Alone, in front of the bathroom mirror? Maybe you just finished brushing your teeth or putting in your contacts. We all do it just to see how many weird faces can be made when you think no one is watching. Go ahead, it’s fun!
I was watching a Halloween program on the History Channel last night featuring some interesting concepts about how Halloween came to be a part of our popular culture (mostly thanks to film and popular fiction).
Halloween started back when Celtic farmers believed in a season of life and a season of death, when spirits could rise from their graves and walk with the living. Ordinary Celts in Ireland would wear costumes to confuse the dead. Later the day was named as “All Hallows Day” to honor all Saints.
The first Puritans of America wanted nothing to do with such things. But the cultural melting pot of America led to the birth of modern day Halloween including carved pumpkins. The custom had become firmly established in popular culture by 1952, when Walt Disney portrayed it in the cartoon Trick or Treat, and UNICEF first conducted a national campaign for children to raise funds for the charity while trick-or-treating. Today Halloween is a billion dollar industry.
The practice of dressing up in costumes and begging door to door for treats on holidays goes back to the Middle Ages. Trick-or-treating resembles the late medieval practice of “souling,” when poor folk would go door to door, receiving food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day.
A few days ago I was driving and at a stoplight I checked my lip gloss in the rear view mirror when I had an interesting thought. What would life be like if there was no such thing as reflection? What if there were no mirrors? What if we went through life with no concept of what we looked like except for how people reacted to us?
Would we care about how we looked? Would we care what kind of car we were seen driving?
I have to imagine that if we lived a life in which we had no concept of self image, that we would focus more on relationships than on “the self”. Of course, others could tell us what they thought of us but one would have no physical concept or idea of their own face.
How interesting.
I wonder how different we would treat ourselves, and how different we would be to each other.
Imagine if you never had any idea of what you looked like. What are your thoughts?
I’m not posting this video to express any kind of political statement. I just thought this was some creative editing. I’m on a video kick.
Entry Filed under: Random
Just a random thought but I wonder why we associate colors with Gender - why pink for girls and blue for boys?
I think that pink might come from flowers and we associate girls with flowers but why are boys associated with the color blue? Blue is not the opposite color of pink on the color wheel. In fact a light green is, so I wonder if anyone can crack this color theory mystery. Any Ideas?
Entry Filed under: Random