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In fostering intercultural understanding, let us take the opportunity today to talk about another religious holiday the vé'hó'e are celebrating this time of the year. During Se'ma'omeveéšee'e, the Starting-to-freeze-Moon, the vé'hó'e decorate their homes in a way which is just batshit- crazy even by vé’ho’e-standards. Speaking of bats, during said moon, vé’hó’e adorn their dwellings with them. Now, invoking the powers of the bat, is certainly a perfectly good medicine – for some. As you probably know, occasionally warriors have used stuffed bats as part of their personal medicine in the past. Now, it goes without saying that a personal medicine is something genuinely individual as every warrior has his or her individual revelations during vision quests or dreams. However, the vé’hó’e, are famously blind and deaf to medicine, and it is probably this which explains why ALL vé’hó’e dwellings show the SAME totem animal. And they don’t even use real bats, instead they usually use black sheets of paper cut in the form of bats. We're not making this up!

Fake bats are not the only fake medicine animals the vé’hó’e use during these festivities. The word vé’hó’e, as everybody of course knows, means at the same time trickster, white man – and spider. Now, the spider people – odd as it may sound – also adorn their dwellings with fake spiders. It isn’t known exactly why they do this either. Maybe they celebrate themselves as a tribe this way.

They also put pumpkins around their lodges, real ones for a change, hollow them out, carve scary looking faces into them and illuminate them with candles they put inside the pumpkins.

The whole festivity is called “Hello Ween”. We don’t know for sure who this Ween is, but it is assumed that he is symbolized by the pumpkin faces. Anyway, at night groups of vé’ho’e children walk from loge to lodge and gather at the lodge doors. When the inhabitants come out, they greet them with the words “trick or treat” and expect to be given free sweets – which comes to pass in most cases. Mixing with the vé’ho’e kids can be quite fun as it gets you something you’ll normally never get from any vé’hó’e: Something nice for free.

Description

In fostering intercultural understanding, let us take the opportunity today to talk about another religious holiday the vé'hó'e are celebrating this time of the year. During Se'ma'omeveéšee'e, the Starting-to-freeze-Moon, the vé'hó'e decorate their homes in a way which is just batshit- crazy even by vé’ho’e-standards. Speaking of bats, during said moon, vé’hó’e adorn their dwellings with them. Now, invoking the powers of the bat, is certainly a perfectly good medicine – for some. As you probably know, occasionally warriors have used stuffed bats as part of their personal medicine in the past. Now, it goes without saying that a personal medicine is something genuinely individual as every warrior has his or her individual revelations during vision quests or dreams. However, the vé’hó’e, are famously blind and deaf to medicine, and it is probably this which explains why ALL vé’hó’e dwellings show the SAME totem animal. And they don’t even use real bats, instead they usually use black sheets of paper cut in the form of bats. We're not making this up!

Fake bats are not the only fake medicine animals the vé’hó’e use during these festivities. The word vé’hó’e, as everybody of course knows, means at the same time trickster, white man – and spider. Now, the spider people – odd as it may sound – also adorn their dwellings with fake spiders. It isn’t known exactly why they do this either. Maybe they celebrate themselves as a tribe this way.

They also put pumpkins around their lodges, real ones for a change, hollow them out, carve scary looking faces into them and illuminate them with candles they put inside the pumpkins.

The whole festivity is called “Hello Ween”. We don’t know for sure who this Ween is, but it is assumed that he is symbolized by the pumpkin faces. Anyway, at night groups of vé’ho’e children walk from loge to lodge and gather at the lodge doors. When the inhabitants come out, they greet them with the words “trick or treat” and expect to be given free sweets – which comes to pass in most cases. Mixing with the vé’ho’e kids can be quite fun as it gets you something you’ll normally never get from any vé’hó’e: Something nice for free.