Here comes Halloween....Halloween....Halloween....

Whenever I watch Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas - and I LOVE that movie - I always feel a sense of disappointment as the movie ends when Jack Skellington - The Pumpkin King - restores order and Christmas to the world. But then, I am among the minority who loves Halloween so much more than that other, bile-inducing festival of indulgence that happens later in the year. Halloween is a reminder that we all have a skeleton underneath our skins. Its occurrence at the end of October, when the year is growing old, is no accident. We need this annual convulse in the same way that the Mardi Gras occurs just before those weeks of po-faced penitence they call Lent. We all come from darkness and one day, we will return to it, too. Kitting out in a scary costume is a harmless masquerade, one that puts us in touch with this inevitability and our other, darker fears. Dressing up as a werewolf or in a skeleton suit allows us to externalise and release our fears in a benign and collective way. We need our intervals of darkness as much as day needs night, and summer needs winter; places of eternal summer do exist - I think they call them deserts? So, next weekend, as you enjoy the candied eyeballs and the witches’ fingers, let the darkness enfold you as relentlessly as you enjoy the blossoms in spring and the beach in summer. Have a wonderful and frightening time!