trick or treat

one time i had a dream that after halloween was over, people still continued to wear their masks until christmas.

after a while, i stopped thinking of people as who they were, but instead just as the mask they wore. we all did. people were happy that they got to be another identity for like in a game. the first few days of all saints and all souls was fun. people played little jokes, and revealed secrets to each other that they normally wouldn't say. this was because no-one knew who they were and because it was part of the extended halloween. only, after a while, they started to get confused. they started doing dangerous and destructive things, because they thought they were the halloween character and not their own personality.

at armistice day bubbles, my pet-fish, became very concerned. people were starting to become dangerous to themselves. they gave up on the idea of the city as a place of civilization.  in the country, people stopped working the land. every one was pulling injurious pranks in the rural areas and deliberately vicious acts in the city. worst of all they took off their boots in public and made other people smell the foot odor. these were noxious gasses that caused great illness and death.

at st. martin's day, bubbles went around telling people that they were only wearing masks. they were not the characters the masks represented, and that they needed to stop confusing the two. people liked their costumes and the masks too much. no-one listened. they kept having smelly feet. people died from the fumes.

at thanksgiving people ate until they puked and never considered how lucky they were to be blessed with plenty. things were becoming more dangerous and more violent. people stopped caring about one another, and only cared about the identity of the costumes. bubbles told them they should take off their masks and remember themselves. no-one listened. more people died.

at the first sunday of advent people decided not to dress things in purple. they didn't care about the arrival of christmas or the solstice. they said there would be no more holidays in the future, it would be halloween forever. they had crossed the veil between night and day. it would be night forever, and they would be characters forever. bubbles told them that these were only masks they were wearing and that they should take them off. no one listened. people did dangerous things to themselves without regard for the consequences -especially exposing their foot smells. more people were slaughtered.

at the christmas eve bubbles came to me and told me this was only a dream. i needed to wake up, he said, otherwise all of these people would end up killing themselves. he was quite serious and terribly worried. i told him that we had to wait until morning to see what would happen. if i woke up then, all of the people might be trapped in their masks, and the dead people would never return to life.

i hung my stocking at the chimney, and i went to bed that night. i had a dream within the dream. it was of summer time at the north pole with the christmas moose. i woke up inside the main dream the next morning.

in the main dream, when i got up, it was christmas. everyone took off their masks, the dead people came back to life, and everyone went back to being who they actually are.

my pet fish bubbles said that this holiday is an example of the folk culture being commodified and exploited for the benefit of a powerful and wealthy minority. halloween was merely a plot by the ruling class to get people to consume more bon-bons.

i asked bubbles if he ever thought anything was fun.