This is Halloween!

Boys and girls of every age
Wouldn’t you like to see something strange?
Come with us and you will see,
This our town of Halloween!

- From “A Nightmare Before Christmas” by Tim Burton

Halloween is one of those things that’s pretty obvious.  It’s a spooky time of year when everything seems a little depressing – why not make it fun?  Yet any history of the holiday starts with ancient Celts and Romans and winds up … not entirely making sense.  How do we get from religious celebration to gorging ourselves on sugar?

Irish Pride

The big party known as St Patrick’s Day is upon us.  Saint Paul, like many cities, more or less shuts down for a day as the town is painted green and flows with rivers of Guinness that wash celebrants down the streets from one bar to another.  The theme of the party is Irish Pride, something that seems like a cheap excuse for a lot of drinking to most people.  The Irish aren’t a people who stand out most of the year, blending in as part of the great majority of our culture here in the US, Canada, Australia, and all the other places we’ve settled.

But it wasn’t always this way.  The reason we still have a party isn’t just a big drunk as we wait for Spring.  Irish Pride was earned the hard way, like fraternity hazing.  It’s a standard that nearly all ethnic groups have had to go through as generations move from being immigrants to mainstream citizens.

Pledge Drive!

It’s Pledge Drive time at Minnesota Public Radio!  This Winter’s pitch for bucks comes at the same time Congress is (once again) looking to slash funding for public broadcasting.  That means one thing to me – I better get my own Pledge Drive in while I can.

Welcome to the first ever Barataria in-blog Pledge Drive!  There’s a survey at the end where you can tell me just what you think anonymously and easily, whether you give or not.

Doctor Who

A long holiday is more than a few days off, it’s a trip back through time.  Reconnecting with family and friends drops us back into conversations and simple glints in the eye that send us back to who we were long ago.  To our parents, we will always be the child they lovingly shielded from the darkness or spent hours crafting a perfect holiday for.  To our childhood friends we are still the kids who had small adventures together.  The traditions that set the scene for all this are as varied as our lives, but they often involve rituals around a television watching a holiday special or sports.

This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, it’s just what most of us do.

Winter Solstice

Tomorrow is, for my family and me, the big Winter holiday.  The Solstice is precisely at 23:38 GMT (5:38 PM CST) on 21 December, always right on schedule. At this moment, the northern hemisphere will be at its darkest, but also starts turning back towards the sun. We celebrate it by blowing out the many candles that are lit and enjoying a few moments without light or sound – just the music of the spheres to contemplate for a moment. This is our holiday for the season.