Christmas takes place on one of the darkest times of years in the northern hemisphere. So hauntings also were associated with this time of year. Ghosts feature prominently in The Christmas Carol and that was more in keeping with that time.
But it became commonplace for attempts to light the darkness of Christmas. Thus, even before the electric age, some Christmas trees had lit candles on them. In our more safety conscious age, I’m glad this custom has been replaced with electric light. And some people spend a fortune lighting the outdoors as well with their strings of lights and other lit up decorations. And now, with the advent of LED lights which work using much lower amounts of electricity, it is only becoming cheaper and cheaper to run these lights. So I expect even more people will do this in the future.
But at least we have Hallowe’en and its remaining hold on the dark things at the dark time of year. But in this age of safety consciousness and reducing the fear of little ones, is even Hallowe’en becoming so obviously safe that little or no fear is experienced by anyone? After all, it does seem to be the era that every child seems to have a night light. All little kids seem to know that light chases away the monsters.
A lot of kids these days Trick or Treat with glow sticks. I guess this is because city and town lights aren’t bright enough.
But one of the things stopping Hallowe’en night from being truly scary in the north, is the extension of sunlight. They did this a few years ago when they extended Daylight Savings Time from ending before Hallowe’en to ending after Hallowe’en. This was done through much of North America. So Hallowe’en night has an extra hour of light.
Now parents of little children, was it so hard to take your little ones out an hour earlier if you were that worried of the dark?
So Hallowe’en just becomes that time of year when horror movies appear at theatres and in videos. Any hint that the shadows might hide anything, seems to have been lit up.
