Halloween
November 1, 2005
There is a very important reason why I am leaving for my book tour on the morning of November 1st. I had to spend Halloween at home.
Halloween is without a doubt my favourite holiday of the year. There is no religious tie, so everybody can participate without spiritual discord. Everyone becomes a sculptor when they face a pumpkin with knife in hand and everybody becomes an actor when they don their face paint. And the kids and their costumes are the epitome of adorable. And the candy – who doesn’t like candy? And the macabre subtext to it all …
With all modesty, I believe I my parents’ house was the best decorated house on the street.(Though sadly the photo is all blurry.) We had six pumpkins, plus a pumpkin display in the front window, plus strings of lights wrapped around spooky branches attached to the porch, plus strings of skeletons and ghosts. My cousin Mike (that’s him carving a pumpkin with my dear friend Sparkle Hayter) is an extremely talented carver whose intricate designs put us all to shame, while his wife Laura stunned us by carving the symbol pi onto her pumpkin to create ‘pumpkin pi’.
Sparkle, who is coming along with me from Ottawa to Boston to New York, took dozens of photos of the costumed children. Her favourite was two girls dressed as ying and yang and you can see the picture of her taking a picture of them.
The only sad part of this Halloween is that I didn’t get to execute my full pumpkin installation. Last year I had a theme of giant pumpkins crushing smaller pumpkins to death in their jaws. This year I had an incredibly wonderful plan but it involved wooden stakes and a dozen pumpkins and I just didn’t have time to pull it off. Next year, oh sweet next year. If you are in the neighbourhood – 4th Avenue in Ottawa – drop by. We give away superb treats.
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No religious tie to Halloween? The name does come from “hallowed evening”, and it specifically is on 31 October because 1 November is All Saints’ Day, a true religious holiday in parts of the world.
But what you say is basically true. Christmas has only slightly more of a religious meaning than Halloween.