Welcome to the approaching Time of the Ancestors, celebrated in both northern and southern hemispheres as Halloween on October 31. Our ancestors would have recognized these modern times when children go to school hungry and to bed cold, where previously honest mothers steal basic food items from grocery stores and millions flee with their children or shelter as best they can in war-torn lands.
But still the world turns and those of us with sufficient resources at this time of the ancestors, can recall the old family stories, cook our great-great grandparents’ recipes and put extra in the food banks as we buy our grandchildren plastic spooky skeletons and scary masks in an indivisible mix of folk lore and commercialism.
In the northern hemisphere at Samhain, in the days that traditionally herald in the winter, we recall Jack o’ lantern whom the loveliest of Morrigu Fate sisters three times in his life asked to go with her across the river of death to immortality. He was too afraid; now he walks between worlds with his small light, recalled as the Halloween pumpkin, in some lands once a swede. In the southern world, Jack laughs, plays can’t catch me, changes his garments and in an eyeblink leaps into renewed life to celebrate the ancient summer time’s return as wild Beltane Jack ‘o’ Green. He seizes life, free as the blossoming woodland greenery and crowns the maiden goddess with wildflowers.
He reminds us at the season’s turning, both Jacks are one and the same, that the human spirit can both mourn and rejoice, expressing in our words, our kindnesses, in those we try to influence for the better, the promise of newly blossoming flowers of summer and the falling leaves of the coming winter days.
We are the ancestors of future generations, borrowing from them the precious but not always treasured earth. The spooky skeletons and sticky candies of Halloween sugarcoat the path between darkness and light, momentarily illuminating those who have gone before and those waiting in the wings who meet within us.