So often we go about celebrating our holidays with out taking into account what they actually mean. Halloween is more than just a candy companies ploy for money.
Halloween has been described so many times by people as a holiday created by the candy companies to make more money. It is true that North America does keep the candy companies in business with an average of twenty one million dollars spent on Halloween candy alone but there is more to the holiday or any holiday for that matter than money.
As a society we tend to forget the things that make our culture what it is. I have heard it questioned whether or not America really has a culture. That everything that we have is just a mixture of something else that was brought here by immigrants. I say that is our culture. It is quite an accomplishment to do what we have done as a nation. We have taken in these various characteristics from other cultures and have made them our own so that it doesn’t matter what nationality your ancestors were you too can celebrate it. Our holidays are times when we can all come together to celebrate, perhaps being one step closer to Martin Luther King JR’s dream of everyone living in peace no matter what color they were.
Instead of focusing on the tasks necessary to celebrate the holiday in “classic” style it may be a good idea to sit back and reflect, at least for a moment, on why we celebrate what we do. Halloween was originally a holiday to celebrate our ancestors, where we came from what our forbearers sacrificed so that are lives could be what they are today. The other aspect of this holiday is that it is a time to celebrate the harvest. In many parts of this country we have moved beyond our agricultural roots. The harvest is not as an important occurrence as it once was but a harvest is representative of prosperity and hard work come to fruition. Halloween is a time where we as a people can celebrate the reaping of the individual harvests that we have enjoyed through out the year such as the new job, the personal goals that have been fulfilled etc.
However you chose to celebrate the Holiday keep in mind the origins of this day and it’s rich history. Halloween is a much more complex holiday than what it has been made out to be. Perhaps we should take the initiative to step up and recognize that there is more to our traditions that a corporate sponsor.
