Death is no easy event to deal with, yet it is as natural as life. In fact they are intimately linked. From the very moment any living organism is conceived, it is condemned to die. Its existence from then either consciously or unconsciously consists in a fight for survival.

As weird as it may sound, death also leads to life. If the tree withholds its fruits, it will not be able to give the precious seeds, which in turn yield to the earth to give other trees and fruits. Likewise living one’s life fully implies a constant fight against one’s shortcomings, killing them so they will not be an hindrance to one’s growth and development. Laziness as an example leads to death of one’s capacity to express one’s worth; eliminating it saves one from a hollow, sterile life.

Most religions underpin this idea of killing our wrong bent, especially our ego, so we may not only live life fully here on earth but also beyond death, in what I prefer to call the afterlife.

In spite of all the eye-opening philosophies that have showed us that death is not the end of all, people are very much afraid of it. They express this concern in such attitudes as wanting to look young all the time because the older you look the closer you are to the end of your life. They would also try to deny the fact of death by searching for pleasure at all costs because pleasure is stimulation of one’s senses, which is only possible if one is alive. Dead people do not react to external stimuli.

The survival instinct sometimes talks this way, but when this behaviour become obsessive and life threatening, it’s more death that is being courted.

In remote times, the fear of death was coupled to that of the spirits of the dead. The Celts, for instance, thought that, on 31st October, the eve of their new year, which also marked the beginning of a long and hostile winter season, the ghosts of the dead would lurk around and cause troubles such as destroying crops or take possession of a living body. Therefore, they dressed up in ghoulish ways and lit bonfires to protect themselves while the Celtic priests questioned the spirits about the future as they were thought to be capable of travelling across time.

This fear of the dead did not match with the Christian belief that we all can be saints who obviously would command more admiration and sympathy than irrational fear. Therefore Pope Boniface IV designated 1st November as All Saints Day known as All Hallows Day at that time. 31st October was known as All Hallows Eve, hence the name Halloween.

The old traditions of lighting candles, dressing up in frightful ways still remain as a legacy of a pagan past but they have lost the original motives, that of the fear of the dead and the belief that they could determine the course of our destiny.

Our destiny is in our hands, our choices which simply consist in separating right from wrong. The wrong choices leading to sure death, sooner or later and the right ones to life here and beyond the frontiers of death.

In life we should rather fear living persons who make the wrong choices. They are dangerous and should be avoided at all costs.

The victory over death is in the love we are called to share among our fellowmen because love is holy and what is holy always wins!!!

<B>Alain JEANNOT</B>