GOURD GRIEF Find a deeper meaning in Halloween
Our costumes and customs should not define us
On a normal day, cobwebs on a house signal neglect, and a skeleton in the neighbor’s yard with a bloody knife plunged through its chest means it’s time to move.
Halloween is not a normal day. During this season, which seems to start right after Labor Day, relatively mildmannered children release their inner demons — or at least their inhibitions around death and devilry. “Sure, kids, you can plant a bunch of ominous tombstones in the front yard and hang a shrieking ghoul from our mature oak.” Have fun.
I’m trying to figure out Halloween for myself. I was able to ignore it for a span of decades, between when I lost interest in dressing up to canvas for candy and when I became a father of two costumed candy hounds. Is it just a fun dress-up night? Is it simply a consumerist frenzy, as Americans are poised to spend more than $9 billion on it this year? Could it mean something more?
This year, I’m finding clarity in an unexpected place. Although it came out in 1966, “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” might be the holiday TV special we all need right now.
A refresher: Linus believes that the Great Pumpkin will rise out of
the pumpkin patch on Halloween night to fly through the air and bring toys to all the children of the world. He stands watch in the pumpkin patch all night while the other kids go trickor-treating. Everyone else believes Linus is strange, crazy or, as Lucy dubs him, “a stupid blockhead.”
Charlie Brown sees Linus writing a letter to the Great Pumpkin and says, “You must be crazy. When are you going to stop believing in something that isn’t true?” Linus responds with calm yet firm conviction, “When you stop believing in that fellow with a red suit and the white beard who goes, ‘Ho, ho, ho!’ ”
Imagine if the roles were reversed, and a kid writing a letter to Santa were treated this way. This thought experiment reveals an uncomfortable truth: We respect some beliefs and rituals but not others, often based on nothing more than majority opinion.
Linus’ “heresy” is that he doesn’t have a community of faith. There’s no Pumpkinterian Church (Google it: zero hits), so Linus comes across as some kind of sui generis neopagan gourdworshiper. But is he really that different from the person who first believed Christmas was the night when Santa Claus flies around the world in a magic sled bringing toys to all the children? Or, for that matter, from the first person to espouse any new faith?
Just because a belief is commonly held doesn’t mean it’s not ridiculous. And just because an idea is in the minority doesn’t mean it deserves ridicule. That’s probably why we need the First Amendment, to protect both speech and religion from our tendency to ban both.
Halloween could be a reminder, then, of everyone’s right to be in the wrong. It’s hard to judge someone else when you’re dressed like a clown. We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal in their capacity to be stupid blockheads.
The holiday’s focus on the occult is integral to this lesson. Normally, death is a taboo subject, but during Halloween we place it front and center. There is no greater equalizer than mortality. As Ecclesiastes (3:20) says, “All are going to one place. All come from the dust, and all return to the dust.” It is harder to judge someone when you realize you’re both headed for the same end.
These lessons come together in one small but profound moment of redemption in the “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.” It involves, of all people, Lucy, the mean girl.
Keep in mind, when Lucy led the kids out to trick-or-treating, the viewer got a laugh at her expense. As she put on her witch mask, she said, “A person should always choose a costume which is in direct contrast to her own personality.” Then she proceeded to boss everyone around and bully her little brother.
After the hoopla of Halloween, Lucy wakes up at 4 a.m. to check on Linus. His bed is empty, so she goes outside to find him curled up sleeping on the hard ground of the pumpkin patch, teeth chattering. This scene makes an impression on my 3-year-old daughter, who worries about Linus. “He’s shivering,” she says, her eyes wide.
Lucy walks Linus inside and tucks him into his bed without a word. Maybe she’s not the witch we thought she was. On Halloween, things aren’t what they seem. Every day, what we assume about others is often wrong.
For me, Halloween is about taking ourselves less seriously. Our customs and costumes need not define us, though we often let them. Our fears and judgments about others’ beliefs and motives say more about our own insecurities than what others actually think or do.
This year, I’ll try to use the opportunity for dressing up to give myself a dressing-down. I’ll try to be more forgiving of the blockheads around me and more honest about the blockhead within.