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Nov. 3rd, 2006 01:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
It's a bit past midnight here, to be honest, but my timesense has always forgotten to begin the new day at 00:00 precisely...
Fandom:Highlander
Characters: Methos
Disclaimer: Not mine
How would a 5000-year-old man celebrate All Souls'?
The thing with traditions, within five millennia there are too many to choose from. Too many details to get right, too many memories connected to each, good or bad...
Remembering and honouring one's ancestors is kind of a moot point, really, if one doesn’t appear to have any. Appeasing the souls of the departed, laying the table with their favourite foods – how, when there are so many, and some of those he doesn’t want to make welcome in his home? Not to mention the obvious difficulties regarding the supplies, considering for example that Caspian’s preferred dish was children’s hearts.
Neither does he feel the need to keep them away with fire and fearsome faces; he’s never yet met a ghost on Samhain Eve that didn’t keep his company around the year, and the candles don’t exorcise the regrets.
Blending in with the customs of the present is what he does well, but he feels that his artistic talent doesn’t quite stretch to creating immortal carvings from a vegetable matter. He should be far past his dressing-up phase by several thousand years and he never liked candy.
So he falls back to what has never failed him yet – he watches. Watches Duncan carve a pumpkin or two, or Joe lighting the candles; watches Amanda flittering around like a child, filling the bowls with candy, waiting for the trick-or-treaters to show up. Watches, and feels content. The oldest tradition, best suited to any holiday.
Fandom:Highlander
Characters: Methos
Disclaimer: Not mine
How would a 5000-year-old man celebrate All Souls'?
The thing with traditions, within five millennia there are too many to choose from. Too many details to get right, too many memories connected to each, good or bad...
Remembering and honouring one's ancestors is kind of a moot point, really, if one doesn’t appear to have any. Appeasing the souls of the departed, laying the table with their favourite foods – how, when there are so many, and some of those he doesn’t want to make welcome in his home? Not to mention the obvious difficulties regarding the supplies, considering for example that Caspian’s preferred dish was children’s hearts.
Neither does he feel the need to keep them away with fire and fearsome faces; he’s never yet met a ghost on Samhain Eve that didn’t keep his company around the year, and the candles don’t exorcise the regrets.
Blending in with the customs of the present is what he does well, but he feels that his artistic talent doesn’t quite stretch to creating immortal carvings from a vegetable matter. He should be far past his dressing-up phase by several thousand years and he never liked candy.
So he falls back to what has never failed him yet – he watches. Watches Duncan carve a pumpkin or two, or Joe lighting the candles; watches Amanda flittering around like a child, filling the bowls with candy, waiting for the trick-or-treaters to show up. Watches, and feels content. The oldest tradition, best suited to any holiday.