Crossing the Threshold
On the Election, Halloween, and the Void
On the autumnal equinox, September 22nd, we left the dominion of the Sun and crossed into the darker half of the year. This equinox symbolically represents the “crossing of the threshold”, the beginning of new adventures. It is when the hero crosses into the territory of the unknown, where he must face great perils before returning to the realm of light in the spring, at the vernal equinox.
Last night, we crossed a secondary threshold. October 31st, “All Hallows Eve” or “Halloween”, is the night some folk traditions say the veil between our world and the spirit world is the thinnest, and therefore, is also the most dangerous night of the year. November 1st is All Hallows Day, when the Church commemorates all the departed saints, and the 2nd is All Souls Day, when all the dead are remembered. This Christian feast is set right between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. In symbolic solar terms, we could say that while things start trending downward (getting literally darker) at the autumn equinox, this second half of autumn is when things get truly grim. From now until Christmas is the dominion of monsters and darkness. The Church picked this time to remember the dead for a reason.
Something else is happening soon. America will be electing a new president.
It is quite fitting that we Americans hold our presidential election during the Autumn, the season of new adventures. Every four years, we stand together and peer over the threshold, waiting to see what new journey we’ll be undertaking together, for better or for worse. As a nation, we cross into the unknown.
But it is even more fitting how we hold our great election not just in the autumn, but right after the feast of Allhallowstide. The darkest, grimmest, most macabre time of the year, symbolizing death and the dead, why choose this time for an election? This seems to say something more profound about the soul of America.
Halloween in the United States is a weird holiday, as no one seems to know what its really about, or to even really care. It’s mostly used as a drinking holiday, and overall it feels more akin to the 4th of July than anything else. Very few Americans actually observe All Saints Day or All Souls Day on November 1st and 2nd. It is a holiday even more secularized than Easter and Christmas. And unlike in Mexico on the Day of the Dead, there’s no cultural belief in America that the dead actually return and walk among us during this feast. American Halloween is a “fake” holiday
But what if to make up for our lack of belief, we have replaced this traditional festival with something else?
What if election day is America’s true Halloween? We pretend to believe in the monsters on October 31st, we dress up, play games, we revel. But every 4 years on November 5th, we stop pretending. On the night of November 5th, the “monsters” and the dead come out for real.
American parents don’t sit with their children on the night of October 31st and tell them how the dead are truly walking that night, and that they must be brave, and pray to ward them off. But Americans do exactly this on the night of the presidential election.
Each “side” of American politics truly views the other as devils, in a sense that is increasingly becoming more and more literal. Our elections have become less a political event and more an event of true horror. The entire nation stays up all night, holding vigil, experiencing a collective horror. The horror of the “other”, the monstrous, coming into power. People experience true terror during this time. Fear runs rampant across the entire nation on November 5th. The “monsters” come out to play for real.
We “revive” the dead for our festival. In the weeks leading up to the election, both sides of the isle will use the images and words of the dead. Lincoln, MLK, Kennedy, the founding fathers, etc, they all participate in the election along with the living. We no longer observe All Saints Day, but America has found its own secular saints to take on the job.
Of course, our festival culminates with one side experiencing the terror of what they view as the monsters actually winning. Unlike in the Christian feast of Allhallowstide, where the whole point is that the demons and the dead are driven away for all. For us, only one side will experience this relief.
This classic clip from the 2016 election shows us a woman who may not have believed the dead and story-book monsters were walking the earth just a few nights prior on Halloween, but she certainly believed a literal devil had just been elected president.
Perhaps it was inevitable that a secularized people would still find a way to observe this time of horror in the solar year. Perhaps the cycles of time and of the seasons can be avoided by no one.
The U.S. presidential election taking place when it does, as a postmodern Halloween, our own festival of political fear and horror, could not be more fitting. It is the holiday we deserve. Morbid but dull, horrific but bureaucratic.
Whatever happens next week, we are headed deep into a dark forest. This election is not an “answer” to any problems, but seems more like a midpoint in some choose-your-own-adventure story, where either diverging path opens up a new quest and reveals fresh new dangers. It is no ending.
But this crossing of the threshold, this new adventure is good news. Something might be about to happen, to change. Well, maybe. The odds are against anything happening, because the defining feature of our age is that nothing really does. We have been living in “The Void” as
describes in his recent essay series.
The Void is where nothing ever happens, nothing matters, and nothing really exists. The Void is the state of our age. While it has become more obvious in recent years, we’ve been living in this void ever since the aftermath of WW2, and arguably even longer. We live in the status-quo of the Neoliberal order.
If I could describe Joe Biden’s presidency as one thing, it would be a void. It has been a sort of liminal space in time. A lull of history. The Trump presidency felt completely different, regardless of your opinion of the man himself. The years of 2016-2020 felt like they actually mattered, and like things were actually happening. But I can hardly even call this last presidency a scandal or a disgrace (although it was), because it was hardly a presidency at all. Everyone knows ole’ Joe has not been calling the shots, everyone knows it’s all a circus act, but no one could do a thing about it, and it seems that many people on the right simply stopped caring. Sure, they’d still deride Biden, but the emotions seemed to fade somewhat. Even the talking heads and social media warriors on the left gradually began to stop pretending that Joe Biden was a true All-American President. The lights are on in the White House, but no one is home. And everyone in the country knows it, and everyone has had their head down, simply waiting for the next election to roll around. Waiting to see if we will take a new adventure (as the Trump campaign has begun to symbolize) or remain in the Void of a Kamala America.
I think that Trump, whatever he is, is not exactly a “savior”. The MAGA movement is better described as a force of cultural energy, one that is changing the United States into something new, and the rest of the western world with it. Trump has become a figure that matters much more for what he represents to the people than for what he actually is. It does not take a political scientist to point out that Trump’s actually philosophies and political goals do not really match those of the reactionary right at all. On that note, he is also not the modern Hitler that the left wants him to be so badly. But, it doesn’t seem to matter all that much.
At its core, I think the energy of the MAGA movement is a reaction against the “void” that the west is corroding in. People want out. They want a fresh adventure. And Trump, Vance, Elon, RFK Jr., they seem to promise something fresh. I make no predictions of what a Trump presidency would hold. But I will say this- be careful. In our desperation to leave the void, false saviors could easily lead starving masses astray. Be wary.
No matter who wins this election, the long road through the dark forest has many, many miles to go. The “void” will not be easily escaped. This quest is just beginning.
So take heart as we prepare to celebrate the real American Halloween.
The monsters will be out this week.
The interim seasons between the extremes of summer and winter, the times of change, always bring about many a rumination on the possible and probable changes in store for our villages. The old holidays brought folks together to ease the unease.
As to the transition from the last four years to the potential for the next four, it is most definitely not a lull, or a void. It is a precipice. Do we drive off the cliff, into the dark canyon bottom, or steer our way back to the light and clear views of the ridgeline above?
I can tell you as someone who has voted for many, many decades, that the path we have been on for the past three to four, is most definitely the wrong one. Until someone begins to excise 50% or more of this bloated parasitic kleptocracy, we are not citizens, just donors to evil. A very cold, dark evil.
The dead really do have to come out on election day. Kamala will need the votes.