Siftings
Halloween / Undas thoughts
Horror scenes of out-of-this-world monsters, groaning ghosts galore, jangling skeletons out of family closets, grinning skulls with worms creeping out of sockets, lyrically floating white ladies in flowing robes, black-robed witches on brooms silhouetted against a red-gold moon, bemoustached pasty-faced Count Draculas with their retinue of bloody-fanged vampires while bug-eyed zombies in bloody, moldy rags stagger to the beat of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”... Aah, scary time again..
Every year in this season of Hallowe’en or Hallow Even–Undas to the citizens of Manila and most parts of Central and Southern Luzon – most everybody goes crazy or is in a frenzy to get scared as the end of October and the first day of November hove into view. The malls and shopping districts of countries in the Americas and in Europe that have an All Saints’/ All Souls’ Day tradition and /or a Halloween celebration go wild with their outlandish decorations of hanging skeletons, leering ghouls, jack-o-lanterns, cobwebbed ceilings, etc. In the Philippines, Halloween segues into one of the most-awaited celebrations of the year for Pinoys, the All Saints’ Day, which most of them designate as the day on which to honor their beloved dead. Much to the disapproval of parish priests who would insist, with loud outcry from the altars of churches, that November 1 is the Feast of All Saints and must be celebrated with solemn masses to honor all the saints of the Catholic Church with whom the faithful are enjoined to commune and to honor. The same priests insist that November 2 is the day dedicated to all the departed souls, on which the faithful can hear mass and offer prayers for the repose of their beloved dead. But alas for parish priests and church law, the Pinoy faithful has appropriated November 1 as his own day for remembering and communing and touching ground again with his beloved relatives and friends who have gone over to the Other Side. So much for strictness of observance!
Again, we expect Pinoys to clean surroundings and paint the tombs, set up eating places inside cemeteries; light candles and say prayers or hold masses; set up tables for festive food they bring to share with the dead; set up mahjong tables, radio sets or karaokes, even, to simulate a true fiesta atmosphere often replete with boisterous laughter and the joys of camaraderie–enough to waken the dead! Often, the festivities descend into bathos with drunkenness and fights which end up in actual death for a reveler or two. Fiesta Minatay! The Feast of the Dead coming to a close at day’s end with a literal death, reminiscent of the ritual sacrifice in olden days to honor a god or invoke his divine intervention.
But why this fixation with a tradition which combines the horror of death with the merriment of celebrations, feasts and festivals? The French critic Roland Barthes calls this condition “carnival”, where you find not just the thrill rides and caged wild animals and clowns to transport you to a place beyond the reach of your ordinary humdrum life, but also the freak shows where the grotesquely abnormal are displayed in a surreal blend of disgust, amazement and relief – relief somehow that you are not born with mermaid legs or elephant ears, or are 7.5 feet tall or is weighs 1000 kilos so that you have to be carried around by at least 5 men. At the most, you can only simulate the merriment of a clown hiding his real sadness behind a thick mask of white, black and red paint, singing the theme from the Charlie Chaplin classic, “Limelight” movie: “Smile, though your heart is aching/ Smile, even though it’s breaking”...
Indeed, why?
If you look closely beyond the “Trick or Treat” game for children, beyond the ghoulish masks and the cutesy/ bitsy devil-horns or jack-o-lanterns or–the latest rage yet!–the hatchet-buried-in-the-split-skull headband – all of these and more, trivialize or manage to imbue with humor the experience of Death and its concomitants: Anxiety, Stress, Angst, Worry, most of all Fear. Fear of the Unknown, Fear of Annihilation. All the emotions and tensions that together bespeak the End of Life for All Humanity.
No mortal has lived to live forever. As my mother used to say: “Wala man sa aton nangin bato. Tanan kita mabalik sa aton Makaako.” Subtext” Human life is organic, meaning, it is subject to decay and will return to the dust from which it came. Unlike stones and other inorganic substances which can defy the onslaught of Time for a longer period. But eventually, in the course of Eternity, all substances, organic and inorganic, turn to cosmic dust.
So here we are. All Saints’/Souls’ Day again. Certainly it is a reason for a holiday, another respite from the workaday world before the long Christmas Holiday which precedes the end, the death of the old year. Amidst all these Halloween claptrap and Undas wreaths and candles, parties and gimmicks, have we paused to consider why? Why do we have all these attempts to render humorous, to sanitize, to make cute for the benefit of our kids the likes of Dracula, Frankenstein, the zombies?
Is it because, at the bottom of our beings, these monsters and supernatural creatures have their seeds, that they are really no strangers to us? Or is it because these seek to remind us all, without the fear, the pain and the angst, that Death Is Part Of Life. That Death Is Not The End Of Life. That no matter how grisly or ugly or sad dying may be, Death is part of the continuous Flow of Eternity in the Scheme of this Boundless, borderless, limitless Universe. Einstein’s Theory of Relativity suggests that the Past merges into the Present, the Present into the Future, ad infinitum, in an endless replay that the limited mortal human mind can never fathom.
It will just give you a headache if you try to fathom this paradox. As of now, there is the solace of the Ritual of Burial, whether Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or whatever religion. Burial and its solemn proceedings of prayers, wakes, the high ceremonials carried out with sacred Solemnity,even Pomp, with Dignity and Infinite Grace, while the smoke of incense and other fragrant burnt offerings rise up to honor our various God, that the reality of our human loss be rendered more acceptable, more bearable as we struggle to meet Life’s challenges in our daily existence.
To make life more livable. And what, in the final analysis, makes Life possible? Love. Love makes life possible. And we honor our dead as long as we live because we love them. Because Love Is Stronger Than Death. Love is stronger than Death.
In this season of Undas, we will prove this truism once more. A comforting Undas to us all!
