All Souls' Day

Yesterday, All Souls' Day, was my birthday. I'm now mumbledy years old, and I wouldn't be a day younger if you paid me. (But that doesn't mean I have to say how many years mumbledly are.)

All Soul's day, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, is a commemoration of the faithful departed. It's also all about those souls who went to the great beyond with a little venial sin still clinging to them, so they couldn't quite get all the way. The prayers of those who remain on earth can help clear those last unsightly blemishes and let the soul finish the journey.

Well, that's my paraphrase of the theology, anyway.

I don't remember how old I was when I found out my birthday was All Souls' Day. I think I was rather disappointed--it seemed so gloomy and minor key. But because I am occasionally contrary and always stubborn, I turned and embraced All Souls'. I embraced the sinning dead. I embraced the gloom and gray I associated with the day. I embraced the fact that no one I knew had ever heard of, or perhaps remembered, what All Souls' was all about. (I'm rather fond of things no one else knows about--not in a smart-alecky, "I know something you don't know, neener, neener" kind of way, but in a love-of-obscurity-and-the-byways-of-knowledge kind of way.)

As time went by, my embrace extended to encompass the whole month of November. I love Samhain, when the walls between worlds are thin, and There bleeds a bit into Here; I relish, in a dark way, Veterans' Day; and Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, trumping all the rest. But for all my love of the whole month, the pinnacle is still All Souls', the day that is mine.