The truth about Halloween
By Tony Sarrecchia
Halloween used to be a time of great expectation and excitement. Growing up,
my friends and I would plan for weeks what we would wear and the order that
we would hit the houses to get the most treats. Someone always had a bonfire
of burning leaves, a wonderful autumn smell that was easily carried in the brisk
air of early fall.
As a father, I couldn’t wait to take my children trick-or-treating. However,
by the time my daughter was old enough, something had changed. Churches were
now having trunks and treats—all the members of a parish would meet in
the parking lot of the church on Halloween, their car trunks filled with candy,
and the kids would dress up and go from car to car. Somehow, that lacked the
same thrill I remembered.
“Times have changed,” one mom told me, “You never know what
your children may get out there.” She had motioned to the wrought iron
fence around the lot. “Out there,” I thought, were your neighbors,
many of whom were probably in here. Of course, one could not fault a parent
for being overly cautious with their children’s safety.
There was also the other group. The one that claimed everything from rock and
roll to, most recently, Harry Potter, were the tools of the devil, and Halloween
was the biggest scythe in old Lucifer’s arsenal. Between bad and incorrect
press, peoples’ suspicious nature, and a few John Carpenter films, Halloween
is quickly becoming “holiday non grata.”
The question should become: “Is Halloween the night of evil; the Druidic
Sabbath when Satan and his minions debase humans and take part in unholy orgies
of sex and sacrifice? Is that Jack-O-Lantern on the Johnson’s front doorstep
just an eviscerated pumpkin—or is it an ancient symbol of a soul forever
cursed to walk the earth?”
The word “Halloween” is a combination of Christian and Pagan terms.
It stems from the Catholic “All Hallows Eve”. The second half of
the word probably dates back 6000 years to the final day of the Celtic Summer
and the start of their New Year (November 1 on our calendar). This Celtic harvest
festival, Samhain (pronounced Sha-ween), was the highest holiday of the year
for the Celts; and they believed they would be reunited with their dead loved
ones at that time. Sometimes the loved ones returned in the form of animals,
most often a black cat.
Other sources say the Celts believed that at this time of the year the dead
who died during the past year were traveling to the next world and the bon fires
would help the dead find their way there—as well as keep the dead away
from the living. There are many contradictions in such interpretations because
the Celts, as well as their spiritual leaders, the Druids, did not keep a written
record. Everything we know about the Celts comes to us from their archenemies,
the Romans. It is precisely because of this vague history that anti-Halloween
folks, including everyone from Pat Robertson to myopic tract writer Jack Chick,
can report their opportunistic version of history as if it were gospel rather
than myth and propaganda.
In one of Mr. Chick’s publications, he shows two “real witches”
bragging that they had poisoned candy and placed razor blades in apples. "Those
kids will get a real surprise," one witch snickered. Most interestingly,
according to Professor Joel Best of Southern Illinois University, there has
never been any child killed or injured by a tampered treat received while trick
or treating. Professor Best studied newspapers from 1958 to the present and
only found one case of candy tampering, and that was by a parent who had attempted
to poison his own child.
The truth is that Halloween and Christianity did merge; though it was Christianity
that interloped on the original day. In 600 AD, Pope Gregory instructed his
missionaries to assimilate pagan rituals and beliefs info Christianity. According
to Jack Santino, author of Halloween, The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows,
an article written for the Library of Congress, “…if a group of
people worshiped a tree, rather than cut it down, he [Pope Gregory] advised
them to consecrate it to Christ and allow its continued worship.”
This “assimilate to educate” concept worked wonderfully. Christian
holy days were set based on Pagan holidays. According to Mr. Santino, “Christmas,
for instance, was assigned the arbitrary date of December 25th because it corresponded
with the mid-winter celebration of many peoples.”
The Catholic Church decided that November 1st should be the day devoted to all
Christian saints who did not have their own feast day. It was hoped that this
day would become a substitute for Samhain and the Celts would spend their time
in adoration of the Saints rather than worshiping their traditional deities.
What actually happened were the Celtic deities evolved, or devolved, depending
upon your point of view, to the current version of fairies and leprechauns.
The Celts insisted on having their reanimated dead.
The Christians tried again to redirect the beliefs of the Celts by establishing
November 2nd as All Souls Day: a day for the living to pray for the dead. “But,”
Mr. Santino points out, “once again, the practice of retaining traditional
customs while attempting to redefine them had a sustaining effect: the traditional
beliefs and customs lived on, in new guises.”
The Celts continued to celebrate All Hallows Eve, but through time the Church
taught that the supernatural beings, as well as the Druids, were evil. The underworld
that the Druids taught, became the concept of Hell that the Christians teach—only
now the Druids and their gods inhabited that underworld. The Druids who went
into hiding rather than convert were branded as witches. The Church taught the
Celts that these witches were not only dangerous, but also evil and malicious
beings who could damn the Celts eternal souls.
There can be no doubt that much of our Halloween springs from these and other
traditions. Trick or treating is probably a version of Celtic ritual of leaving
food out for the souls of the dead. In time, people began dressing like the
dead, as well as fairies and demons, and performed skits for food or drink.
Of course, through the years, Halloween became second only to Christmas as a
holiday for kids. Recently though, Halloween has become more sanitized. Schools
now refer to it as the Fall Festival rather than Halloween in order not to offend
any of the various religions. An interesting corollary is that the hoax e-mails
about poisoned candy and terrorist attacks on Halloween seemed to have tripled.
Here at the dawn of the 21st century, it is silly for us to allow superstition
and myth to dictate how we celebrate the number two holiday on the Kid Calendar.
We have sanitized so much of what our children experience that to loose Halloween
to fear and ignorance would be slighting our children of one of the greatest
treats of childhood.
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Tony Sarrecchia is a technical writer for a wireless communications company
based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Copyright © 2002 by Tony Sarrecchia. All rights reserved.
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