cough * … fun 😅
Eventually, like most kids of 4 to 5, they got desensitised to it, the candy helped, of course. But all this did give me an odd perspective on the spooky 👻 subject, like, what would an alien, or for that matter, a therapist make of all this?
It's just such a bizarre annual ritual to keep alive, and although I know it's here to stay, and I'm a massive fan, I did wonder, where it all started? So I looked it up 🙄. It seems it all started out nearly 2000 years ago as an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain, pronounced Sah-win, but the W is silent. Originally on the 1st of November it was a time when people thought the spirits returned home for the night. But just in case some evil spirits showed up too, the people would dress up in an effort to scare them away. Halloween is now ritually celebrated every year in some form or another all around the world. I guess deep down, we all enjoy at least a wee taste of fear to keep us on our toes. But if you really don't enjoy Halloween 👻 and the fear is just too much, then perhaps you have Samhainophobia.
Well, that's all from me today folks, I hope you all continue to enjoy this beautifully disturbing holiday and take advantage of some scary reads, fun parties and chilling horror movies! Until we meet again, here's a cool gif I like 😈
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