It's Halloween. Or Samhain*, for you traditionalists, or Wiccan types. There are a lot of web sites about Halloween -- many of them fraudulent (run by hysterical religious groups), many of them confused, many of them interesting and possibly informative -- but on the web, who can tell? You can just make stuff up, and as long as you present your case in a reasoned manner, many people will just accept what you have to say.**

Anyway, there are a few things that everyone who isn't a hysterical religious group seems to agree on about Halloween.

It is Celtic, particularly Irish, in origin.

When it was a Celtic holiday, it marked a turning point of the year -- the end of the year, and the beginning of the winter season. Like all such times, it was considered a time when the veil between the natural and the supernatural worlds was particularly thin. So on the one hand it was an auspicious time to foretell the future and that sort of thing. And, on the other hand, there were customs that were supposed to keep evil spirits from taking advantage and snatching your children into the fairy realms or whatever evil spirits like to do. Honoring ancestors was also involved.

It is one of those pagan holidays that has a Catholic holiday layered on top. The Catholic holidays are All Saints Day (November 1) and All Souls Day (November 2). These holidays involve rememberance of the dead. According to our New Orleans cemetery tour guide, people still gather there on November 1 and 2 to remember their ancestors. He pointed to an ornate wrought-iron bench and indicated that this is what the bench was for. He claimed that all ornate wrought-iron outdoor furniture had its origin in New Orleans cemeteries. Or maybe I'm just saying that.

The current incarnation of Halloween is a modern North American interpretation of traditions brought by the many Irish immigrants in the late 19th/early 20th century. The interesting thing is, nobody is really sure where it started. Nobody can point to a particular incident and say there, that's the first trick-or-treating, the first jack-o-lantern, the first Halloween party. By the 1940s and 50s it was already a well-established holiday with the well-known icons in place, to judge from the clip art of the era. The modern Halloween has a few elements that I think are key: disguise, morbid sense of humor, prankster spirit, harvest festival, hedonism (which in children manifests itself as GIANT BAGS OF CANDY), spookiness (the modern version of "the veil is thin"). Rememberance of ancestors is notably absent, but many of the other aspects still reflect the holiday's less materialistic origins.

(A note about the name: Halloween, Hallowe'en, Hallows Even, Eve of All Hallows, night before All Hallows/All Saints. That's Hallows as in hallowed ground. You know, sacred.)

The Mexican Day(s) of the Dead is an interesting side note, because, as far as I can tell, it is primarily the Catholic holidays of November 1 and 2 getting layered on top of Aztec/Mayan traditions. So you have two layers of paganism to only one layer of Catholicism! Pagans win! (Okay, it doesn't really work like that.) It's a completely separate, parallel tradition from modern Halloween. I'm hoping the growing Hispanic influence in the U.S. will cause Day of the Dead to influence mainstream Halloween celebrations.

So, have fun, dress up, laugh in the face of mortality, eat too much candy, try to creep yourself out into believing there's more to the world than blatant materialism -- and while you're at it, spare a thought for your departed ancestors.

--Julie McGalliard (Home)

*The word "Samhain" is apparently pronounced "sow-WANE". Those Celts and their wacky approach to Romanization. Paul's theory is that this may be deliberate, especially on the part of the Welsh. "You can make us use your Roman letters, but they still won't make any sense to you! Ha!"^^

**I'm planning to use this factor in my "George W. Bush is, in fact, the Antichrist" campaign.^^