The Lighthouse Keeper
It's Halloween. It is also Election Day on Nantucket. In fact, including today, three of the next four Tuesdays will be election days on Nantucket.

Today's election will decide whether the new Surfside waste water treatment plant will be funded, following last week's Special Town Meeting's approval of the Proposition 2 and 1/2 override. How many folks remember we are voting today?

Tomorrow we will know the results and it will be over - we hope. The only things running in this election are the desire to cap the cost of the plant (by getting on with its construction) and a fervent wish that all discussion of the issue and the plant and its cost are now behind us so we can move on to other things.

In the meantime in this election season, everyone is preoccupied with Halloween. A local sage compared the elections and Halloween by saying that both are scary. Elections are scary because not enough people vote and factors such as the Washington influence on a state or local election come into play, even though they have no real relevance. Halloween is scary because people get scared, but mostly in good fun.

What makes people intentionally scare themselves, not to mention ruin their teeth? A little research was in order. "Googling" Halloween provided a wealth of information - in fact way too much - on the origins of the celebration. Ultimately two Web sites, Wikipedia and the old standby, Ben & Jerry, provided as much information as anyone could possibly want to know about the whys and wherefores of Halloween.

The Wikipedia site has 14 printed pages of information and references about Halloween In (very) brief, the celebration derived from an ancient Irish pagan ritual marking the return of the dead. Bonfires were lit to scare away evil spirits. Over time, the customs of creating masks and, later, cutting ugly faces in pumpkins also served the purpose of warning off those retuning ghosts. Yes, that too is where the notion of putting a sheet over one's head, punching holes to see and breath and yelling "boo" came from. The pumpkins scared off the ghosts, or something like that.

In the ninth century, the Christians co-opted Halloween traditons from the pagan Anglo Saxon world by designating November 1 as All Saints Day or All Hallows Day in honor of the saints who weren't saintly enough to have their own designated day. The pagan celebration the day before, October 31, soon be came Hallows Eve -or Halloween - and a big party day.

Interestingly, Halloween, which thrived in Northern Europe, didn't reach the shores of North America until the 19th century because it was still a bit too pagan for our Puritan forebears. However, according to Wikipedia, now "Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as part of American pop culture in the late 20th century."

The early Irish custom was to give pieces of cake, sometimes with hidden trinkets, to each family member. The Scots and the English expanded on that to provide candy and food for neighbors' children who entertained them. Now of course, candy is massed produced by the zillions to take care of the 93 percent of American children who, reportedly, go trick-or-treating.

The commercialization of Halloween in the United States did not start until after World War II. Now, according to Wikipedia, Halloween is, commercially, the sixth most important "holiday" in the country - after Father's Day but certainly well ahead of Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veteran's Day or even the 4th of July.

Which brings us to Ben & Jerry. Why would an ice cream company devote a couple of pages of its web site to Halloween? It is hard to comprehend how Ben & Jerry can derive much profit from an event which often occurs on a chilly night (certainly in Vermont ) and affords no way to get its product home without its melting during the trick-ortreaters' trips around the neighborhood. Be that as it may, we are grateful to Ben & Jerry for the information that in Vermont, a movement has evolved to counteract the appeal of Mischief Night (another piece of the pagan rite) with family celebrations of Halloween. Come to think of it, perhaps Ben & Jerry is actively promoting those family celebrations. What better place is there to serve ice cream?

Next week, Tuesday, November 7, is the "general" election. As noted a couple of weeks ago, here on Nantucket there is little indication that anyone is running for anything, but over in America it is a different story. The Airport Rotary in Hyannis had so many signs planted on it a couple of weekends ago that one almost wondered whether they were a new variety of weed. The candidates and their supporters seem to be whirling around the rotary almost as fast as the cars that passed by, as they gestured and shouted their supplications to the occupants of the surrounding automobiles.

All clowning aside, the only race that makes this general election interesting is the contest for Governor. The reason that contest is attention grabbing is not because of the issues between the candidates, which are pretty much predictable and, in the case of Healy focusing on Patrick's role as a defense lawyer, very trite, but how deeply the recent Massachusetts custom of electing a Republican governor will be buried under a wave of anti- Washington sentiment.

Other than that, the races for which we are voting are boring. The results are totally predictable. Come to think of it, the increases in the vehicle accident rate and in stress fractures at rotaries where campaigning occurs may be one of the more pressing issues of the election.

After a week's respite, Nantucket's voters return to the polls on November 21 to elect a selectman to replace Michael Glowacki. That race will be interesting. There are some differences among the candidates.

The Civic League's Meet the Candidates program will be held at 4:30 PM on Friday, November 10, in the Great Hall of the Atheneum. The format will permit members of the audience, as well as the panelists, to ask questions of the three candidates. To get informed about the candidates, try to watch it on television if you are unable to be present at the program in person.

Another factor making the election unusual will be the presence of the late Arch McColl's name on the ballot. At this point, why it remains there doesn't matter. Experience elsewhere has shown that some voters, for what ever reason, will cast their ballots for deceased or no-longer active candidates. That vote may be a nice gesture to the decedent, but the fact remains that it skews the outcome between the remaining candidates. Such votes, in the aggregate, may make a difference in the outcome of the election, particularly in a small community. With no disrespect to Mr. McColl's memory or to his family, such a consequence does not honor those candidates who are still in the race.

Halloween isn't really scary. It's mostly good fun; an outlet for the frustrations of our lives. And what might those frustrations be? One is certainly elections which don't inspire people. We in Nantucket are lucky this year. We have one interesting election out of the three over this four-week span. If they were all like the one today, that would

be scary. I

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The "Lighthouse Keeper" reflects the views of the author and does not represent the editorial position of The Nantucket Independent. Please send any comments to drake@nantucketindependent.com.