Halloween time has hit the stores. We are still over a month away, yet when you enter any store you are hit with displays of candy and decorations. I personally love dressing up and carving pumpkins. Our old neighborhood in Hamilton always came together on Halloween night. Houses were decorated and we chatted from porch to porch as trick-or-treaters filed up our walk ways. We could talk about how Halloween helps people deal with the tragedy of death by giving them a chance to make it something easily dealt with by playing with ghosts and skeletons. Perhaps by dressing up and playing with scary things we can learn not to fear death very much. Perhaps this is a good thing. I do not know. But, what has struck me this year is how we seem to embrace death to the point of romanticizing and belittling it. When I see Halloween displays this year, I think that maybe we have lost touch with the deep pain death can cause. By romanticizing death perhaps we have done the same thing as sweeping it under the rug. Maybe going so far one direction by making death fun and entertaining we have still lost touch with the tragedy we face when we lose someone. As our society moves towards a romantic idea of death, we are still so far away from dealing with the reality of death. Maybe while you are hanging your new store bought skeleton this year, take a moment and think about what you are doing.
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Caroline Vuyadinov
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