the time has come for colds and overcoats
Oct. 28th, 2005 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
enthusiastickOK, let's talk about Samhain for a minute.
For me, Samhain has strong associations of saying farewell. I tend to see the year as divided into two halves, a Winter and a Summer, with Samhain and Beltaine being the holidays that mark transitions between the two. And I am unreservedly better off, happier even, in the Summer half of the year. So much so that I sometimes feel guilty of using the intervening major holidays (Yule, Imbolc and Ostara) primarily as benchmarks, demarcating how much of Winter has passed, and how long remains until Beltaine. So Samhain is about saying farewell, not just to the dead, but also to my better half. Bidding farewell to all those things I associate with Summer, like warmth and light and love, and bracing for all those things I associate with Winter, like cold and darkness and loneliness.
Incidentally, its not as though there aren't things I enjoy in Winter. Samhain is immediately followed by the traditional American holiday season, and I totally get into that stuff. My family, like my friends, can generally make me smile no matter how awful I feel. Nevertheless, as the Counting Crows have it, "I guess the Winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower..."
As a result of that viewpoint I often go into Samhain celebrations with a certain degree of desparation, a sort of frantic desire to achieve one last gasp of Summer-style revelry before settling in for the dreary months ahead. It never works, but I always try. I like Samhain as holiday. I like the costumes and the symbolism and the emphasis on come-as-you-aren't. But its hard to escape thoughts of what it heralds, and so I invariably find myself alone with my thoughts at some point, wistfully turning things over in my head. Back in college I spent a couple of Samhains sitting on the lakefill, staring at the sky, wishing it didn't ever have to be Winter.
Its a self-fulfilling prophesy, and its the definition of bittersweet. Samhain.
For me, Samhain has strong associations of saying farewell. I tend to see the year as divided into two halves, a Winter and a Summer, with Samhain and Beltaine being the holidays that mark transitions between the two. And I am unreservedly better off, happier even, in the Summer half of the year. So much so that I sometimes feel guilty of using the intervening major holidays (Yule, Imbolc and Ostara) primarily as benchmarks, demarcating how much of Winter has passed, and how long remains until Beltaine. So Samhain is about saying farewell, not just to the dead, but also to my better half. Bidding farewell to all those things I associate with Summer, like warmth and light and love, and bracing for all those things I associate with Winter, like cold and darkness and loneliness.
Incidentally, its not as though there aren't things I enjoy in Winter. Samhain is immediately followed by the traditional American holiday season, and I totally get into that stuff. My family, like my friends, can generally make me smile no matter how awful I feel. Nevertheless, as the Counting Crows have it, "I guess the Winter makes you laugh a little slower, makes you talk a little lower..."
As a result of that viewpoint I often go into Samhain celebrations with a certain degree of desparation, a sort of frantic desire to achieve one last gasp of Summer-style revelry before settling in for the dreary months ahead. It never works, but I always try. I like Samhain as holiday. I like the costumes and the symbolism and the emphasis on come-as-you-aren't. But its hard to escape thoughts of what it heralds, and so I invariably find myself alone with my thoughts at some point, wistfully turning things over in my head. Back in college I spent a couple of Samhains sitting on the lakefill, staring at the sky, wishing it didn't ever have to be Winter.
Its a self-fulfilling prophesy, and its the definition of bittersweet. Samhain.
