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Death Needs a Holiday Posted 7/6/2007 8:44:29 PM Death Needs a Holiday At midnight on Halloween, I light candles to help the spirits find their way back--and I feel surrounded by a radiance of love. By Waverly Fitzgerald Look in your family photo album and what do you find? Pictures of graduations, birthday parties, weddings and vacations. Photos taken during holidays celebrating the new life of spring, the return of the sun in mid-winter, fruits of the harvest. Everyone is smiling, no matter how much tension lurks behind the pleasant face. Where are the images of break-ups, divorces, illnesses, and funerals? These events shape us as much as, perhaps more than, the happier moments. But we hide them away, preferring a story that life is all about joy. That's why Halloween is so important: it is the only holiday that commemorates death, offering us a rare opportunity to face the darkness. Not the darkness of violence or evil, but the darkness that is part of the natural cycle: a chance to accept endings, to mourn losses and to recognize our mortality. A century ago, most people died at home and were laid out in the front parlor. But now death is something we rarely witness, except the violent deaths depicted on TV shows, in films and in crime novels. As a society, we cling to the myth of perpetual summer, constant growth in the economy, and continuous improvement in our personal lives. So when things go wrong, when we make mistakes, when we lose someone dear to us, we see that as abnormal. We confuse darkness with evil, and approach death with fear, thus the emphasis in American celebrations of Halloween on demons and ghosts, the gory and the grotesque.Yet death is as natural as life. All cultures have a holiday when the dead are honored--in fact, most have more than one: In Japan, the Obon festival in July; in China, the Moon of the Hungry Ghosts; in ancient Rome, the ghosts of the ancestors were appeased during Lemuria on May 9. Today in America, we still have the secular holidays of Memorial Day and Veteran's Day. But during my childhood, those perfunctory trips to the cemetery to lay flowers on my grandfather's grave never caught my imagination the way Halloween did, and still does. Underneath the disguises, trick-or-treating and parties, the spiritual heart of the holiday is an acknowledgement of death. Halloween is a complex blend of customs from many different cultures and holidays. The oldest layer comes from the Celtic festival of Samhain, which means "summer's end." It was also the new year--the Celts believed the year began in darkness, just as the day began at dusk. It was a time when the crack between this world and the Other World was open. Fires were left burning during the night and people avoided walking in isolated places, for fear the fairies would take them away. In Ireland, the whole month of November is devoted to the dead, who hold their final dance on November 30. In the seventh century, the Catholic Church established a holy day honoring All Saints. At first celebrated in May (when the Romans held their feast of the dead), it was later moved to November 1. Also known as All Hallows Day, it's the source of the name Halloween (the eve of Hallows). By the 10th century, the following day, November 2, was officially designated as All Souls Day, when the faithful pray for the souls of their departed. The Cathars, who developed a unique Christianity that flourished in Southern France until wiped out as heresy by 13th century Crusaders, believed that this was the day when the souls of those who died during the year entered into a place of rest. Before this day, they wandered around the earth, from church to church. Angels chose from this flock those ready to be admitted. The living could influence the selection by saying Masses for the dead, paying off their debts and giving gifts to the poor. This is similar to the English tradition of going from house to house, gathering ingredients for soul-cakes. Sometimes these were left out for the poor to eat, sometimes given to the priest to pay for Masses for the souls of the dead, sometimes given to "sin-eaters," beggars who took on the sins of the dead. Although the emphasis in the church was on praying to the saints (the holy dead) and for the souls of those in purgatory, we can glimpse an earlier understanding that this was a time that the dead returned to visit their families in the way Italians celebrate I Morti. On the night of November 1, before they go to bed, children set out letters they've written to their dead relatives, along with a list of presents they want. The dead rise up from their graves and roam through the streets, drifting like smoke into the stores, stealing sweets and toys to leave as treats for the children. When the children wake up on November 2 they search for these presents and shout out thanks to the ancestors when they find them. When the Spaniards brought this Catholic holiday to Mexico in 1521, it went through another colorful permutation to become Dias de Muertos. The indigenous people of Mexico did not fear death like the European Christians for whom it was a time of judgment. Instead, they viewed death as a phase in a cyclic journey: to die was to wake from the dream of life. The combination of the indigenous reverence for death with the Catholic holiday produced a flowering of ritual and art in Mexico around this holiday. Vendors sell skeletons made of papier mache and macabre toys, like clay skulls with movable lower jaws or skeletons that dance on a string. Children beg for "a funeral" or "a death" and are given treats like bones made of milk chocolate and sugar skulls with maraschino cherries for eyes and grins of syrup and rows of fine gold teeth, sometimes bearing their name. The Days of the Dead are a time of reunion when people travel home. Altars are set up in houses, and decorated with flowers, leaves, fruit, incense and candles. Sometimes flower petals are scattered in a path from the altar to the open door to guide the returning dead. Offerings to the dead of food and drink are placed on the altar. On the night of November 1, people gather in cemeteries and spend the night with "the little dead ones." A priest might come and sprinkle the graves with holy water. Candles burn on every grave, all decorated with offerings and flowers, especially the marigold, the flower of the dead in Mexico. Sometimes bands serenade the dead with songs and music. In other places, people dance. Ever since my daughter brought home a miniature Days of the Dead altar from elementary school, this has been my favorite way to celebrate Halloween. In the last days of October, I set up photographs of my ancestors, friends and pets who have died, surrounding them with candles, vases of flowers, and offerings of food and drink they would enjoy (Fido gets a dog bone, the dead hamsters carrots, my dad a shot of Irish whiskey). When I'm home, I burn candles and incense. At midnight on Halloween, I light a candle on each windowsill in my apartment, to help the spirits find their way back. As I wander from room to room, checking on the candles, I feel surrounded by soft fluttering, like the wings of doves, and a radiance of love. This is the heart of Halloween. By remembering the dead, we keep them alive in our hearts. By facing our own mortality, we taste the sweetness of life. (0) Comments

OLD FOLK LAW Posted 7/6/2007 8:36:37 PM Vanemuine, the god of song, dwelt on the Hill of Taara. But he grew tired of living in Finland and of his beautiful hill, so he sent word for all things to come to him to receive the language they were to speak before he went away to his palace in the sky. As they gathered around him, he opened his lips and sang so sweetly, so softly, that the murmur of his harp strings seemed almost harsh as compared with the music of his rich voice. The wandering winds who listened afar off caught and remembered only the loudest tones. The sacred stream that flows so softly around the Hill of Taara chose for its language the rustling of the silken garments which moved upon his shoulders as he played. The listening trees of the forest heard the rushing of his flowing mantle as he descended from his throne on the crest of the hill; and ever since, this has been the language of the tree-tops. If one will sit on the mossy bank of a little brook near by a full-leaved forest, he may even now fancy that Vanemuine is come again to earth. Some of the larger creatures took up the deeper tones of the heavy harp strings, and their language is now full of these sounds. Others loved the melody of the lighter strings, and this softer music is ever in their voices. In his great joy Vanemuine sang songs never before heard on the earth, and the listening nightingale caught their meaning, never to forget. When you hear the nightingale pour out its song in the dusk of evening hours, you hear an echo of the song the nightingale heard upon the Hill of Taara. Vanemuine sang of love and of the beautiful springtime. The happy lark heard and understood, and the sweetest tones of the song she sings over and over with each returning morning. As she soars higher and higher into the clear air, she sings her song, trying to tell the whole world of the love and beauty of which she heard so long ago. While everything else was being made so happy, the poor fishes were having a sad time. They could not leave the water to go to the Hill of Taara, but they stretched their heads out of the brooks and rivers to their very eyes, yet kept their ears under. So they saw Vanemuine, the song-god, move his lips, but heard nothing, and they did as he did and made no sound. To this day the poor, dumb fishes move their lips, but speak no language. Only the men and women who stood close around the Hill of Taara understood everything that was sung. That is why human voices more than any others can thrill us and make us see the beautiful and true. Vanemuine sang of the glory of heaven and of the beauty of earth. He sang of the flowing waters and of the rustling leaves. He sang of the joys and the sorrows that come to all people, to children and parents, to the rich and to the poor. If we listen to the songs sung to-day, with open ears and expectant hearts, we may hear all that Vanemuine sang so long ago upon the Hill of Taara. When Vanemuine's songs had been heard by all the world, he rose on the wings of the winds and went far into cloudland to his golden palace in the sky. There he still sings his wonderful songs for those who are greater than mankind. To this very day the people of Finland think they can sometimes hear Vanemuine's voice when the forest trees sigh in the wind, or the water in the river softly laps against its rocky shore. Perhaps--who knows?--we may hear him, too, if we listen well! (0) Comments

LETTER Posted 7/6/2007 8:07:02 PM Dear Child, I am writing this slow because I know that you can't read fast. We don't live where we did when you left home. Your dad read in the paper that most accidents happen within 20 miles from your home so we moved. I won't be able to send you the address, as the last family that lived here took the house numbers when they left so that they wouldn't have to change their address. This place is real nice. It even has a washing machine. I'm not sure if it works too well though. Last week I put a load in, pulled the chain, and haven't seen them since. The weather isn't too bad here., it only rained twice last week, The first time it rained for three days and the second time for four days. The coat you wanted me to send you, your Uncle Steve said it would be a little too heavy to send in the mail with the buttons on, so we cut them off and put them in the pockets. We got another bill from the funeral home. They said if we don't make the last payment on Grandma's grave, up she comes. John locked his keys in the car yesterday. We were worried because it took him two hours to get me and Shelby out. Your sister had a baby this morning but I haven't found out what it is yet, so I don't know if you're an aunt or an uncle. If the baby is a girl, your sister is going to name it after me, she's going to call it Mom. Uncle Pete fell in a whiskey vat last week. Some man tried to pull him out but he fought them off and drowned. We had him cremated and he burned for three days. Three of your friends went off a bridge in a pick-up truck. Ralph was driving. He rolled down the window and swam to safety. Your two friends were in the back. They drowned because they couldn't get the tailgate down. There isn't much more news at this time. Nothing much has happened. PS, I was going to send you some money but the envelope was already sealed. (0) Comments

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