Director's Wave | Volume 6 Edition 8

Dear CIS Community,

Something to Ponder

“For Halloween, I’m going as that feeling you get at a store when you try to refold a sweater properly and put it back on the shelf.” - Rob Delaney

Halloween is here! These three words inspire a variety of questions, such as…Come on mom; please can I stay out a little later? Can you believe how much this costume made out of cheap material cost? How much will the dental work cost this year? Why do people like Halloween - it is merely a marketing ploy for consumption? Do you want to trade a chocolate bar for a bag of chips? Why not love Halloween, it is a time when families get together, people share creativity and people of all ages laugh? … And the list goes on.

There are several versions of how Halloween started. Conventional wisdom attributes Halloween’s origins to an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain. This festival celebrated the end of the harvest season, representing a time to make an inventory of food and other supplies in preparation for winter.

Today, a student asked me if I like Halloween. I diplomatically responded that I enjoy having a costume and I clearly eat too much candy.

In reality, I am not a fan of Halloween. Sure I like dressing up. And for sure I have a lot of nostalgia for trick or treating as it conjures up memories of walking and laughing with friends for hours on lovely snowy nights (indeed the snow meant that everyone in my neighbourhood had a costume that could be worn over a snowsuit - it was pretty hard to look like a convincing muscular Spiderman from the cool sixties cartoon with the bulk of a snowsuit underneath my makeshift “Spidey suit”).

I find now, I lean toward being like the grouchy old man near the end of my childhood street. Often I am dismayed by people’s lack of manners when trick or treating - what happened to a polite thank you and please. There is a distinct lack of tricks too - it seems to be just candy, candy and more candy. The costumes seem elaborate, yet are primarily purchased and delivered, thus lacking imagination - or there are too many costumes clearly knocked off from a youtuber who thinks they get money each time you click on their site. It strikes me that Halloween has become a homage to veblenesque conspicuous consumption, poor health, wastefulness, questionable manners and dress-up with veiled entendres. And the whole thing with horror movies … Phew, it feels good to get all that out! 

Today at school, it was lovely and endearingly cute to watch the EC students parade around the school in their costumes this morning. Likewise it was fun to see our senior class all coordinate and dress as Smurfs. Similarly, the creativity of teaching teams dressing in different themes set a tone of togetherness.

This evening, I will have my spiderman shirt on, handing out candy (though when a person says trick or treat, my response will be trick and the quality of the joke or magic trick will determine the amount of candy a person received). Of course, I may consider keeping my door locked, and the lights dimmed so I may watch the Blue Jays win the Major League Baseball Championship (oddly known as the World Series) in game six whilst eating my very own bag of all dressed chips with a side bowl of chocolate almonds. In the end, I will have a smile on my face as I know Halloween celebrations may contribute, in a small way to nostalgia and memories that may help our young people from being “a grouchy old person” who thinks Halloween has become an homage to convenience, conspicuous consumption and lazy marketing ploys. Perhaps in this year’s case it may also be the Halloween that is remembered when we used some of our resources to support family and friends in Jamaica as they begin their recovery from Hurricane Melissa.

Wishing everyone a good weekend - sincerely,

Jim

Jim Urquhart

Director - Cayman International School