Let’s see … should I write this column for Tuesday, November 3, which is Election Day?  That’s my usual slot.  Still, I am fearful that my column appearing then will give the people of the Santa Clarita Valley – notorious non-voters that they are — another excuse to do nothing on Election Day.  “Did you vote?”  “Oh, no.  But of course I was so busy reading the Beacon’s Chris Sharp Tuesday column that entire day (LOL).” 

And so I am vacating my column for Election Day and moving it up to here, the hours just before Halloween night.  It will be impossible to ignore Halloween on this day, so why not make the best of it?  Then you cannot blame my column for keeping you from voting November 3. 

Meanwhile, I will be spending at least some of the time on Halloween Day thinking about the good people of history who never left an imprint in the history books. As a teacher, I use these history books to teach kids what we used to be.  The history books go ahead and teach that we have spent most of our most important time in the past killing each other.  And in our more recent past, in the past two years, 34 important kids have been killed at school in Chicago by other school kids. 

But lost in the history textbooks is all that time we have spent doing good for each other.  This is why I think art is so important.  We can find much more of the good in ourselves in our art than we can in our history.  For example, nowhere in a history book can we find the simple goodness in an ordinary face that an artist like Pieter Brueghel brought to us from the 1500s. 

Some centuries earlier, and just before his death in 844, Pope Gregory IV – who is best known for rebuilding Rome from its ruins – set up November 1 as “All Hallows Day” that would honor the saints with “prayers, not sacrifices.”   

The children of the day would go out through their neighborhoods the night before – October 31 – on All Hallows Eve which became Hallowe’en and then Halloween. At the doors of their neighbors, the children in the costumes of souls in Purgatory sang “souling” songs.  In these communications, the adults would be promised many dividends of the soul – long segments of happiness – if they would simply offer the children food, drink or money for the night.  However, if some grumbling adult offered the children nothing, this unhappy person would be condemned to a life where he couldn’t be able to ever stop grumbling (via a Hallowe’en trick).  

The classic Hallowe’en treat was what was called soul cakes.  It was a small, rounded cake filled with allspice, nutmeg, cinnamon and raisins – it was known as delicious.  Today it would be known as a “cookie.” In the ninth century, it was called a “soul.” 

The 9th Century children would open their bags of cookies to eat the next day.  For each cookie eaten, one soul was said to be freed from Purgatory that day.

In addition to cookies, apples were as they are today a symbol of the ancient Halloween.  On November 1, the ancient Celts honored Pomona – the goddess of pome fruits such as apples – with a holiday that would be celebrated with ancient games.  These were the ancestral versions of today’s Halloween apple bobbing games.  Even thousands of years ago the Druids – on the eve of “Summer’s End” or “Samhain” on October 31—devoted a night to a “Return to Earth” event of returning ancestral ghosts.

On that night the children in Druid villages that night would dress in masks and costumes to make the returning ghosts feel at home with fellow spooky beings.  Food and other treats were left out for the returning ghostly ancestors.

Throughout this October 31 tradition, families were dealing with the inevitable cycle of nature – summer life dying to be replaced by the winter cold.  But the symbol of death left by the fallen leaves was bright and festive.  Many felt these leaves had never looked more beautiful during their earthly lives.

And so Halloween for thousands of years has been a festive celebration of the magic and he mercy of nature, with children traditionally the beneficiaries of all the festivities.

Today as a teacher I am more aware of parents objecting to any references of dark powers on Halloween.  But since I was a child I have always seen Halloween as being brighter and more positive than any ordinary day of the year.  I still see those parents who are all too ready to deprive children of Halloween as the same ones who have a Grinch-like desire to keep kids from getting Christmas gifts.  Maybe I would be more tolerant on this subject if I were to notice these particular adults depriving themselves of their favorite festivities.

Chris Sharp- Commentary

Chris Sharp is an educator and a prize-winning professional writer. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.