Remember, Remember

This blog understands, but disagrees.

Well, it’s a little bit late, but better late than never. What’s been happening?
Well, we’ve just had Hallowe’en, we’ve had Bonfire Night and the clocks have gone back. Now we’re officially into Autumn, as far as I care. Time to get out the warm clothes, the mulling spices and the vegetable stews.

But I’ve been thinking about the events of the past week, and these things kind of confuse me.

Let’s start with the clocks, shall we?

I understand the purpose of the clocks changing, and I know that once that happens and it gets dark early we like to wrap up warm and it’s all very lovely. But surely it can’t be as simple as it appears to be for us.
Jon Richardson has a theory that no one actually knows when the clocks change. I sure don’t. But every year, without fail, I manage to get caught up on it. Jon’s theory states that it is, in fact, just a little old lady somewhere who’ll tell her visitors
“The clocks go back this weekend.”
“Oh, right. Better remind people then.” they’ll say to one another.
And that’s that. Word spreads, people adjust their clocks accordingly. But I honestly can’t keep up with when it happens. And when it does happen, it baffles me. If we can control time in this way, arbitrarily adding or removing hours from our lives, why are we limited to only twice a year? How do we get an extra day every four years? Where does that time go when we’re not using it? Do we change the clocks at midnight, or do we wait until 0100h and then repeat that hour? Is it just midnight for an hour and then business continues as usual? No one seems to know. I know I feel sorry for the poor guys who do the TV and radio listings.
But then we just get on with it. We get an hour longer in bed, although most of us will just stay up for an extra hour anyway. Brilliant. Lie in. It’s dark by tea time and we don’t feel so guilty about staying in and drinking hot chocolate all night and the beautiful words ‘Hot toddy’ reappear.
But where does that hour go? Do we keep it in a little box until we need to get it out again, only visible a couple of times a year like the Blue Peter tortoise? I always ask these questions, and I am always met by the same response: an unimpressed stare and a change of conversation topic.
People don’t like to humour me with this.

Never mind.

Onto Bonfire night! When we celebrate a failed terrorist plot by covering fruit in melted sugar, setting off explosives and burning the effigy of the chap who wasn’t as good at regicide as he had first hoped.
Fun for all the family (except the pets, I’ve been told they don’t like fireworks)!
I love Bonfire night. I like fireworks. I don’t know how people can’t. But it is a bizarre celebration. I can’t think of another failed terrorist attack we celebrate with such gusto. I can’t think of another we celebrate at all, whether it was successful or not.
And I kind of miss those harrowing adverts you used to see, warning you not to play with fireworks. The ones now don’t seem to have quite the same impact. Public service announcements just seem to have gone downhill since I was young. I haven’t seen anything that quite compares to the horrors of watching that advert of that kid getting splatted by a train when I was a kid.

On to Hallowe’en! A day when children dress up in order to retain their anonymity and mug strangers for confectionery. Or, perhaps, an excuse for adults to dress up as in less clothes than would usually be acceptable, especially in such cold weather, and get drunk. Wonderful fun for all involved.
And don’t get me wrong, I like Hallowe’en. It’s an excuse for me to stay in, away from all the terrifying children, and watch classic horror movies. I don’t usually need an excuse, I can do that anyway, but sometimes it’s nice to have the option of an excuse just in case I feel the need to have to justify myself to anyone.
But I think I prefer the Mexican ‘Day Of The Dead’ celebrations to our alternative. They know where it’s at, honouring and celebrating the lives of those who are no longer with us, it’s usually a bit more of a jovial thing.
But then again, I live in England, where we’re happy for any excuse for a piss up and where people get annoyed about things, whether justified or not. I once had a conversation with a guy who got really angry at me over something that he had decided during that conversation.
I understand that a lot of people would rather their funerals and wakes be more of a celebration of their life, rather than a sorrowful occasion,  but then a lot of people don’t like that idea. In reality, the whole process is down to the people left behind. It’s for the living, to gain some closure and generally come to terms with the fact. I don’t care, people can celebrate and have a laugh or they can cry their eyes out. Whatever’s best for them. It’s not like I’m going to care. “Do what you need to do” I’ll say in my last will and testament, “Just get on with it. Have a drink on me.”
And, not being affiliated with any Church or Religion, people can pretty much do as they please. There’s no code for how to behave at an Atheist funeral as far as I’m aware. But if some of the money I leave in my will is going on a bar tab, I can pretty much imagine how that’ll go down.
But the thing with Hallowe’en, much like many festivals, is that it had it’s roots in some serious occasion, once upon a time.
I read an article lately, seemingly berating Hallowe’en, because… Well, fuck knows. People were enjoying themselves too much I guess. I don’t fucking know.
But this article was on the website of Archbishop Cranmer, who, as well as being an Archbishop, is also rather conservative. I reckon we’d get on famously…
I’ll let you make up your own mind about the article, but what I gained from it is this:
Hallowe’en isn’t about God. Let’s make it about God.
It’s the idea that it’s all about sinister occult things that they get so caught up on, and why not let’s change it and make people say ‘Hallowmas’ and throw anti-hallowe’en parties.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the same people who will insist on saying ‘Happy Hallowmas’ are also some of the same people who get angry about the whole ‘Let’s rename Christmas ‘Winter Festival” fallacy.
I’m all for making it a joyous celebration, but I was kind of under the impression that it already was.
It’s this quote that bothers me most though, I think:

“This kitsch celebration of the ghoulish, promising confectionery-fuelled mischief for children, and alcohol-fuelled mischief for adults, is promoted not just by the retail industry, but growingly by the entertainment industry, where film and television have made vampires synonymous with hedonism and sexuality, and music artists like Lady Gaga don fetish wear and devil horns just to buy a pint of milk. To many eyes, Halloween has come to represent not just pumpkins and sugar, but the culmination and validation of a year round media diet of horror, the supernatural and the occult.”

I know he’s trying to make a point, but… Seriously… ‘Fetish wear and devil horns just to buy a pint of milk.’? Really?
I’m not even going to start on the whole ‘The media made me do a bad thing’ argument.
And then there’s the thing about Supernatural and The Occult.

Right, here we go. I know that there are a lot of fundamentalist Christians, especially in America, and I know there are a lot of believers in the supernatural, especially in America. I’m not sure if they often go hand in hand. I’m going to guess that they probably don’t, Christians believing that souls ascend or descend and so them remaining on Earth would undermine the whole thing, surely? But, really, they’re going to rip on people for being obsessed with Ghosts ‘n’ Ghouls when their entire religion is based on the Holy Trinity; God, Jesus and The Holy Ghost.
That’s right. Omnipresent spiritual entity, benevolent Jewish zombie and pyromaniacal ghost.
I’m not going to start throwing the whole hypocrisy argument around all over the place, I think I’ve been perhaps a bit cruel to the Christians lately, so I’m going to let this one slide. But really? You’re going to get upset about people liking fiction films and books about zombies and ghosts now are you?

Maybe I should start ripping on another religion. But I reckon that the Buddhists are alright, and Muslims and Jews have been getting it pretty bad without me laying in, and Scientology… Well… They do it to themselves, I don’t even need to say anything. I’m feeling kind today.
Most of this Hallowe’en stuff has nothing to do with the church anyway, just a few guys who don’t like it and are using their religion as an excuse to get irate about it. Not everyone shares the same views. Which is probably why there are so many different Churches and sects of Christianity. It’s the details that count, after all.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed your lie in, your Hallowe’en and your Bonfire night.
Time to get making some hearty stews for the long winter nights, and start saving up for the annual bottle of Baileys.

Big love,
L

P.S. I now write articles for Mobilephonenerd, whose logo I designed a while back. Check it out.
You can also still donate to Movember too. Nice one.

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Tags: bonfire night, christians, ghosts, guy fawkes, halloween, horror, horror films, movember, zombies