Is Halloween a real holiday?

My daughter has always declared Halloween to be her favourite holiday --and I have always asked her why she considers it a holiday since she doesn’t get the day off from school to celebrate it? I had always thought it was just about dressing up (sometimes in costumes which I now know to have been cultural appropriation), games, seeing friends and collecting boatloads of candy. In more recent years, she’s added horror movies to the mix.

I brought up the subject again this year -- her friend has been self-isolating with us since the start of COVID, and I wanted to get his perspective on the day. “Of course Halloween is a holiday”, he told us. In addition to the eye roll and OMG-here-we-go-again look from my daughter came a long discussion about paganism, witches, witchcraft, the Day of the Dead, and the importance of recognizing different beliefs and cultural traditions. For both of them the day has a lot more meaning than I would have thought. 

When in doubt - take a poll

At one of our daily gatherings with my team, I put the same question out as a poll, as I was curious about their takes on the day. The results: 60% YES and 40% NO, and it sparked a bigger question about how and what do we qualify as holidays? Is there a distinction in our minds between holidays we celebrate and the statutory and civic holidays where we don’t work? And those stat holidays, many rooted as they are in a particular faith -- are they still relevant in as diverse a city as Toronto, or a country like Canada where our population is composed of people from every faith, culture, and ethnicity? Are the holidays that are recognized by our government universally relevant? 

Are we attached to the right traditions?

COVID has brought us to our knees on so many levels - physical, mental, spiritual, and communal. The killing of George Floyd and the subsequent resurgence of the conversation around #BlackLivesMatter, not just in the United States but around the globe, has kickstarted conversations around racism, colonialism, and cultural oppression. More of us are starting to question why our country is set up the way it is. And it has me asking myself, Am I attached to these traditions? Do they still make sense? And what should we think about doing differently? I feel as if I am waking up from a deep slumber, a dream in which I was conditioned by the system to see the world in only one way, as though this was the way it ought to be. 

And it grows more and more clear to me that I have lived my entire life in a white colonial European bubble. And that just because this is the way it has always been does not mean that it is the way it should be, or needs to be going forward. I think we need to dismantle these white colonial structures, piece by piece. It’s going to take time and effort, and it definitely needs a lot of discussion among all of us as a society. It is daunting when I think about all that needs to be done and addressed. 

The following has been attributed to Saint Francis of Assissi, Desmond Tutu, and K’ung Fu-Tzu:

One can eat an elephant, if one takes one bite at a time. 

And that’s what we’ll have to do. Tackle the problem one issue, one injustice, one step at a time. I will question my assumptions, engage in conversations with my friends, family, colleagues about the frameworks we work and live within. I will continue to ask how we can look at these structures with an anti-oppression and anti-racist lens? What can I do to actively be a part of the change, and to not be a part of holding on to systems that really don’t align with my values? 

Today the team will come together to celebrate Halloween, each in their own way. But I’ll be thinking about more than costumes and candy.