How I Learned To Love Halloween
The ancient people of my native land had a concept of time that I have begun to appreciate more and more as I have grown older. The wheel of the year, starting in the frosty, decaying embers of Autumn, passing through the deep darkness of Winter, bursting into life in Spring and basking in the abundance of Summer, has a poetry that countless artists and thinkers have utilized as they described existence. Even other cultures that formed the cradle, not just of my physical existence, but the root of the beliefs which have shaped much of my life, have an understanding of a calendar that cycles round and round, always returning to the same themes. Tellingly, the Hebrews from which Christianity eventually sprang had a view of beginnings which I find very similar to the Celtic wheel of the year. In Jewish understanding, the day starts, from our western perspective, the evening before. Basically, each new day begins in the darkness, and a restful night is necessary prep...