Today is both Halloween and the first night of Diwali, two very different observances each with murky origins in dim pre-literate times. It is also the night of a New Moon, the Catholic All Saints Day and the eve of All Souls Day and the Indio/Mexican Día de los Muertos. On top of that, a fateful U.S. Presidential Election with its bagful of possible horrors is just five days away. Ordinarily, that would inspire one of my serendipitous date poems. But I am having a hard time wrapping my head around this one or finding a creative hook to tie a verse together.
Others, apparently, do not have the same problem. The Web is afire with memes and notices on Tik-Tok, YouTube, X, and other social media except Truth Social which does not want to offend Evangelicals or take notice of grubby brown skinned people. The world press has also chimed in with articles in newspapers and magazines, especially in India where Western Halloween has made cultural inroads in recent years.
My problem is that Halloween and Diwali have little in common. Both celebrations incorporate small lamps, but they have different meanings. Hindus light profusions of diyas, small oil lamps inside and outside of their homes to offer puja (worship) to Lakshmi, the goddess of prosperity and wealth. In the mystery lore of Halloween a lost soul was condemned to wander for eternity between the gates of Heaven and Hell carrying a hollowed turnip with a candle as a lantern to illuminate his way. In the U.S. the turnips became pumpkin Jack o’ Lanterns. Both also share treats—mithai sweets shared with small gifts to family and guests in India and candy as the swag of ritual begging for Halloween. Finally, both celebrations have pre-historic origins that seem animistic or pantheistic with only fuzzy connections to modern practice.
Diwali seems to stretch back much earlier by millennia to proto-Hindu tribes and clans in the Indus headwaters and valley likely a fusion of harvest festivals in ancient India where each village adored their own local spirits and crypto-gods. Eventually those spirits were melded and became figures in the Hindu pantheon. It was mentioned in Sanskrit texts such as the Padma Purana and the Skanda Purana both of which were completed in the second half of the 1st Millennium CE from older texts and oral traditions. The diyas are mentioned in Skanda Kishore Purana as symbolizing parts of the Sun, the cosmic giver of light and energy to all life. That makes it (usually) the earliest of the Festivals of Life observed by cultures across the Northern Hemisphere.
Halloween arose from the vigorous Celts or Gaels who spread from somewhere in central Asia across much of Europe and into the British Isles over centuries. Customs are also attributed to the English Druids who may have been Celtic and/or partly Romanized Briton priests supposedly representing a Quarter festival between the Autumnal Equinox and the Winter Solstice. Samhain was particularly important because it was the gate in time to the death and starvation season of winter, as well a time to celebrate the recent harvest. The association with the death of winter also extended to the spirit world, which was considered to be closer to the mortal plane than at any other time of the year. Druids—marked the occasion with the lighting of bonfires and with gifts of food and drink for the spirits of the dead.
Or so modern Wiccans tell us. But beginning in the late 19th Century they began confabulating scraps of lore and occasional fancy into a wholly new religion centered around the covens of self-proclaimed witches, warlocks, and wizards who have kept the ancient wisdom alive through persecution by Christians and the disdain of agnostics and humanists. It never included any form of Satanic Worship—although both Catholics and Puritans would make those charges to justify the orgies of witch burnings in Europe and North America. Evangelicals still campaign against Halloween in schools and in public.
On this side of the Pond Halloween slowly took root and morphed into juvenile celebration featuring masquerade and ritual begging similar to Twelfth Night and Mardi Gras. It did not become pervasive and nearly universal until the post-World War II era and spread like Santa Claus to other cultures across the globe.
Horror and ultra-violent fantasy became a growing part of Halloween thanks to the influence of both classic Hollywood monsters of the 1930s-‘40s and the slasher blood fests since the ‘70s. That coincided with the day becoming an adult party excuse second only to New Year’s Eve and is an economic powerhouse, generating sales second only to Christmas.
Diwali remains a family observation spread out over five days and is so widely celebrated it seems all India is partying. The diyas drive away any darkness. It is a festive occasion.
Perhaps a Bollywood musical might be just the ticket for figuring out how to connect the festivals.
Certainly this poor poet cannot.
No comments:
Post a Comment