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Of Halloween and Horses
Nov. 7th, 2025 02:47 pmLast Friday evening was Halloween and I went out with a couple of friends for a crawl through the city, which was full of people dressed up for an evening of hedonistic entertainment; "you're dressed up like a clown, putting on your act, it's the only time all year you'll ever admit that" (Dead Kennedy's, "Halloween", 1982). I doubt that many have any clue whatsoever about its relationship to the liminal Celtic harvest festival of Samhain, or even the Christian Allhallowtide, where the dead are remembered and respected. The closest that any contemporary culture comes to combining these traditions, in my opinion, is probably the Mexican "el Día de los Muertos", which also incorporates a strong sense of danse macabre and memento mori, along with insightful and socialised humour through mock epitaphs, "calavera literaria".
As a highly secularised pantheist, "now that makes it clear I'm no priest or monk" (Severed Heads, "All Saints Day", 1989), I nevertheless rail against the disenchantment of the world; "Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist das Mystische, sondern dass sie ist" (Wittgenstein, TLP, 1912). The festival of "el Día de los Muertos" at least illustrates that one can hold a non-denominational fiesta that has some depth to it. Alas, it seems that the relatively recent import of Halloween to Australia has been the saccharine version that is utterly trivialised, commodified and commercialised, and stripped of any significance.
In that sense, perhaps it is appropriate that Australia holds the Melbourne Cup in the same week. I don't particularly care for horses as a species; as one writer has quipped, they are "evolution's mistake", and a good argument against Intelligent Design. For our mainstream culture, it's an opportunity to frock up and get themselves so drunk that they can't stand. Scratch the surface and you find that the festival is basically a blood sport with the 2024/25 racing season resulting in the most deaths from racing on record. They shoot horses, don't they?
Certainly, I had a great afternoon out on the day at the Royal Melbourne Hotel with visiting interstate friends from the Northern Territory and South Australia. Great company, great conversation, and even a venue I could reminisce about; the former 19th-century police complex was also a goth club in the 1990s that I used to frequent. But I cannot forget one track from that era; "I dress this way just to keep them at bay because Halloween is every day" (Ministry, "Every Day is Halloween", 1984).
As a highly secularised pantheist, "now that makes it clear I'm no priest or monk" (Severed Heads, "All Saints Day", 1989), I nevertheless rail against the disenchantment of the world; "Nicht wie die Welt ist, ist das Mystische, sondern dass sie ist" (Wittgenstein, TLP, 1912). The festival of "el Día de los Muertos" at least illustrates that one can hold a non-denominational fiesta that has some depth to it. Alas, it seems that the relatively recent import of Halloween to Australia has been the saccharine version that is utterly trivialised, commodified and commercialised, and stripped of any significance.
In that sense, perhaps it is appropriate that Australia holds the Melbourne Cup in the same week. I don't particularly care for horses as a species; as one writer has quipped, they are "evolution's mistake", and a good argument against Intelligent Design. For our mainstream culture, it's an opportunity to frock up and get themselves so drunk that they can't stand. Scratch the surface and you find that the festival is basically a blood sport with the 2024/25 racing season resulting in the most deaths from racing on record. They shoot horses, don't they?
Certainly, I had a great afternoon out on the day at the Royal Melbourne Hotel with visiting interstate friends from the Northern Territory and South Australia. Great company, great conversation, and even a venue I could reminisce about; the former 19th-century police complex was also a goth club in the 1990s that I used to frequent. But I cannot forget one track from that era; "I dress this way just to keep them at bay because Halloween is every day" (Ministry, "Every Day is Halloween", 1984).
