Live and Let Live (a Halloween Tale)

It’s the Halloween special here on the Camino a Ítaca. My latest looks at the false rage at a harmless ‘tradition’. Click over to read the original in Spanish or have a look at the English version below. (PDF en castellano abajo).

Sacrilege comes in many
forms, though I’m not sure that putting pineapple on pizza can be categorized
as such. True, it may not be your favorite type of pizza, it may even make your
stomach turn somewhat, but is it really worth losing sleep over?

In today’s social media
world, where people relate with each other in their echoing online bubbles, the
smallest things get blown up way beyond their origins. The easily offended
suddenly proclaim themselves victims and words lose their meanings overnight.

The quickly triggered
choose the strangest things to get upset about. For some, and here I’m not
including Neapolitans, putting pineapple on pizza is the moral equivalent of
poisoning an entire city’s water system. The sin of admitting that the Vikings
had reached North America half a century before Columbus is akin for some here in Spain to
setting the Spanish flag on fire. Not to mention the sight of two persons of
the same sex touching lips, or acknowledge the mere fact that some might desire
to, become harbingers of the coming of the apocalypse for some. These subjects can
provoke without warning, either by flaring up suddenly or forming part of the
cyclical moaning calendar we all suffer (next comes the so-called ‘War on Xmas’).

One of the most perplexing
of these comes up every year around about this time; Halloween or as I have
seen it delightfully spelt phonetically here in Spain, Jalogüín. A day on the calendar that
sparks anger in certain circles. What’s even more curious about all of the false rage that
surrounds All Saints Eve is that it drives the quickly offended on both extremes
of the political spectrum equally mad.

The standard bearers of
the progressive leftist moral compass vigorously protest that this age-old
Celtic tradition is actually an imperialist American imposition led by the CIA,
specifically designed to wipe out Sephardic buñelos and the roasting of
chestnuts. It is true that most of this hashtag activism takes place on their
iPhones over Twitter, Facebook or Google before having a hamburger while watching
their favorite American series on Amazon Prime or Netflix and then falling
asleep to their favorite British rock band. I’m sure that deep down they mean
what they say.

Those on the right deeply fret
over the unreligious symbolism of some of the costumes depicting heaven and
hell and more importantly, yet at the same time somewhat ironically, fervently maintain
that the dead cannot come back to life. It’s true, a quick look at the most
popular Halloween costumes of the past few years lists witches as the most
popular costume but these are closely followed by morally tainting dinosaurs, fairies,
cowboys and clowns, not to mention those morally reprehensible bunny rabbits. It
makes you wonder if the inhabitants of the peninsula complained with the same
vigour when the church coopted Saturnalia.

Both sides seem to forget
that culture and cultures are not permanent, fixed states. People learn from
one another. Ideas travel. Jazz may have been born in America, but it would be
absurd to say it can’t be played elsewhere by non-Americans.

But really, if someone has
a serious problem with kids dressing up in costumes and eating candy on a
special day of the year, there truly are monsters to worry about.