three holidays
The first is Day of the Dead, which as I understand it, celebrates, as I write, the souls of young children. We invite them back from death to join us in this 24 hours, by making shrines to them with all their favorite things. We decorate skulls in lively pink and yellow colors to show that death is joyous, not dark and angry. But if it's joyous, why do they need to come back? They don't, they just visit and join us for a while.The second is Souls' Day. I think it was the Catholics who believed that lots of souls were stuck in the in-between, unable to go to either Heaven or Hell. Now don't get me started, but I for one believe that 100% of us are stuck in the in-between, as I've never met anyone who was 100% good or 100% bad, so I never believed there could be an unkarmic distribution system where someone put an ok person in heaven just because, ok, he was ok. He made a few mistakes, but, what the heck. If sloppy lazy humans were in charge you might have a system like that, but we know that karma is perfect and sloppy lazy humans aren't in charge. Therefore there is some truth to Souls' Day, which is that there are a lot of us floating around in this in-between land. And we might as well celebrate ourselves.
The last one is simply my personal holiday. It is to me the most beautiful time of the year. I'm not sure why I think that; it has to do with the colors, and the freshness of the air, and the refreshing nature of the cold. This is the absolute peak; a few days after the leaf peak, when the reds have turned to pink, and everything is browning a little, that's the best.
So I took the puppies for a walk. They liked it too. They are content now, resting in a warm living room.
Happy holidays!
posted by tom @ 8:06 PM
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