Happy Halloween

A friend asked me yesterday, 'Halloween - yes or no?', to which I have to say a resounding yes.

When we were kids, one of my very best friends was American (actually, she still is, but we're no longer kids). She introduced me to 'trick or treating', of which I'm not a great fan - it always seemed a bit too like begging. But she also introduced me to 'Halloween candy', dressing up, outrageous decorations, lots of black and orange, playing ridiculous party games and scaring ourselves silly. I loved the Jack o'lanterns. I loved apple bobbing. I loved eating cream buns hanging from the ceiling by a thread with your hands tied behind your back.

As I got older I went through a New Age, pagan sort of phase involving lots of candles, ribbons and bad poetry. I communed with cats and tried to see the good in toads. I learned about masculine and religious oppression and I celebrated the female goddess worshippers; the medieval healers and midwives who were persecuted and hanged or burned at the stake for offending the patriarchal establishment.
One Halloween Him Outdoors took me up Pendle Hill, site of the infamous Lancashire witches, ten of whom were hanged for witchcraft in 1612. It was dark and quite spooky. People trudged up there to light bonfires and join covens. I have only dabbled and never specifically tried to invoke the dark side. I don't know if I believe in a dark side and certainly wouldn't want to invoke it. I was scared of the people who believed they were conjuring with black magic.

So I no longer really know what to believe. But I enjoy so-called Pagan Festivals - like May Day, Yule, Candlemas, Midsummer, and, naturally Halloween. I worry that it is too easy to get too serious about such things however, and would like to remind you to treat Halloween responsibly and not to leave alcohol around pumpkins.