Electing to Make America Sane Again: Halloween, Diwali, and Day of the Dead

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PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

Those who are familiar with my columns and videos know that I am a sucker for the psychological meaning of holidays and anniversaries. I assume that they have become important for some important social reasons: a milestone in life; mourning of losses; and conflict resolutions, among other meanings. As I discuss them, I again apologize in advance for getting any information wrong outside of my own cultural identity.

Recently, and right before our national elections in the United States, we have just had some important multi-faith and multi-cultural holidays in the fall season in the Northern Hemisphere, when the weather is turning colder and darkness overcoming light.

Halloween is the most popular one. Its origin was in the annual pagan celebration marking the start of winter. To ward off evil spirits, bonfires were lit.

Over time in the United States, it emphasized costumed children going around their neighborhoods for tricks or treats, usually candy, but that has decreased with some scares of poisoning and other dangers. Adults, though, are celebrating more with its commercialization. This year, movie costumes seemed to be the most popular, an interesting escape from the scary reality that would be triggered by political costumes.

October 31st also happened to be the peak of the Hindu holiday of Diwali, traditionally lasting for 5 days. It emphasizes obtaining more light over the dark, or in our psychiatric terms, insight and recovery of patients over the darkness of stigmatized disorders.

Then there is Day of the Dead over November 1 and 2. Most popular in some Mexican cultures, it is devoted to honoring and welcoming back ancestors.

A valued colleague wondered if and how divisiveness has been increasing. He shared a Pew Research Center survey discussed back on December 21, 2021, in the article by Jacob Ausubel: “Christians, religiously unaffiliated differ on whether most things in society can be divided into good and evil.” The conclusion was that the more religious Americans who were polled viewed the world more strictly in black and white, while the nonreligious saw more ambiguity. This survey noted that it did not include Muslims and Jews. Moreover, the Eastern religions were not mentioned at all.

Collectively, then, do these holidays provide us with any useful guidelines? I would suggest, yes.

- Halloween. At its best, Halloween prioritizes giving treats to others, creative costumes, and dazzling displays.

- Diwali. This holiday ends with emphasizing sibling love, which we could translate into valuing colleagues, as we are ethically supposed to do. We know from ancient stories to modern times that family conflicts are the most volatile and hardest to resolve.

- Day of the Dead. This celebration emphasizes gratefulness of ancestors, welcoming them back into our lives, a well-known theme and process in psychodynamic psychotherapy.

So there we have it, as long as we can use it: treats for others, loving loved ones, and using lessons learned from ancestors. Elect these principles post-election too: treat others well with the wisdom of our ancestors!

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.