A Pumpkin By Any Other Name . . .

It always amuses me how, each October 31^st, every xian child in the USA gets dressed up in creepy (or cute) costumes and tramps from house to house demanding sweets.  Halloween, of course, has pagan roots in the Celtic Samhain, a festival of the harvest and the dead (something Christine O’Donnell might be relatively familiar with – or not).  The Celts saw the end of October as the "end of lightness" or the end of summer, and the "beginning of darkness," or the long, cruel winter ahead. At this time of year, harvests were complete, livestock were slaughtered, and community bonfires were started. During this transformation from light to dark, the ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the spirit world became thin, allowing spirits to pass through. Some spirits were thought to be harmless, such as the family's ancestors; while other harmful spirits were warded off with the use of masks and costumes.

The next time you find yourself carving a pumpkin, you should think of how much more difficult your task would be if you were following the Celtic tradition of carving a much denser turnip or rutabaga. The American tradition of pumpkin carving actually preceded the popularization of the Halloween celebration in the United States, which is thought to have origins in the Irish immigration following the Great Famine of 1846. Pumpkin carving was a harvest ritual and was not specifically associated with Halloween until the mid-to-late 1800s.

What if we could learn to be content with our lives, exactly as they are today?

It is beauty of things imperfect, transient, and incomplete.

It is beauty of things modest and humble, the beauty of age and wear.

It is beauty of things unusual.

It is also two separate words, with related but different meanings.

Wabi - the kind of faultless beauty that is caused by natural blemish, such as asymmetry in a stoneware vessel, the uneven glaze and cracks which reveal the craftsmanship of human hands. It is simplicity, whether elegant or rustic.

Sabi - the kind of loveliness that can come only with age, such as the patina on a very old bronze statue. Or hand-sewn patches on the elbows of a sweater. Or wrinkles.


A wabi sabi relationship is one in which you consciously accept each other the way you are - imperfect, unfinished, and mortal.  Warts and all, as they say.  Accepting another person's faults, rather than 'taking them on as a project to be fixed' leaves you both the time and emotional energy for enjoying each other.  Shed expectations and assumptions and simply focus on the sensations of the other person.

A wabi sabi home is full of rustic character, charm and things that are uniquely yours.  It celebrates what's handmade; materials that weather beautifully - like wood, stone and metal - allow appreciation of the natural [rather than filling your life with plastics].  Wabi sabi is a color palette that mimics nature: greens, grays, earth tones, rusts, blues.  Earth and sky colors create an atmosphere of tranquility and harmony and are reminders that we depend on the earth, the soil and the sea.

Wabi sabi is about savoring your life.  Or, as Cheryl Crow would say, it's not about getting what you think you want, it's about wanting what you already have.

Warts and all.

[thanks in part to Gretchen Roberts, Whole living, October 2010]