Pack the kids into the car and roll down the Connecticut back roads resplendent
with colorful foliage in the search for the perfect pumpkins. Yes, once again
it is the season to garnish the front steps with carved pumpkins, garb the
children in the likeness of this week's favorite cartoon character and send
them off to threaten the neighbors for candy.
We are pre-prepared at the Taber house this year. The pumpkins were bought last week, decorations have been up for at least two weeks. The Queen Amidala costume was snagged several weeks before that when it was first spotted (Not taking a chance on having to beat other mother's senseless to purchase the coveted Star Wars themed costume a scant few days before the big night.)
When I was growing up, my father always made the decorating of the house and yard with riggings and contraptions designed to send the younger children running back to their parents before they were halfway up the driveway. I could never figure out if he truly reveled in the spectacle he created or if it was his devious and carefully calculated scheme to be sure of having more than half the candy left over for himself.
Not only have I inherited his joy of decorating the house with Halloween paraphernalia when the leaves start to turn, but also his joy at the sight of a large bowl of assorted candy. I readily admit to not only overbuying trick or treat candy, but using a crumpled corner of the wrapping to deem a coveted treat 'suspicious' when checking my daughter's candy after she gets back from looting the neighborhood. Of course I willingly volunteer my tastebuds to give the candy in question the ultimate testing of it's safety.
Granted we have not yet purchased the candy for the trick or treaters, but it is most definitely the next thing to do. Just last week we took the drive to pick out the perfect pumpkins. Year after year our favorite place has always been the Farm Market in Thomaston with the sign advertising their bananamas. I'm sure eventually they will finally get another n tile in replacement of the m, but I hope it's not for a while as the sign just as much as the market has become a Thomaston landmark.
The eldest daughter nearly leaps out of the car at the sight of the 'piles and piles upon rows and rows' of pumpkins. The largest one we were told weighing in at nearly one hundred pounds, quite more than enough to impress the eight year old and myself. As always one pumpkin must be bought for each person in the house. Last year and this that means dishing out for four of them. Those we two parents pick out must be bigger than the one the eldest has and the baby gets a tiny one. Sadly they didn't yet have any cider or apples, but that gives us an excuse for another family drive.
Though I must admit the joys of family drives have been replaced by anxiety since during the last few weeks it has become apparent that the younger seems to be prone.. no, plagued by carsickness, a problem never encountered with the eldest. So as we embark on the ride home with four pumpkins, two rather large, rolling about in the back at each turn we cross our fingers with hawk eyes on the younger as we chat with the elder.
One of the most difficult things in the world is explaining to an eight year old the difference between secular and religious holidays. After running the gamut trying in a dozen different ways the blunt and far too simple 'Samhain is religious and Halloween is secular.' I'm not sure who was more confused, me or my daughter. Suffice it to say that Halloween though it has pagan roots is not a pagan holiday. Samhain, the remembrance of those who have crossed over during the preceding year as well as the celebration of the turning of the year's wheel is the pagan equivalent to New Year's Eve and a Fall Festival. The time when the veil or barrier between this world and the next is the thinnest as it is a between time in the lunar calendar, not the new year or the old, but a time unto itself.
To me it's the most natural and simple concept, that Samhain is not Halloween and Halloween is not a religious holiday. I hope it is to you, but I know it is not to hundreds of school districts and thousands of people who seem to be stuck in the eight year old mindset of 'if it's on the same day it must be the same thing.' Again this time of year we hear in the news of school's cancelling Halloween parades and costume parties with the reasoning that Halloween is a Pagan holiday so instead they will be having Fall Festivals instead.
Irony abounds in this as what Halloween is as a secular holiday of children dressing up and getting candy as they pretend to be princesses, jedi's and other such popular characters, has nothing to do with the Pagan holiday of Samhain or any other Pagan Fall Festival. (Yes those of us with earth-based religions have had first dibs on seasonal festivals for nigh about forty thousand years). Though I know any of you who spend your days embroiled in suspicion over anything or anyone who is different enough from yourself that it or they must be branded 'evil' will say my words and definitions are moot. Because your conspiracy geared mindset believes that my motives are twisted and devious just by the fact of who I am and what my religion is.
That is more than okay with me as I drive through colorful back roads searching for pumpkins and cider, help my children carve jack o lanterns and take them trick or treating. As I allow my children the joys of experiencing tricks or treats which was one of the fondest memories of my childhood, back when Halloween was pure and completely for children. (The way it still is in my mind and technical fact the secular holiday it has been since shortly after the turn of the century.) On the same day that we here at the Taber house and several thousand more also celebrate Samhain, a fall festival, a new years eve, a celebration to honor our ancestors and their lives, a remembering of who we are and a time out of time.
As we do all these things, I for one know the difference between the religious and secular but if you insist, I have no problem as a Pagan parent with being handed the whole kit and kaboodle to enjoy with my children and pass down to future generations. If the joyous, child centered traditions of Halloween cannot be enjoyed with the innocent they were meant to be by anyone else, we Pagans, our children and anyone else who's inner child can dance are more than up to the task. Pass the pumpkins and grab your costumes fellow Witches, let's go tricks or treats before circle this year.