What the World Needs

Is not more Halloween, but rather more Thanksgiving!

First of all, why should we stop the spread of Halloween? Because today it has become a desecration of an ancient feast of the dead that was designed to ensure that they remain happy where they are and not be inclined to return or do us ill. Now, instead of a quiet time for family members to perhaps share food on the grave of ancestors, it means encouraging all the petty violence and the pseudo-charity that hands out cheap candy to keep the kids from bothering us. It has even become commercial and that took some doing. Instead of old sheets and cork-blackened faces, mothers and fathers today are encouraged to buy costumes that mimic monsters and horror. And horror and fear really hide under Halloween. As for the witches, they had a hard enough time when they were around a few centuries ago to deserve better than being made figures of fun, not to mention caricatures of old women per se.

So let’s drop Halloween, or make it a time for friendship and quiet contemplation when we emphasize what is positive, our deep debt to the grand parents and their parents, all those who have gone before us and in so many ways made life easier and safer for so many of us.

Now Thanksgiving is a bird of a different color! It celebrates life and gratitude. The sheer abundance of food that is spread on long tables everywhere symbolize a rich harvest…that is meant to be shared. It honors the farmer, and the land he or she works on, the gardener and the horticulturist. We honor them as we eat what they have produced and we honor the good land that produced our food at the same time. We enjoy the contrast between the dead leaves of November and the rich summer that this food symbolizes. And, like all real and strong symbols, we taste and savor it, we feel it as well as verbalize it. This is a time for sharing and our only wish, our most fervent desire is that so many others could enjoy the same, that there could be more Thanksgivings.

Our planet is now a shaky refuge for millions of people. They are hungry and uncertain of even the poor shelter they enjoy. Unlike us, they are not safe and comfortable but threatened by all the modern weapons science and technology now provide, as well as the tried and true weapons that cut and slash and pierce.

So let us give our own thanks in the autumn of each year and hope that an epidemic of Thanksgivings may spread in the future. Good things can pollinate as well as the weeds. Having said this let us look around and thank all our friends for being just that, friends, happy and able to share our good fortune and gratitude.