Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

by Katherine May

Halloween is an overturning of the natural order, with a lineage in old traditions of reversing the roles, letting the poor become rulers, and bringing the rich low. There has long been a feverish link between monsters and mockery, and those without power have often been given licence to play at the edges of civility in order to quell more dangerous lurches towards riot and rebellion. At Halloween, the next generation gets to express their wound-up potential for making trouble, and so offers us a comforting vision of the restraint they show during the rest of the year. For Bert, who is a decade away from all-out insurgency, Halloween is the festival that gives him access to the encroaching winter nights, letting him dress up and go brazenly out into the dark evening, knocking on unfamiliar doors. He wants the camp pantomime of Halloween, the last outpost of summer before his playtime gets seriously restricted by the dark.