It’s Halloween! It’s one of the set of similar days with very different tones: There’s the Day of the Dead, with reverence for the departed. There’s Halloween, where in theory the evil spirits have power, but has evolved into a chance to meet the neighbor kids, if only briefly. There’s All Saints Day on November 1, a day of celebration. Following that, on November 2, is All Souls Day, which I remember in particular for that scary sequence in the old Latin liturgy:

O wrath, O day of mourning,

O hear the fateful prophet’s warning,

Heaven and earth in ashes burning. …

When the Judge his seat attaineth,
And each hidden deed arraigneth,
Nothing unavenged remaineth.

What shall I, frail man, be pleading?
Who for me be interceding,
When the just are mercy needing? …

The general tone is aptly captured in Verdi’s or Mozart’s Dies Irae, from their Requiem Masses.

Of course, you might also mistranslate “Dies Irae” as “Day of the Iras”, and listen to Ira Glass’s This American Life, or some of those great songs from George and Ira Gershwin. Or not.

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