Halloween, was once known as Samhain, and was celebrated on October 31st by the ancient (shamanic) Celts. On the 31st the Celts burned animal bones, carved gourds like skulls, and hung skeletons upon their windows… young men even dressed as though dead and painted their faces black.
The Celts did all this because Samhain was the day when the world of the living overlapped with the world of the dead. And through these symbols and rituals the dead were free to move among the living. It was actually a generous day, a day where we welcomed the dead back into this beautiful and growing world.
So between trick-or-treaters this year, consider all those dead people (your/our ancestors) who have brought you forward. Give thanks! And hold for a moment in your mind the wondrous fact that is this world (which is a closed circuit) you are breathing the same air that was in your ancestor's lungs, you are drinking the water that passed through them too (not as gross as it sounds), and your body is made of molecules that have changed hands billions upon billions of times, on this planet and before that reaching out into the primordial recesses of space!
The first, long vanished, ancient stars are our earliest known ancestors, and countless eons down the line, the amoeba, the lunged fish, the tool wielding apes, our father's father's father, our mother's mother's mother... all standing behind us today. Happy Halloween!
