Halloween Days, P4
We Ward Off The Demons
Today, we conclude our little haunted run of articles with a story from this year’s Halloween - a moment of self-awareness and strength in the face of the goblins and ghosts. We hope you enjoyed this little series and - once again - thank you all so much for being here!
OF PRAYERS AND RITUAL CELEBRATIONS (2024)
Near the end of our street is a house with a massive Halloween set up, a full front yard packed with gravestones and ghosts and ghouls, and one particularly nasty looking red demon. Or a monster? Something. I’m not sure.
What I did know is that this particular decoration, at the push of a button, will leap forward with a mighty growl to scare the unsuspecting trick or treaters on the sidewalk below.
So I did what any good dad would do. I told the kids - we were escorting a pack of eight of them - to pose for a photo below the demon. Sure enough, the house owner, pressed a button and BOOM the demon descended on the unsuspecting kids, growling and hissing!
I expected to get a great pic of kids scattering to the wind. And they all did! Well, except one. No ghoulish red demon was going to scare Little Bean off. Instead she raised her hands, a woodland fairy squaring off against the devil itself, and she held that demon at bay, laughing the whole time!
Not bad for a kid who’s scared of ants.
The evening rolled on, as it has for the past few years, of laughter and sugar, of super heroes and skeletons - an evening of remembrance and of facing the unknown.
A friend recently made me aware of a quote by Ron Rolheiser, a Roman Catholic priest:
The real intent of our prayers and ritual celebrations for the dead is to continue to be in a more deliberate communication of life with them, to finish unfinished business, to apologize to them, to forgive them, to ask them to forgive us, to remain mindful of the special oxygen they breathed into the planet during their life.
I’m uncertain of the context, of course. He’s likely not speaking of Halloween, per se. But since community and memory are fine stands ins for prayers and rituals, I’ll take it. At any rate, if dressing your front yard up as a graveyard, isn’t - even accidentally - a form of being in deliberate communication with the dead, well then, I’m not sure what would be.
And so we put another Halloween behind us. How many more do I have left anyway, with her. Five? Seven if I’m lucky. How many more opportunities for her to practice facing down the thrift store demons before she must begin facing down the real ones?
Near the end of our night, I walk home ahead of the crew, a little faster, to take the pup out and make sure the house is fine. The bowl of sweets we left on the porch is empty, but the back up bowl still has quite a bit in it. As I’m making my way in, two teenagers come up. Barely in costume. Just collecting candy basically.
It’s late. Trick or treating is nearly over.
“Here,” I tell them. “Take the rest.”
They look at me, hesitant.
“Empty it,” I say. “Empty the bowl.”
They dig in. Greedily. “Thank you,” they yell over their shoulders.
Feed the monsters. Appease them, before it’s too late.
I love that picture of Little Bean pushing back the demon with her outstretched hand. It's like she's protecting her friends!
That girl is fierce! Brava!