Guy Fawkes, Diwali and Samhain... Oh My

Examining traditions and finding connection and catharsis through intentional rituals

I have begun exploring how I feel about the festivals and celebrations I have grown up with. What I am experiencing as I examine these traditions, is a potent need to divorce myself from the ones that hold no spiritual or ancestral importance to me, and to severely limit my engagement with the commercial side of any celebration. This isn’t a self-righteous lecture or judgement of anyone, it is a loud and urgent feeling that I’ve realised is a natural part of my unlearning and reclamation journey.

I’m not going to give much time to Guy Fawkes/Bonfire night. In England it’s a big deal. A celebration that commemorates the hanging, drawing and quartering of a person, burning their effigy on a bonfire - is not for me. The fighting between two branches of Christianity that led to it also doesn’t provide any solace to a decolonial practitioner. Aside from some great memories of baking potatoes in the bonfire and being surrounded by friends and family, it’s one I’m not torn about leaving behind.

Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, falls on the 12th of November this year. My family on my dad’s side is Hindu, and Diwali was a firm part of my upbringing. The story of Diwali itself has many issues - the depiction of the Sri Lankan king Ravana as a dark-skinned demon who kidnaps people, the depiction of Sita as a naive damsel in distress, the light-skinned king Rama saving her and claiming victory, and the eventual exile of a pregnant Sita because Rama, swayed by public opinion, was concerned about Sita’s fidelity while Ravana’s prisoner… yikes! Suffice to say, I don’t feel connected to the framing of the origin story (Sri Lankans tell it differently, if they give it any credence at all!). Diwali for me, is a cultural tradition, rather than a religious one. It gives me much needed access to my culture and my people. The imposter syndrome that is my whiteness, my not speaking Hindi or Bhojpuri, gets eclipsed by how Indian I feel when surrounded by my community and immersed in our cultural traditions. For a mixed-heritage person raised in England, I can’t tell you how essential these small anchors to my Indianness are - so I take them, with my eyes open to their flaws, and am grateful.

One of the questions I have been asking myself as I explore traditions is this: what has whiteness taken from me? Meaning the system of white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism and how it has intertwined itself with my identity. Whiteness has replaced ancestral tradition and history for pale-skinned people in many places. Many Britons who colonised and settled have sacrificed their ancestry on the alter of whiteness, but what does that mean for the ones that never left? Do we have a culture and identity separate from the void that is whiteness and colonialism? It depends. The Irish, Scottish and Welsh would (mostly) identify as Irish, Scottish and Welsh before they identify as white. They have languages, traditions, rich cultures and they all suffered under and resisted against English colonialism. What about the English? Well, we have to go back a way before we can find anything that isn’t Christianity and colonialism. I personally don’t have to go back very far - I am Irish, Welsh and Scottish on my mum’s side within 3 generations. But my point is, if I go back far enough, our traditions, festivals and spirituality converge, and this, is where there is some respite from whiteness for me. Back to a people with reverence for the land, for nature, for the balance of life, for whom science and faith were the same thing.

This year was the first year I observed Samhain (pronounced Sow-wen), the Druid and Pagan celebration marking the end of harvest and the beginning of winter on the 31st October. We listened to Samhain music, I cooked a traditional meal and we had a small bonfire and said prayers to welcome our ancestors. It is said the dead are able to visit on this night, when the veil between life and death is at it’s thinnest. If that sounds familiar, it’s because Halloween is based on Samhain, and all of the traditions associated with it are based on Druid and Pagan rituals. I felt connected to those who came before me and I was able to access some peace, gratitude and a quiet but definite joy.

The complex history of Britain makes it impossible to separate myself entirely from colonialism, and it would be wrong to try. I can however, reject the religion used by my coloniser ancestors to oppress and control indigenous people. I can reject the commercialisation of ancient rituals to serve capitalism. I can reclaim my ancient ancestors’ traditions as a form of liberation. And through this, I can remember who my people were before whiteness started chipping away at our humanity.

As I write this, my heart is almost unbearably heavy with the violent results of colonialism happening in the world right now. I’m finding it strange that I ever ‘celebrated’ Halloween without reverence for its origins. With so much death, avoidable death, death that lines the pockets of rich men divorced from their humanity, I don’t know how to approach a festival all about the dead without some respect and reflection. Maybe it’s one of the reasons white people don’t know how to grieve, and are able to shut out the grieving of our neighbours. We replaced our festival of the dead, our opportunity to reflect on our mortality and connection to our ancestors, with a fun-filled, commercialised, candy party.

I’m not judging anyone who celebrates this way, I just can’t access it anymore. Now I need something else. Something that connects me to this earth, to my roots, to life and death and meaning. Every day that I am bullied by this system into pretending not to feel, not to grieve, not to have needs that can’t be fixed with capitalism, I grow further from my humility in the face of this awesome and impossibly rare opportunity to live on this earth. And I must and will regain it.

—AJ

Today’s Neuro-Embodiment Prompts:

Suggestions and questions to help you engage with mindbody decolonisation:

• Are you celebrating anything ‘for traditions sake’ that doesn’t hold meaning for you or needs to be reimagined? How and where can you find meaning in ritual and reverence?

• What makes you feel connected, peaceful and grateful? How can you bring more of this into your life and your traditions?

• Are any of the origins of your celebrations connected to harmful events or constructs? How can you examine this and choose what to leave behind and what to take forward?