Just a few days away from the
famously scary festival of Halloween, this year, I find myself in North
America, amusingly in the seat of the pumpkin carving, howling and wailing,
trick-or-treating, supposedly scary celebration of the spirits and ghosts from
the other world! Halloween is not new to me, but something which I hadn’t had
the opportunity to enjoy from close quarters hitherto.
The festival traces its roots to
the very old Celtic and Gaelic rituals of celebrating “Samhain”, during harvest times, of honoring and warding off the
spirits of the dead. As tradition and superstition blend together even in
modern day Halloween concepts, people cling to their beliefs of not crossing
paths with black cats or passing beneath a leaning ladder, believing that
witches still disguise themselves as black cats to avoid detection or ghosts
easily get attracted to leaning ladders.
What was once observed as “All
Saints Day” and the eve prior as Hallow’s Eve has now christened itself to
Halloween, the funny yet scary event that kids and grown-ups alike, look
forward to. While there have been many myths weaved around Halloween to make it
appear scarier, tradition still holds that the spirits of the dead return to
the earth on this night! And as they do, they tend to create more confusion
than joy, thus scaring away the living to their fears’ end! Hence, people want
to carve out pumpkins and turn them into lighted lanterns, leave food outside
their homes, and light large bonfires in the fields to mis-lead and ward off
the evil fairy spirits from the neighbourhood.
Passing through the streets of
the Canadian capital and seeing Halloween preparations at almost every turn, I
cannot help but be amused. Also, my childhood memory of our very own Bengali “Bhoot Chaturdashi” seems to come back
very strongly in the spirit of Halloween!
A ritual celebrated on the fourteenth
night of the moon’s cycle at this time of the year, and just preceding the
worship of the goddess Kali, Bhoot
Chaturdashi is a simple yet sinister celebration without doubt. Fourteen
earthen prayer lamps (now replaced by candles in many homes) are lighted and
placed in different locations and corners of the home; it is believed that
these lamps burn to ward off evil spirits.
Goddess Kali, the slayer of all
monsters and ghostly spirits, is in herself quite unnerving to behold in some
of her avatars, and heralding her
arrival it is believed that all the creepy and spooky creatures of the
netherworld run helter-skelter the night before! That these spirits do not hide
in any dark corner, or cast their evil spells, people light the earthen prayer
lamps in their homes.
Children in many a Bengali household even today run
around behind their elders fanning away such imaginary spirits as the lamps are
dutifully placed in every room! The delight and fun in this activity is forever
etched in childhood memories!
So, with the pumpkin lanterns of
Halloween and the decorated earthen lamps of Bhoot Chaturdashi, ghosts and spirits of every form, shape and size
that haunt the world, certainly do not enjoy such frightening ‘fun and abandon’ by us at their expense,
this time every year!
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