7 life lessons How Halloween Makes You Happier, Kinder, and Healthier

Yesterday, one of my friends sent me a picture of her daughter, who was dressed as a scary witch carrying a broom in one hand and a carved pumpkin in the other. The only cute thing I found out in the entire picture was the carved pumpkin, which looked as if it was trying hard to laugh without any teeth. She posted this in our WhatsApp group, saying, “Happy Halloween.”

And I wondered what happiness one could draw by turning a beautiful cute face into a wrinkled old lady with a spooky getup.

It is fall there in Ireland, the transition period from summer to winter and the cold nip in the air outside makes the weather pleasant to roam around. Instead of capturing the mesmerizing picturesque kaleidoscopic nature, they were busy celebrating an unnerving festival called Halloween.

I still remember how my grandfather sitting on the hammock used to narrate ghost stories to us and we all grandchildren used to listen to him with great concentration sitting like a scaredy-cat, and at that particular moment, even a simple touch from a person can make us scream as if that touch have the power to take away our life. We were so terrified. And here in some countries, they are celebrating the ghost festival.

This made me curious to know why the dead are being celebrated in some countries and why even someone invented a day like this to wear weird costumes as if they are ghosts or spirits.

And my search bar found many answers; I found out that there is a lot more to Halloween than just the scary stories and Trick or Treat.

So what is Halloween?

It all started with the Celtic people, or the celts lived in regions now in Ireland, Britain, and Northern France. The celts had a belief of remembering the deceased and keeping the evil spirits peaceful, and they did this every year, and it was called Samhain. And Halloween is derived from the words Hallow and even, which means holy evening.

People believed that wearing scary costumes would scare away evil spirits. And they carve the pumpkin even some people nowadays are using plastic pumpkin and keep it outside their homes to keep out the evil spirits.

“Where there is no imagination there is no horror.” — Arthur Conan Doyle, British Writer

Then I understood we could learn a lot of things from this festival.

• It teaches us gratitude: Cultivating the habit of being grateful is highly essential for a happy life.

• It helps in self control: In this festival, children go door to door and say, Trick or treat! “The person then gives children candies and usually admires children’s customers. This selfless act makes the children happy and helps crush our egos and make us a better person.

• It keeps us together: Halloween allows us to know our neighbors better and socialize with others, which boosts serotonin and dopamine hormones that make us happy and suppresses our stress hormones.

• It pushes us to come out of our comfort zone: Staying inside the cocoon is safe. There is absolutely no doubt in that, but if you want to fly and taste the world’s different nature, you have to become a butterfly; that’s the rule of nature. Halloween helps you to interact with strangers and neighbors. If you are a person who is more comfortable in your comfort area, it allows you to explore the new possibilities of mingling with new people.

• It makes you understand the positive power of negative thinking: A single thought of death is enough to give chills in your spine; the horrible feeling is beyond words. But in this festival people dance on this concept, play pranks. They turn horror into play and death into levity; hence positivity takes over one of the most negative emotions of life, i.e., death. Life is having its way of snatching the carpet under the feet; it’s that uncertain. So why to let negative things control our emotion.

• It teaches us how to embrace odds: People can enjoy spooky theme parties with persons who turned themselves into a blood-sucking vampire, an ugly witch, white-faced ghosts, evil spirits. It shows that they are enjoying without bothering about there outer physical appearance. You look weird and scary, but still, they accept you, party with you.  It gives a strong message that external beauty is immaterial unless you are not beautiful from inside. It is essential how naturally one carries the aura of beauty. The beauty is in the humbleness, gratitude and kindness that one caries, in peaceful nature, in absolute confidence and inner calmness, in gentle soul, in total confidence and inner serenity.

• This festival says how to confront your fear: What can be weirder than partying with spectres, apparitions, spirits, blood-sucking vampires, a bare skeleton flaunting its ugly white bones without flesh that to in a spooky paranormal ambience. If you can manage to deal with these horror scenarios, then you can tend to escape fear easily. We all know fear breeds more fear, which can be harmful because it ceases your thought process and paralyzes your action. So face it fearlessly with all your heart it will fade away and disappear.