GE 1997-8 Season 4 Episode 9: Paulitorial
Note: this is not a transcript, but a working draft of the script, so there may be differences in the aired version.
PAUL: Of all the days in the year, of all the ceremonies and
anniversaries we celebrate, of all the earthly delights and
pagan rituals that fill our days with light and our nights
with dread, there is none I feel a closer kinship with than
the Day of the Dead.
There's something for everyone in this triad of days devoted to
the dearly departed - All Hallow's Eve and its kiddy content, the
tricks and the treats and the jack o'lanterns; All Saints Day,
an homage to those known and unknown people of holiness; and then
All Souls, the day for the plain old long gone, the expired, the
extinct, the late, those who have gone ahead.
Hallowe'en, once the night of witches and ghosts, has been cleansed
and made palatable by commerce, losing much of its adult luster.
The bonfires are out, the wicked souls and the lord of death get
short shrift from Hallmark, and instead, candied apples and Darth
Vader masks are in.
All Saints - well, that was pretty sanitary to begin with, wasn't it.
Organized religious observance and all. The official party line.
It's the white milk bottle version of the afterlife - you know, the
harps / fluffy clouds / angels we have heard on high kind of thing.
So that's the young and the guilt-free taken care of. But they've
got holidays all over the place. Where are the days for the damned ?
All Souls, the Day of the Dead ... now that has resonance for those
of us who haven't merely fallen from grace but leapt from it. We who
tempt the lord and laugh in the face of the devil, who have described
our own circles of hell, who know that if you're going to get anything
out of this existence, you better get it before you go. The hedonists.
The cynical. The cross-addicted. The guilelessly guilty. The real
hobgoblins and satyrs. The maniacs, the misanthropes, the morbid, the
monsters, those of us who have done it all. We need our holidays, too.
And now, straight, clean and sober for years, I have become the person
I most feared.