A quick bit of Very Important business: Nikki and I are online tonight for an episode of Left Unsupervised! Tune in on Facebook or Youtube and share your comments, witch hints, and hilarity with us!
We have some exciting things happening under the Golden Apple Tree this month! Check here for our October events!
Nikki and I get super excited about Samhain AND Halloween. Yes, Halloween is a crass commercial holiday. It started as a civic holiday intended to prevent vandalism after more Americans moved into city centers in the 20th century - and the pranks traditional to October 31st-November 2nd started getting too expensive to the taxpayers. (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-halloween-was-all-tricks-no-treats-180966996/) I find this fact more hilarious than the pranks themselves, just because many people wearing American Flag caps exhort the one civic holiday designed to save them money AND get them a parade of fun costumes to their front door. There’s just no satisfying some people.
Notably, I often don’t find the traditional pranks of Halloween particularly funny, but that’s a discussion about thresholds, fairies, boundaries, and considering the impact that is probably better covered in a piece centered on attempting to parent the feral when you are feral yourself.
But Nikki and I both enjoy the hell out of visiting stores when the Halloween season comes around. I’m always circling Michael’s starting mid-August, waiting for the cheap wood coffin boxes to come up for sale. I like to stay stocked! My partner Synty and I find visiting a Spirit Halloween store an acceptable date night, even as we find a mix of items that delight us and others that are problematic. (Yes, I have that notorious tarot deck. I’m still a little too gobsmacked by its willful ignorance to do any content creation around it, but I will find my way someday, maybe?)
When Nikki finds her way to her happy place, she often sends me photos of all the shinies that make her light up. Just sharing lights me up - because I love to see my loved ones in a place of joy! While I haven’t found room in our budget for the 12-foot skeletons that Synty fervently wants, I have started to quietly goth our house, with a Samhain tree at the dinner table and a quiet background plan of Halloween movies to watch with our kids, a method to budget their candy, and the more solemn planning of ancestral dinners, psychopomp work, and spirit communication happening the background.
It’s been ten years since I wrote Samhain: Recipes, Rituals and Lore for Halloween. I honestly don’t remember what I wrote word for word - but I do remember saying this much: Halloween is about celebrating that magick exists or the possibility that magick exists. I am fortunate to feel that magick every day, holiday or not - but feeling the magick of Halloween? That’s truly special.
I never know how I’m celebrating until a few days before anymore. I tend more towards solo and family practice, meaning that what’s even possible is often a surprise. My days of planning elegant yet fun events have had to step aside for soccer practice and one kid that’s still scared of the ghosts in our house.
Want to join our Island of Misfit toys? Come hang out with us in our Facebook group Under the Golden Apple Tree. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/960679994877279) Ask questions, share what you’ve learned, have folks group fact-check, and have a good time!
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