Monkey's Blog - with a little help from Alice

Happy Halloween!

I had lots of fun dressing up for this tableau, and Alice felt very proud of making such a wonderful squash lantern just for me. But I'm not at all sure if you're actually allowed to say Happy Halloween! It's not like Christmas or someone's Birthday. Always the stickler for accuracy, Alice says Halloween is really the old pagan festival of Samhain, which got incorporated into the Christian one of All Hallows' Eve, and is the evening before All Saints' Day.

The skulls, skeletons and ghosts that appear at our commercialised Halloween (supposedly scarey) are a product of this culture's inability to come to terms with death, she says. I think I agree, even though decay is more of a problem for me than your actual death, not being technically animate at all. And sorry if I've spoilt your illusion!

In Latin countries like Mexico, they go the whole hog to celebrate the Day of the Dead, or Día de los Muertos, visiting their family's and friends' graves and feasting among the tombs at night. See this really good article in The Guardian. It's a festival for both embracing death and rejoicing in the pleasures of life. They properly understand you can't have one without the other. . .

The Trick or Treat stuff goes back to  the Medieaval customs of Souling or Wassailing, when the poor folk went from door to door, singing traditional songs and asking for a gift of money or food.

 The Watersons had a super version of the Souling Song on their album Frost and Fire - one of Alice's favourite albums from way back in the time of vinyl LPs. We couldn't find them singing that one on YouTube, but there are other videos of them, and a version by Sting who gives a slightly different rendition.

Do you like this other photo of me doing Halloween? I think it's just a bit more spooky than the one at the start. You can click on it (and any others) to see a bigger version, or right click and open in a new tab for full size. If you come here often, you'll know that already.

This has turned out to be a shortish post, but one with lots of links to follow - or not, as you please. Alice is getting twitchy because she meant to spend today editing the dozens of photos she took on a recent trip Down South. Quite a few of me among them too. So look out for that coming soon, folks.