Happy Halloween!There is something very satisfying about the shape and colour of pumpkins, it seems to me. Like concentrated sunlight--which, now that I think of it, may be the reason why using them as part of harvest festival is so appropriate.
Certainly the many, many pumpkins I've seen on doorsteps these last 10 days add colour to days which are increasingly short. What a contrast with the rather contradictory messages at large this time of year when a festival that originally commemorated the dead has become a festival for children who parade around in costumes and eat too many sweets!
When the kids were small I obsessed about this more, giving out only boxed raisins and insisting that they eat as much as they liked of whatever they collected that night, but that the rest be thrown away. The fact that I've started buying little candy bars to give out to the relatively few little ones now living on our street (streets have generations, too, I realize) amazes them. But as Emerson said (most appropriately,) "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..."
The quote ends: "... adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines," which is appropriate too, given Montreal's municipal elections tomorrow.
4 comments:
Beautiful colour, shape and true quote of a great nature philosopher!
Best times and statesmen for Montreal !
Its such a shame one's children cannot revisit these scenes. By the time they get us trained -- they are too old to get the treat! We live out of the beaten trek and so have few haints visitin'. Still I get something on the off-chance. I've learned to get something I would enjoy, as I'm likely to have most of it left.
Happy Samhain!
--ml
Very few kids this year--none of the little ones on the street, and not even many of the bigger kids from farther afield. The weather is rainy and windy, but I'm wondering if H1N1 hasn't played a role too. Don't know that I would have allowed my kids when small to trick or treat any place which wasn't in our usual circle of friends.
Oh well, there's a lot of OHenrys left, which Lee will devour.
Not a single one at my door (I live on the top storey of a typical triplex, in la Petite Italie). Haven't seen any out and about either, and I've been home since late in the afternoon, so I'd have seen the little ones.
Just as well - I've pretty much banned sugar from my dwelling, and certainly don't buy candy (more for reasons of teeth than anything else).
Halloween has relatively shallow roots in Québec, but it is nice to see make-believe celebrations for children.
Oh Gord, I've accepted to work at a poll. Problem is, it is not in my neighbourhood - it is at the other end of this strangely shaped arrondissement. There are very few buses on a Sunday morning, and I'm not cycling there and leaving my bicycle outside all day and evening. Confess (geezerdom) that I don't like cycling after dark, although I do have lights fore and aft.
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