Halloween: Everything Important About the Most Popular Secular Holiday

By LEONARD R. N. ASHLEY

This big, informed, witty, and entertaining book, actually several books in one, covers all the aspects of the secular holiday unlike any other. Only the exhaustive is interesting. - Thomas Mann

HALLOWEEN HISTORY AND TRADITION, THE JACK-O- LANTERN, TRICK OR TREAT, HOLIDAY FOLKLORE, MASKS AND VARIOUS COSTUMES, HALLOWEEN BUSINESS, HALLOWEEN AROUND THE WORLD, HALLOWEEN PARADES AND PARTIES, HALLOWEEN RECIPES AND PARTY IDEAS, HALLOWEEN STORIES AND OTHER LITERATURE, HUNDREDS OF BIG AND SMALL SCREEN DELIGHTS FOR YOUR WATCHING AT HALLOWEEN WITH A FULL, CASUAL, GIANT ANNOTATED FILMOGRAPHY, & COMMENTS ON HORROR IN ARTS OF YESTERDAY AND TODAY.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469179506

LEONARD R. N. ASHLEY

Leonard R. N. Ashley (PhD, Princeton), LHD( Columbia Theological) is professor emeritus of Brooklyn College of The City University of New York and among his many books on literature, folklore, military history, and literature has authored eleven popular works on the occult now available in US and UK editions, some also in German, Dutch, and Italian translations.

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Copyright 2012 by Leonard R. N. Ashley.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher and the author, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publishing Data

Halloween: Everything about the world’s most popular secular holiday/Leonard R. N. Ashley

1. Halloween 2. Holidays 3. Popular culture 4. Folklore 5. Halloween Costume, Parades, and Parties 6. Day of the Dead 7. Guy Fawkes’ Day 8. Title: Halloween: Everything important about the world’s most popular secular holiday 9. Author: Leonard R. N. Ashley

No turkey was killed nor any reindeer overworked in the production of this book.

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Printed in the United States of America

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Xlibris Corporation, 1663 Liberty Drive, Bloomington IN 47304

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Table of Contents

HALLOWEEN HISTORY AND TRADITIONS

TO START WITH: OVER BUT NOT DONE WITH

RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND OF OUR SECULAR HOLIDAY

CHRISTIANIZING PAGAN ELEMENTS

WHERE THE DEAD GO

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

THE AGE OF FAITH

DEVELOPMENT OF THE HALLOWEEN HOLIDAY

SECULAR CELEBRATION

GUY FAWKES’ DAY

MOVING ON

JACK-0’-LANTERNS

THE SYMBOL OF HALLOWEEN

THE LEGEND OF JACK OF THE LANTERN

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

A PUMPKIN BROUHAHA

CELEBRATE THE GREAT PUMPKIN

TRICK OR TREAT

WE ARE NOT DAILY BEGGARS

THREATS AND TRICKS

THE LOOT AND THE ROUTE

POPULAR CULTURE

THE HOLIDAY CAN TEACH CHILDREN

ATTEMPTS TO THROW COLD WATER ON THE FESTIVITIES

ROWDY REVELS AS A PART OF THE FOLK AT PLAY

HALLOWEEN FOLKLORE

THE FANCIES OF ORDINARY PEOPLE

HALLOWEEN TALES AND THEIR GHASTLY GRIP

HALLOWEEN BOOKS

OLD WAYS FROM THE OLD DAYS

THE FRIGHTENERS AROUND

LET’S GET METAPHYSICAL

BACK FOR A MOMENT TO THE REAL HERE AND NOW

THE CELTS

FEAR OF THE UNCANNY, THE UNKNOWN

HAPPY NEW YEAR

THE GIFT OF PROMETHEUS

NOMEN EST OMEN: A NAME CREATES A FATE

MORE ABOUT THE CELTS

BATS

BLACK CATS

CANDLES

COLORS

FLOWERS AND WATERING, PLANTS AND COOKING

FARM

FOOD

GAMES AND DIVINATION

THE AIR IS THICK WITH SPIRITS

GETTING ANSWERS

IT JUST GHOST TO SHOW YOU

SAINTS AND HAINTS

THE GRATEFUL DEAD

TABOOS

TAKING MAGIC AND WITCHCRAFT INTO ACCOUNT

TAM LIN

THE PURSUIT OF THE HIRSUTE

TWEAKED AND TWITTERED

WHAT WAS THAT?

THE WILD HUNT

WICKED WITCHES

THE PERSISTENCE OF ANCIENT BELIEFS

THERE IS NOWT SO QUEER AS FOLK

HALLOWEEN MASKS AND COSTUME

WHAT ARE YOU GOING AS?

FAVORITE HALLOWEEN OUTFITS

OUTSTANDING OUTLANDISH OUTFITS

HIGH SOCIETY

ORIGINAL IDEAS

CLEVER COSTUMING

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS

NO SWEAT

HOW ABOUT THIS?

PARTIES, BANQUETS, AND BALLS

INDIVIDUAL FAVORITE COSTUMES STARTING

WITH THE MONSTER

MASQUERADE

GET-UPS FOR GROUPS

WHAT TO GO AS

MORE IS BETTER

HALLOWEEN AROUND THE WORLD

A KIND OF TRICK OR TREAT IN OLD DENMARK

REMEMBER DEATH

THE SEND OFF

HELP FROM BEYOND

ARYAN WORSHIP OF ANCESTORS

DAY OF THE DEAD IN MEXICO

WELCOME HOME

MEXICAN CELEBRATION AT HOME AND

IN THE UNITED STATES

DAY OF THE DEAD IN OTHER SPANISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES

PORTUGAL AND BRAZIL

HALLOWEEN BUSINESS

THE COMMERCIAL HOLIDAY

TREATS, THE WAY WE LIVE NOW

WHAT TO WEAR

SHOP ’TIL YOU DROP

FASHION TRENDS

OBJECTIONS TO COSTUMES

THE HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN COSTUMING AND MORE

ONLINE SHOPPING

RED HOT ITEMS

THINGS ON SALE

THE CHALLENGE TO HALLOWEEN BUSINESS

HIGHTENING HORROR

DOING BUSINESS WITH GHOSTS

DEVIL’S NIGHT

REALTORS’ REALITY

HOME SWEET HOBGOBLIN HOME

HAUNTED HOUSES (BUSINESS) AND

HELL HOUSES (GOD’S BUSINESS)

TEACHING MOMENTS

HAUNTED PLANTATION

HALLOWEEN AT THE PLAYHOUSE

HALLOWEEN BUSINESS IN CANADA

AMONG THE GRAVES

SHOW, DON’T TELL

RELIGION SPARKS DISAGREEMENT

HALLOWEEN BASHES

HALLOWEEN BASHERS

AN X-RATED HAUNTED HOUSE

BLOOD MANOR: THE MASTER IS DEAD

WE OWN HALLOWEEN, IN HONG KONG

HALLOWEEN AS CHINESE TAKEOUT

AUTHENTIC HAUNTED PLACES

PROFESSIONAL PARTY PLANNERS

COME JOIN THE PARTY

HALLOWEEN PARADES AND PARTIES

I LOVE A PARADE

THE BIG APPLE BIG HALLOWEEN PARADE

OTHER PARADES IN AMERICA

REIGN ON YOUR PARADE

ORDER OF MARCH

TAKE TO THE STREETS AT HALLOWEEN

IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO STAGE A PARADE

SHOCKING BEHAVIOR

PARADE FEATURES

GET ORGANIZED

THE MORE THE MERRIER

NICE TOUCHES

THE NEIGHBORHOOD PARADE

GET IN LINE AND ENJOY THE FUN

A KEYNOTE FOR YOUR PARADE

THROW A PARTY

KEEP IT CASUAL

FUN AND GAMES

AT THE PARTY AND AFTER THE PARTY

COMING AND GOING

HALLOWEEN RECIPES AND PARTY IDEAS

FOOD, GLORIOUS FOOD

FOOD OF THE HOLIDAY

HALLOWEEN SPECIALS

JUST DESSERTS

HOW TO DO THE HOO-DOO: HERE IS THE VOODOO DOLL COOKIE

SEASONAL TREAT

OUT OF SEASON SEASONED COOKIES

PUMPKIN SEED BRITTLE

PULP FICTION

NO BAKE PUMPKIN PIE

PANDEKAGER

MICKEY MOUSSE ICE CREAM PIE

HOT APPLE COBBLER

PUMPKIN PANCAKES

BIZCOCHO DE ALMENDRAS

OTHER NICE CAKES

MINIATURE CAKES

DROP DEAD DAY OF THE DEAD ORANGE CANDY

SWEETS TO THE SWEET

KRISPY KRITTERS

GET CRACKING AND MAKE CRACKLES

CUPCAKES—WHAT A NICE SURPRISE!

TZA NAHN GWA

GERMAN PUMPKIN STICKS

SCOTCH EGGS

SALADS

A HOST OF HELPFUL HINTS FOR HOSTS

ANOTHER MENTION OF CUPCAKES

COOKING IS EASY

MICROWAVE MAGIC

HOLIDAY PARTIES

DINNER PARTIES

DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDUM

SPECIAL OCCASIONS

PUMPKIN AND OTHER FOODS

PIE 3.14159

QUICK SAVORY BREAD

MORE ADVICE

PUMPKIN PUDDING

ORIGINAL DESSERTS AND CANDY

COPING AND COOKING

OODLES OF BOODLE

TRICK OR TREAT WRAP-UP

SUPERSTITIONS ABOUT FOOD

PARTY ON

HALLOWEEN LITERATURE

MAKING YOUR FLESH CREEP

THELABA THE DESTROYER AND HORRID WRITING

PARTY ENTERTAINMENTS

TALES OF THE OCCULT

115 SHORT STORIES FROM WHICH YOU CAN SELECT FOR HALLOWEEN

INTERESTING MATERIAL IN FOREIGN LANGUAGES

GOBLIN BIBLIOGRAPHY AND RESEARCH

DRAMATIC EUROPEAN MATERIAL

LIKE A GHOST FROM THE TOMB

OLD STORIES: GAIN SOME PERSPECTIVE

NOBODY DIES/ THEY JUST LEAVE HERE—POPULAR SONG

ENTHRALING ENTERTAINMENT

GHOSTLY ADVENTURES FOR YOU

WRITING HORROR

HALLOWEEN SHOWS

THE GRATEFUL DEAD

THE BOY WHO FEARED NOTHING

BIG AND SMALL SCREEN DELIGHTS FOR HALLOWEEN

A STEP BACKWARD AND THEN THE

ONWARD MARCH OF THE MOTION PICTURE

WEIRD AND FREAKY, GHASTLY AND GEEKY

FUN IN THE DARK

RADIO AND TELEVISION, ENTERTAINMENT IN A BOX

DIVERSION FOR HALLOWEEN

THE TASTE FOR BLOOD

THE BUSINESS OF FRIGHTENING PEOPLE

LAUGHTER

PERSONAL OPINION

WHISTLING, AND WHINING, IN THE GRAVEYARD

FANTASY WORLDS

HE WHO PAYS THE PIPER CALLS THE TUNE

HITTING ON THE AUDIENCE

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION

A LEARNING EXPERIENCE

ALTERED STATES

I’VE GOT A LITTLE LIST

A LIST OF HORROR MOVIES BEGINS

INTERMISSION: CUE MUSIC

AND THE LIST GOES ON

BIGGEST SEX SCENE EVER—VARNEY THE VAMPIRE THE MOVIE TO MAKE

TWO BRIEFLY CONTRASTED MOVIES: THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL AND THE HUNGER

CATCH YOUR BREATH

AND THE LIST CONTINUES

DUMBING DOWN

MORE SICK AND SADISTIC STUFF

ON YOUR IMAGINARY FORCES WORK

THE LAST OF THE LISTS

WELL, MAYBE STILL ANOTHER BREATHER

AND THEN THE LAST

THE FILMS COME TO A FIN

THE WALKING DEAD HAVE A MESSAGE FOR YOU

MASTERS OF HORROR

FEAR AND FUN

CULT FILMS

PLAYING FAVORITES

IT’S A WRAP

L’ENVOI

CODA: STAGE PLAYS

image001.jpg

Dedicated to

Mark J. Dempsey

resu.jpg

Resurrectionist at work.

frankenstien.jpg

Thomas A. Edison’s company made the very first filmed Frankenstein (1910) as a liberal adaptation with Charles Ogle as the monster, but it was James Whale’s version of 1931 that established the classic movie line.

jekyll.jpg

An early ripoff of Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was the German

Der Januskopf (The Head of Janus,) a creaky silent before

John Barrymore’s of 1920.

image009.jpg

HALLOWEEN HISTORY AND TRADITIONS

Here comes the Bogey-Man!

So hide your heads my darlings

For he’ll catch you if he can!

—Old Song

TO START WITH: OVER BUT NOT DONE WITH

With the total approaching 150 million books already published on all topics, more on subjects related here keep rolling off the presses, or onto e-screens. This week as I write I see the arrival of Wheeler Winston Dixon’s History of Horror, Gregory A. Waller’s The Living and the Undead ("laying vampires, exterminating zombies"), Andrew Smith’s The Ghost Story, 1850-1820, and lots more. There are more Halloween related TV programs and films than ever. A 2011 effort, American Horror Show, in each episode had enough plot points for a half dozen horror movies. Horror movies keep coming out, not as popular as other prequels or sequels or comix derivatives but still a major part of The Industry. Despite all the interest in things Halloween there is, however, no really terrific, well-researched, truly useful book on Halloween in print. So here is an attempt to do for Halloween something similar to, if a great deal less than, what Dickens did for Christmas.

Halloween deserves a truly good book that is both historical and up to date, learned and practical. It needs a reader-friendly book written to interest lots of people in this important piece of popular culture but it also must be researched by someone expert in writing about so-called high culture, a traditional scholar and yet one who is not stuffy or writes in professional jargon for an in-group. Halloween’s religious and folklore origins are fascinating and its impact on popular culture is immense and it is a favorite holiday, of interest to the general public.

Costumed parades, parties you can go to right away and read this background chapter later. Throughout you will see movies as references, better than books because millions know movies better, especially you horror movie fans. Moreover there will be, because one never knows where a reader might go, some repetition of what is said in the last chapter from time to time found in earlier chapters. It is getting much harder to organize books in the era of channel and online surfing and hitting FIND in digitized texts than it was in the era of published works read cover to cover.

Costume may be your initial interest. What to wear? We all love to dress up, whether for Masonic meetings or religious rituals or a wedding or a week of dancing in vintage clothing at the seaside in Newport (RI) or a cotillion. In daily life people don everything from the outrageously sexual fetish to the black I’m here to view the body suit, the military uniform, and occasionally the medieval academic gown. Can you spare the time for some history of Halloween before we get to the dress-up holiday of today? Much has happened since at Halloween people dressed to disguise themselves so as to avoid evil spirits. Today it is not disguise but self-expression they seek in the spirit of Halloween. In this and some other matters what critics call a subtext is found. There will be surface information but there will also be insidious ideas as it were behind or underneath the text, so keep your mind and your intuition both working as you read. Pause now and then to let things sink in even if you are reading straight through.

Movies may be the first place you want to look. Go to the last chapter, your handbook for Halloween and all year round and incidentally a history of motion pictures with the emphasis on the horror genre.

Style meant choosing between the dry, impersonal academic and the casual approach and although all decisions are open to criticism by each and every reader, most will, about Halloween, prefer the colloquial and conversational to the professorial and professional style that people are tempted to call pompous. At the Modern Language Association you may hear writing referred to as a virtualization of speech. What we have here is individual-to-individual communication, conversation at a distance. There must be the admitted I as well as the considered you. That you can extend to scholars, for the research is extensive. Scholars for once, considering the topic they might call the existential nature of the topic under consideration per se, may enjoy the absence of jargon, the presence of humor, and a distinct personality talking to them to inform and involve rather than to impress and hold at arm’s length. Hopefully. Scholars deplore ordinary people’s (mis)use of that word, which often prompts them to respond I don’t know what you mean as if nothing not in their style is comprehensible. Pedants will whinge that there is no index, and UK readers may complain that the book is in American while Americans will want to know why a UK word such as whinge crept in. Actually the principal readership addressed is on both sides of The Atlantic and the Americans and the British languages are constantly influencing each other. The detailed Table of Contents suffices in lieu of an index. If scholars want to know if they themselves happen to be mentioned, which is why most scholars consult indexes, they can read the book like anybody else. Those who gripe that there are no footnotes can go on the Internet to document as others can. They ought to be asked if they regularly read and check all footnotes for accuracy anyway. Here are well researched facts plus what Sondheim in a recent book subtitle called Comments, Principles, Heresies, Grudges, Whines and Anecdotes. Well, no grudges; we all have enough luggage to lug without carrying grudges.

Short subjective comments will appear especially on the horror films that are the subject of the final chapter. If fans are as angry as they say when the brief New York Times TV listings dismiss, for example, a Twilight film as bloodless or even a far less popular horror flick as garbage, so be it. Writing about the occult is always perilous. My werewolf book got letters from a handful of people saying I was wrong to use the word legend because they personally are werewolves. Some things saner readers denounced as heretical or irreverent, some expressions as smart-alecky. This was made up for by readers who called the comments learned and even LOL. One critic objected to my publisher’s use of Complete in my occult series’ titles. True, no book is complete; no encyclopedia is encyclopedic if that means Everything. Everything Important in the subtitle here may draw rude response. It means everything I think important, and I am the author. Today’s people are not used to long screeds and psychologists have discovered that memory is enhanced by taking things in small packages. That they call chunking. As for the incredible, one buyer of my book on spells, curses, and magical recipes bitterly observed that, although the book clearly said that these recipes should not be tried because dabbling in them is against both faith and reason, when he tried the incantations and recipes he was outraged that they did not work. You may be glad to hear he goes to Hell anyway, just for trying.

That’s not myself telling him to go to Hell, that’s religion. Religion and superstition and eccentricity all come into any discussion of Halloween, of course, so we must expect attack by those who hold their personal opinions tightly and do not want ever to be contradicted or, as they might say, condescended to or lorded over. They can always be terribly offended by some diligent researcher who has reached other conclusions in these days when it seems nobody loves a fact man or easily accepts authority. When it comes to prejudice, every person wants to be an infallible pope, even in the US where 86% of Roman Catholics completely disagree with their pope on all matters related to sex.

The author of this book on a serious topic has made himself not an infallible pontiff but a well-read expert. If you do not want to hear about that, skip forward. He has published a shelf of works on belief and society, no-brain sheep think and the madness of crowds, traditional delusion and persistent foolishness. He is authoritative on language internationally, repeatedly re-elected president of the American Society of Geolinguistics, an organization founded in 1965 to study the impact culturally, commercially and politically in the interaction of languages worldwide. He was twice elected president of the American Name Society, which for more than half a century has studied onomastics, how proper nouns work in literature and life. You have here an expert on communications, author of Language in Modern Society and Language in Action and on folklore both English and foreign (Elizabethan Folklore and some parts of Cornish Names and Nordic Folklore and Tradition). He states qualifications not to lord it over you but simply to assure you. His only boast is that he wanted to write and has written something that is not in style or in scope your average book on Halloween, the marvelous holiday when Americans do not have to worry about traveling to family on congested roads in bad weather.

Communication technology has now emphasized the concept of virtual communities and hive mind. We are in a world where casual communication is easy and thinking hard is hard. We remain fallible humans. When we are swimming in the sea of life and it starts to rain on our rationality human beings may duck their heads underwater to keep from getting wet. We face or deceive ourselves with many monsters. Some monsters are symbols of psychological and political anxieties, some even, as a dumb blonde says in a movie comedy, just crave a little affection like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and some are inbred or insane humans or imagined, ferocious alien creatures. Those can be devastating. Very few of them are as funny as in Men in Black II’s view of our earthly stressful work environment. Do you know that movie where we are told that NYC monsters are in Grand Central Station, the post office, the airport, all over the place, the tabloid headline is SATAN ESCAPES FROM HELL, and we may be saved by a secret society of protectors or just Will Smith and our amazing technology? In our daily lives we may overcome by ourselves or with the assistance of real or imagined superior forces. Most people believe in Something superior and locate it Up There, in the heavens. That goes back to time immemorial. Horror is found in religion and superstition, in all culture, even the comic books and the musicals, movies, and electronic games based on them. That is Halloween’s focus. Halloween is connected to universals and at the same time as American as Mom and Pumpkin Pie.

At the start it might have been best to present not the author’s credentials, which few may find needful and some may deem narcissistic, but you must get your author identified and your values straight and you should read this first. Maybe harder to take than most, this is as a background chapter the easiest thing to write, if one has done lots of deep digging despite the fact that Halloween’s origins are lost in the mists of antiquity. It may not be the easiest chapter to take in. It deals in historical background. Most books on the subject concentrate on the modern aspects. Their research is habitually limited to earlier books so constructed. Some are flimsy. This one is substantial. Some other books go into details you may not appreciate because certain authors deal with Halloween in, for example, Virginia or Pennsylvania or some other particular place and some other time than what you care about. This one may present details you do not require. They are interesting if you care to read them. Some books are too backward looking for the Now generation. A very American American, Henry Ford, asserted that history is bunk. Now Americans say history means something over and done with. They find it boring, or trivial, as in Edna Barth’s book Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts (1963). It need not be. It need not be limited to a gothic riff, the title of a recent book. It can deal with the here and now as well as the backstory. A happy holiday can prompt very sober thought.

At least this need never be an assault on your patience or an insult to your intelligence. Nothing here will be as weird as Bonnie Vent’s e-book Is My House Haunted? A Practical Guide. You will get no falsehoods about real parapsychological experiences and actual ghosts. You will not be detained too long in this introductory chapter. It is brief compared to the unique last chapter. That will be much longer because you are more interested in TV and movies available now than you are in matters long ago and far away. So an extensive filmography with hundreds of movies mentioned is a feature here, good for Halloween and for horror entertainment useful all year long. If you will read some history, after the backstory you can move on to more attractive things. Realize that the earliest history is murky because it goes very far back. We can cope, at the very least, by emulating a longwinded and tedious lawyer in an old French play who commenced by speaking of the creation of the world and was urged by a judge to start with historically datable material. He was instructed to move on to The Deluge.

RELIGIOUS BACKGROUND OF OUR SECULAR HOLIDAY

Doing that starts us at a widespread legend of destruction by water found in many much earlier sources and picked up in the Old Testament where it is given the dignity of revelation. We are most familiar with the Jewish version of The Flood but well before Jews other peoples wrote of a flood that archeologists and geologists say actually occurred. We must notice that the roots of Halloween, connected to death and destruction, the intervention of the supernatural and the importance of the human family, lie much deeper than the Judaic religion or even the Chaldean and other religions and superstitions from which Judaism sprang. All religions attempt to answer the question of who or what created the earth and accounts for us here. All religions address what we are supposed to accomplish here and what if anything we can look forward to after we leave here. All religions try to explain life and death. What is this gift of human life, a gift that we never asked for, and is it possibly an Indian gift, to be taken back, or once on Earth do we go elsewhere as ourselves? Halloween plays with such questions.

On second thought, not unusual in conversation, let us go back before The Flood, back to Creation. Many early religions stress the Sun as creator, bringing life out of dead matter. As for the world’s creation, the Jews said the earth came into being on a 22 October, not a 31 October, somewhat over 5700 years ago. The Jews were far off regarding the year of creation or if you prefer the Big Bang. Today scientists are discussing earlier explosive events. The Jews knew nothing of any Big Bang but they were exactly right in trying to provide a creation story. Every religion needs one. The Jews gave their tribe or nation a special place in God’s green world, proclaiming their divine being to be real and anthropomorphic, a heavenly father, and all other peoples’ divinities mere idols. Their Almighty handed down ritual and moral instructions. All religions do. That unified the Jews politically and supported them morally. The Jews set out some laws to be obeyed under threat of the wrath of God and most of all the Jews found a way of responding to the fundamental human fear, whatever one’s political or ethic position, of the human dead as well as of the undying divine. Their creation story likewise dealt with good and evil and Satan as well as Adam and Eve, angels and demons. Those terrors of the unknowable haunt all early religions of which we know. They lie at the heart of our Halloween today.

Jews especially concentrated on an angry deity and legalism and political exceptionalism. They borrowed from others a dash of mysticism. The Buddha was responsible for a different kind of religion. He placed the emphasis on human rationality. He claimed reason, enlightenment achieved by thought, accepting as truth nothing except what contemplation brought him. He suggested we not bother ourselves much with thinking about gods in heavens. But there are many Buddhist mysteries and many Buddhist hells. There are always accretions of the irrational to any religion, even superstitions against which the religion may warn, especially ideas about spirits. Confucius said: Let us leave the spirits aside, until we know how best to serve mankind. Most religions take an abiding interest in the spirit world, including the spirits of the human dead. Halloween is a time when we especially think of them, perhaps not always rationally. There is more going on here than you may have realized.

Also connected to the heavenly and the terrestrial are, more familiar because more recent, Greek and Roman ideas and ideals. The Romans had a festival of the dead and also a harvest festival, the latter about the first of November. It was dedicated to the goddess Pomona. That is where some Halloween apple traditions originate. Harvest time was an appropriate time for settling accounts and for thinking about spiritual things while as the hymn says bringing in the sheaves. It was believed that vengeful ghosts might choose that time to return, the ghost being the spirit that lived within the now dead person or even animal and perhaps now to be seen looking rather wispy, like breath in cold weather. Maybe witches might evoke these shades. Maybe there would be ghostly visitations.

The witches spoke of them. Witches were the wise old women who knew herbal medicine. Many people believed witches could cast or remove spells. When the patients died the people called the women evil and when the medicines worked and the women accumulated some money the people accused them of dealing with The Devil, killed them and took their property. The black (evil) cats of Halloween were some of the witches’ familiar spirits, diabolical assistants in animal form. Here we have symbolism, like the horns and tail of The Devil, of bestial nature. In a similar fashion, creatures that move fast are shown with wings, an idea that the Jews picked up from the Assyrians. Angels are said to have wings. The first wife of Adam, Lilith, angrier than most first wives, also had wings, or so The Talmud says as it warns that unmarried men should never sleep alone in a house because this vicious winged creature—think of the Greek harpies—will get them. Some of Satan’s satraps and his demons are depicted with wings because they go, like angels (the Greek term means messengers) speedily about the business of their masters. At Halloween superstition assures us that human witches and all the ambient forces of evil, often symbolized by the black bat that flies by night, may be especially predatory, flying around. At this time it is essential to pay attention to rampant evil as well as to remember the blessed dead. It is likewise an opportunity to reflect on what we have come to believe about good and evil and the important parts that they play in our lives whether we are serious or at play. Halloween is a holy day and a holiday. It is a time to remember others and ourselves. It connects the present to the past, the living to the dead, Christianity to Judaism and Islam, and those Abrahamic religions to all the pagan past.

CHRISTIANIZING PAGAN ELEMENTS

Paganism as the name suggests was for the people in the fields, savage people from the wild forests, civilization for those who lived in cities. St. Gregory the Great, pope from AD 590 to 604, was a practical man, determined to improve the church and extend it, converting the heathens. You can see that by his tinkering with the calendar, though it is still not perfect, and his response when missionaries reported to him at Rome that it was difficult to get pagans to give up their old ways. Pope Gregory instructed the missionaries to co-opt if not adopt what could not be extirpated. Get to them where they are. The church had to work with what it encountered.

The Romans insisted on reveling on 25 December because that was part of the celebration of the god Saturn, the Saturnalia. That date also happened to be the birthday of Mithras, the god-man, born of a virgin, the son of God (the Sun), who shed the eternal blood for the salvation of mankind. Sound familiar? Mithras was worshipped by Roman soldiers well before Jesus of Nazareth came on the scene. Temples to Mithras were built in Rome and all across the empire, or empires, because what we call the Roman Empire had several parts before Constantine undertook to unify it. For unification Constantine appears to have conflated the religions of Jesus and Mithras, both worshipped in his armies. The Christian church also unified as the Bishop of Rome decided to convert Saturnalia and the older worship of Mithras into a new Christmas.

The birthday of Jesus of Nazareth was actually in April, like that of the Buddha, Mohammed, and some other great religious leaders. Perhaps you did not know that. It is correct. Our count of AD 2011 from anno domini (year of the Lord) is a few years incorrect. If Jesus was born in the reign of King Herod as The Bible says it must have been no later than 4 BC, when Herod died. Astronomers have calculated that it was probably April of 5 BC that the star, perhaps a comet, that Matthew speaks of was seen by the Zoroastrian astrologers we call magicians (Magi). You do know that Jews will not use AD; they prefer CE (Common Era). Muslims date from the flight of The Prophet from Mecca to Medina. We all have ways to which we cling and which differentiate us. Now the point for Halloween and other holidays is that we all have our special customs. For other holidays we deck the halls with boughs of holly (why follow the druids?) or color eggs or have an Easter bunny (why?) or do something else not as easily explained as the Thanksgiving turkey. We used to dance around the maypole, a phallic symbol, in Spring, the time of rebirth. What, you may ask, is all this about popes and paganism and the calendar and other holidays doing in a book about Halloween? The answer is that there is an attempt to stress the fact that there are pagan origins to the Judaism and Christianity and Islam of the modern world and that there is such a thing as times gone by that work on us all even if we do not care to notice that or hear old facts. Importantly right here, Halloween conflates many year end/New Year festivals, with all that that entails.

In any year Spring is the best time for new shoots of any kind. Jesus was conceived in late March (The Annunciation) tradition said. Thus for a long while the Christian’s new year began on 25 March. It was called Lady Day, for the Blessed Virgin. Christianity says He was born on 25 December when a second angelic announcement was made, this time not to the Virgin Mary but to shepherds abiding in the fields. In Judæa late December was far too cold for the sheep to be out grazing. Choosing 25 December for the day of birth, however, was a very good move on the part of Christians who wanted to supplant the Roman Saturnalia. Pope Gregory like many doctors of the church down the centuries was shrewd enough to grasp that if you can’t beat them, join them, or make it easier for them to join you. By Gregory’s time Christianity had actually beat them because for whatever reason, a miraculous vision or a sound political decision, the Emperor Constantine had made Christianity not a despised and beleaguered radical sect but in the fourth century AD the official faith of the entire Roman Empire. Christian sects coalesced and established scriptures and rituals and rules and holy days/holidays. Holidays marked new starts, the coming of Spring and of the onset of Winter, for instance. The relevance of Herod and the Christmas angels singing and the rest to Halloween? Simply that no matter how firmly established in history and belief, no matter what you have always heard about this or that, the details may in fact be wrong. A holiday like Halloween is sure to be surrounded by vague or even inaccurate reports, old legends, even sometimes unexplained features, but it has its history, accurate and complete or not.

Yes, each culture, each religion has its own ways. If some Jews raised up a Golden Calf, other Jews destroyed the idol. Christians not only borrowed much for the new, reformed Jewish religion of The Christ but also took another tack. If a piece of classical statuary showed a woman and child such as Venus and Cupid, Christians put halos on them and said the result was the Virgin and Christ Child. If pagans had a popular magic well, Christians could make it over into a holy well even if they had to promote some local legendary figure to the rank of saint. You could modify to mollify the locals. Maybe you could get pagans to stop worshipping gods in trees and allow them to bring branches for decorations and rushes for the church floor. Eventually you could have the German Tannenbaum (Fir Tree) as a highly decorated Christmas tree, really popular in English-speaking countries after Prince Albert, the German consort of Queen Victoria, introduced it to Britain in the mid-19th century. The decorated tree tradition is, of course, ancient on The Continent. Long ago the Swedes used to decorate trees with the corpses of the sacrificed, hoping to placate the god who lived inside. We still knock on wood to call on the spirit within. Now you know why. Once again you recognize that Halloween, among other things, comes to you sometimes without elucidation.

One can make clear that in the spirit of celebration Christians adopted some aspects of the long established Celtic religious practices and tailored them to fit the new religion. It was partly a political move, like rummaging among all the available texts and putting together the official Old Testament. That consisted of five books attributed to Moses, who did not write them. The New Testament was also a select anthology. It rejected gnostic beliefs, putting in this, leaving out that, ending with the Revelation of St. John. You can fashion the old into the new, as Christ did Judaism, as before Him the Jews reworked the sources of Judaism, as Islam revised both Judaism and Christianity. Christ appears about several dozen times in The Koran but as a prophet, not a messiah. We say man proposes, God disposes but even what we accept as divine revelation we undertake to manipulate. Theology has to deal with the people where they are and preach to them in the words they understand. It told us various creation stories and that the sun moves around the earth but that it stood still for Joshua at Jericho. Later we found out about evolution as well as Adam and Eve and we debate that but not that the geocentric belief was flat wrong. Later archeologists proved that Jericho had been leveled well before Joshua arrived on the scene. Much later, missionaries discovered that the people of the Far North had to be told not of the Lamb of God, Jesus, after the ancient Jewish custom of offering animal sacrifice before Melchizedek’s fruits and wine, but of the Seal of God.

The case of Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the most high God, is highly interesting. Melchizedek was the man who offered bread and wine to Abram (renamed Abraham, a new name for a new personality). That old priest of the Jews is a good if usually ignored example of the connection between himself and the Messiah, Who combined bread and wine and blood sacrifice, just as the Messiah is taken as the fulfillment of the ancient Jewish prophecies. The obscure old priest makes us notice the change in tradition that takes place over time, religious as well as secular, changes we find in details such as those of Halloween. Did you ever think of giving away candy as a form of sacrifice, as an attempt to sweeten the supernatural forces? It beats offering up the lives of animals and human beings.

Tradition as time goes on undergoes many alterations and it did so most in the days of oral transmission from one illiterate generation to the next. Except for a goddess springing from the head of Zeus in Greek mythology—representing an idea—not much that is religious comes full grown instantly. Details change but basically all religions have in common certain permanent features that serve the enduring and inescapable needs of humanity. We have a God gene, science asserts. It is natural for us to have some kind of religion, one suited to our time and place, ethnicity and history. Into it may be taken, however new it is, some older religious traditions and folk beliefs. Think of Mormonism if you do not have the goods on Judeo-Christianity or the Greeks if you do not know what they borrowed from the Egyptians. Basic is usually Heaven up, Hell down, and good and bad supernatural beings all over. Whether spirits live in the heavens, in rocks and trees, is up to you. Everything, after all, is the result of some creative force.

Some of the rituals and beliefs of Christianity came from the east, from the Jews and from the druidic and other ancient peoples who originated in the east and moved westwards into Europe where they helped to shape European Christianity. Over time some customs of the dead and the old Samhain of the Celts were transformed into All Saints’ Day, Halloween being the e’en or eve of the hallows, the blessed saints. The day after All Saints’ Day was to be All Souls’ Day for all who had gone to Heaven. Both were to be red letter (especially important) days permanently in the missals and rituals. At first the celebration of the lives of all the saints on a single day may have been a way of bringing together the various cults of the early Christian martyrs, the ones chiefly responsible for giving emerging Christianity its firm foundations. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, wrote Tertullian. These heroes and heroines of the faith needed to be honored and emulated. There was value in holding them up as inspirations to the faithful who were still living and who hoped to join the blessed in Heaven and become saints themselves and live forever after. The dear departed were treasured. There was the very common worship of ancestors—and the fear of departed spirits who just might come back along with demonic forces.

WHERE THE DEAD GO

Early people worried about what it was that departed and left living creatures dead. They assumed all creatures had spirits if they had breath. They painted pictures on cave walls to manipulate the spirits of animals. They put piles of rocks on top of buried humans as much to keep the spirits from getting back up as to prevent wild animals from disturbing the dead bodies. People assumed that the human spirit persisted after death, which, as Tennessee Williams said, has never been much in the way of completion. In ancient times people mused about where the departed spirits lived. Egyptians said the ka (soul) went to a netherworld. Norseman said the heroically dead in battle went to a heavenly banqueting hall in Valhalla. The Greeks said they went to the Islands of the Blessed. For Christians there was a Heaven or Hell for the saved or the damned and a Purgatory for those persons who had died in the faith but with eventually pardonable sins still on their souls. The church doctrine was that Purgatory was a correctional institution where sinners were confined for a time determined by the number and severity of their shortcomings. Purgatory was a penitentiary from which, purged, humans could finally emerge to join the angels in an eternal Heaven. It was a dogma that these suffering souls could be prayed for by the living and that thereby dead sinners’ sentences might be reduced. No time off was offered for good behavior in the correctional facility but time off for certain petitions. Thus All Souls’ day was created as a major holiday of the medieval church because prayer is believed to be efficacious and pity is a Christian virtue and people of all faiths love the dear departed.

On that day the living especially prayed for the dead. On that day priests were allowed, as previously only at Christmas, to say extra Masses. These requiems on All Souls’ day were to be attended by all the faithful. If you are a Roman Catholic you should go to Mass on this day. That rule still applies, even now that the church has run into a new kind of forced Reformation, somewhat resembling the great Reformation that was partly instigated in anger over the church’s selling indulgences to help those in Purgatory. There was strong objection to medieval Get-Out-of-Purgatory cards, so the church has done away with selling forgiveness. In fact Rome has lately spoken a great deal less about the whole concept of Purgatory and even less than that about Limbo. Keep reading for Limbo, here in Limbo (put aside) for now.

It appears that the church, additionally, no longer wants to recall the medieval Lord of Misrule and Boy Bishop and general parodia sacra (mockery of sacred things) and world-turned-upside-down shenanigans of the New Year holiday and all the carnival high jinks of feudal times. As late as 1444 the theological faculty of the University of Paris told French bishops high jinks were essential. To put it in the Freudian terms of the boiler-room school of psychology, people needed to reduce pressure, to let off steam. The Paris doctors said, in Latin here translated, that we all needed that outlet

so that foolishness, which is our second nature and is inherent in mankind, can freely spend itself at least once a year. The barrels burst if from time to time we do not broach them to let in some air. All men are barrels poorly constructed. This is why we permit Folly on certain days so that in the long run we may return with renewed zeal to the service of God.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Heaven is where God especially is and has been from eternity. Hell came into existence when God cast out of Heaven a Satan, an archangel who insisted Non serviam (I will not serve), and with him all his rebellious angels. They were to live perpetually in tormenting fires. In Hell. The Jews had a Hell. They slowly developed an idea of Sheol. Islam has a Hell. Buddhists have a large number of hells, you know. Purgatory, the Roman Catholic church’s equivalent of places of temporary afterlife punishment also found in eastern religions, is said to be a place for the expiation of sins not so heinous as to warrant the eternal punishment of Hell. You know that but perhaps have never realized that it substitutes for the repeated incarnations until perfection is achieved of some other religions.

Protestants and eastern Catholics not allied with the church of Rome generally do not believe in a Purgatory. They likewise do not accept the Catholic teaching about Limbo, mentioned earlier. Now, Limbo is a place of eternal rest for those who were born before the Messiah came. Those people could not, however virtuous they were, ever enter Heaven because they had not been baptized. Yet they did not deserve any punishment in Hell or Purgatory. So they were sent forever to Limbo. Also in Limbo were the infant children of Christians whom the parents had not been able to get baptized before the little innocents died. The New Testament says Christ descended into Hell and released some worthy ancients there, and He loved children. If they could not get into Heaven at least the babes ought not to suffer, it was thought, so they too went to Limbo, never to emerge but happy nonetheless. So maybe it should be said Christ went to Limbo, not Hell. Correct the creed. Some unbelievers reject traditional creed and assert there is no Heaven or Hell, or they define both as being in this life or they say Hell is other people. Some who are believers, stressing that God is above all merciful, are sure that eventually everyone goes to Heaven the way that repeated incarnations in some other religions finally end in nirvana. Perhaps no one has to be in a Purgatory or a Limbo or a Hell. But Halloween strongly asserts that there are Hell and Purgatory as well as a Heaven. Now, if there are people in Purgatory they just might return as ghosts. People in Heaven or Hell stay there forever.

That is quite enough theology for one book. But understand that the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the tradition of Islam, a modification of the Judeo-Christian religion, as you are aware, all have beliefs about angels and saints and devils and demons, the dead, penitential practices, prayers and sacrifices for the deceased, etc. All firmly hold that the dead retain human personality and that there is a question of whether those personalities may, or may not, be able to come back to visit the living. Understand that and you grasp essentials shaping the religious basis of Halloween. Halloween is more than simply a time to act up and party hard. Ancient religious beliefs still underpin the now mostly secularized holiday and its carnival atmosphere. The concepts of Heaven and Hell, etc., help to explain the basis of Halloween practices, practices more or less widespread still even though we are no longer in what was called the Age of Faith, a time when in the western world a catholic Christianity united a great number of disparate peoples scattered over a wide area. Those peoples often had very different histories and peculiar secular ideas.

THE AGE OF FAITH

Behind all this were needs of the average individual and the fear of God and the hope of reward for a virtuous life. These things are at the bottom of all or most religions. Religion also attempts to allay dread of death, to extinguish extinction. Religion often posits if not some Isle of the Blessed or reincarnation on earth then some kind of afterlife in some eternal and better place, perhaps bliss after a certain number of lifetimes which provide opportunity to perfect the self. The Hindu transmigration of souls and repeated rebirth, reincarnation, offers the most logical of explanations of the existence of evil. It proclaims that suffering in this life that we know is retribution for sin in past life and that salvation and rest have to wait until all debts are paid, all justice done, and the spirit purified. What religion does not believe in justice and some kind of spirits and continuance? What kid entranced by video games does not believe he can respawn?

If spirits did live on after death, perhaps ghosts might return. You could not say dread of ghosts was ridiculous if you insisted that human beings retained their identity after physical death and moved on to suffer in propria persona in Purgatory or Hell or to live forever in Limbo or in bliss with their recognizable families and friends in Heaven. Spirits might possibly return from Purgatory while suffering there or maybe even from Limbo where the non-baptized but good, such as ancient philosophers and infants, as you have heard, were supposed to live happily, though it was unlikely those in Limbo would have any business back on earth. Therefore, your child’s invisible friend just might be a child ghost. Then of course there were evil spirits, for the Judeo-Christian tradition had replaced the more ancient polytheistic idea of various gods and goddesses, some good and some evil or partly good and partly evil, with a simple opposition. There was (at least after the War in Heaven when numerous gods duked it out and the Supreme Being took the throne) one single good God and one evil Satan (The Adversary). Each had followers such as angels and devils, more numerous than anyone’s friends online. That posited what Cotton Mather termed an Invisible World. That world he thought to be as real as the world we see. There was, to use scientific terms, not only positive but negative forces, and of course the positive must be stronger than the negative or there would be nothing at all, the two canceling each other out, all this despite the scientific fact that some 95% of our universe is so-called dark matter, invisible but definitely there, doing something or other we cannot see or understand. At some times, maybe what we call Halloween now, could it be that the boundaries between the spiritual world and our world might be more easily penetrated than at other times and that the usually invisible becomes visible? Maybe that happens at Halloween, folks say.

It happened to be on Halloween in 1517 that a former monk who married a former nun—how Catholic can you get?—nailed to the front door of a church at Wittenberg, a German university town where intellectual debate was very popular, a list of 95 theses that he was anxious to argue with the theologians of the Roman Catholic Church. The man was Martin Luther. Luther was convinced his church needed to be shaken up. His bold act of necessity (I can do no other) launched the Protestant Reformation. Realpolitik as well as religious factions quickly became involved. That led to even more changes in the culture of the west. Over time the relaxation of authoritarian Catholic dogma was followed by further alterations, some of which help to explain why Halloween today is basically a secular holiday and not the All Hallows’ Eve of yore.

What was pagan to start with became Christianized and then it became more and more secular. Pope Gregory had taken the bonfires of Beltane of 1 May, and the Roman honoring of Cybele and all the gods, and pagan harvest festivals and set in their place 1 November to honor St. Mary [The Blessed Virgin] and all the saints. That is how the holiday of All Hallows was born. Since then further changes have naturally occurred. The river of history runs on. Herodotus said you could not step into the same river twice, for the river flows, time passes. Once you have one Reformation celebrating freedom of thought other Reformations are sure to follow. All the pope’s forces and all the king’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty back together again—however ecumenical they may be, and do not expect much more than lip service to that in any case if history is any guide.

The holiday has drifted in different places in different degrees from solemn remembrance of the dear departed and maybe a superstitious fear of the dead to jolly secular festivities. Halloween-like ceremonies have always had at the core a lot of revelry and a touch of rebellion. Halloween is just right for our hedonistic and contentious present.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE HALLOWEEN HOLIDAY

In Roman Catholic countries today Halloween retains a lot of the religious aspect. For example, it exhibits strong religious features in Mexico. This is true despite the fact that anticlericalism has long been rife there because of the church siding with the Spanish invaders against the natives who, for quite a time at first, neither church nor state was ready to define as human beings. Now both pre-Conquest and Catholic traditions still have a major presence in Mexico. Later you will read of the Mexican Day of the Dead. Something like our US Halloween is growing in popularity in Italy, where The Vatican deplores how irreligious All Hallows’ Eve has become and where Italians visiting graveyards leave their calling cards at tombs to show they have paid their polite visit. In France, where even a great many Roman Catholics do not bother to go to church and where anticlericalism goes back at least as far as the Revolution when the Goddess of Reason danced on the high altar of Nôtre Dame, aloine (variously spelled) is every year growing in popularity. The French tend to be anti-clerical but they retain many old religious customs.

Pagans likewise are involved. In a number of countries Wiccans, worshippers of The Goddess and nature, have objected to Halloween as somewhat deriding their recently invented or reinvented religion, but there are Wiccan celebrations at Halloween as well. Halloween does indeed have close connections to nature worship and maybe even to ancient women’s religions, even though Wiccans and many others have to debate those others who assert that arguments for goddess worship in pre-history rest on little if any evidence and that Sun (male) religion may always have trumped Moon (female) religion. Both of those aside, now anyone who favors ancient traditions against society’s grain and who wants to overturn hierarchies or have an outburst of fun and freedom from restraint of females or males may be drawn to Halloween-like occasions. Homosexuals for centuries had to hide their sexual nature. Now they appear even if out especially to enjoy all the masquerading and have welcomed Halloween as the Gay Christmas. There will be a little more a little later on regarding the global spread of Halloween today. Chiefly here we consider Halloween in the US but we often note the British and others who are likely to pay attention to a book written in English.

Merchants have seen Halloween as a tremendous business opportunity. Even some cultural institutions—Boo at the Zoo in Bronx, NY, for example—have attempted to make a profit out of this holiday with a Halloween Oktoberfest in a beer hall or a Halloween yacht cruise ($200 cash prize for the sexiest female costume but no prize for males), etc. We shall later look at that aspect. Some business people such as airport staff dress up for work at Halloween, although weird outfits at the airport are to be seen on many passengers every day of the year. Don’t Americans have any idea what they daily look like? Does their ordinary appearance push Halloween costumes ever more toward the extreme? To supply the demand there are not only places that sell Halloween costumes and props but also others that have, like the old-fashioned Santa Claus Land in Indiana, a Halloween theme park. Today Halloween has many appeals to everyone except perhaps those whose sacred scriptures condemn cross-dressing and dabbling in the occult in any way at all. But in the US even fundamentalists pick and choose which rules to obey and they elect ministers, bishops, and politicians who agree with their ways of thinking. Fundamentalists are often called dictatorial, but strength is in dogma. It is just that when the majority reaches a decision old-fashioned democrats expect the minorities to accept the will of the majority. Against their conscience and beliefs? In modern times every minority wants special treatment and exception from the dictates of the majority. Among the religious, every person says (s)he will be guided by her/his conscience and that law, where arrived at democratically or not, cannot and will not be obeyed when it goes against faith and conviction. Of late the relationship between sovereign states internationally and also nationally between US states and the federal government and between the individual and society as a whole have all been faced with considerable new challenges. Can you impose your standards and customs and beliefs on others by law or by force? One Nation, Under God but now not entirely under one single god and for some not under any god at all. Now what? In these parlous times a unifying, secular, non-partisan Halloween may be of much increased usefulness.

The rise of secularism in the modern world cannot be denied. In a country almost 90 % nominally Christian, Americans are now sending Seasons Greetings instead of Christmas cards. Thanksgiving is far less religious than it was at first. Bill O’Reilly has militated against Halloween as having a secular progressive agenda but so was the nation the Founding Fathers set up. O’Reilly has connected Halloween’s mischief, if any, to the political left. Others have gone to another extreme saying our Halloween is too religious for a country where religion and politics are supposed to be in separate locked boxes. Of course they are not. We have chaplains in the armed forces and the legislatures, we have In God We Trust all over, we have put under God into the Pledge of Allegiance, and we do not tax church property. Meanwhile even with Christmas and Jewish and African-American holidays, among others, America is growing less truly religious. Now Christmas is more of a retail store holiday, one that puts 30 % of Americans under unusually great stress, while Halloween is more for enjoyment than essentially a gift-giving time although there is trick or treating. Moreover, you do not start Halloween as far in advance as Thanksgiving does for Christmas and you do not have to sustain the thing for the 12 long days of Christmas. You have a one-shot romp and it’s over. That is very American—fast and painless. It is indeed very American and just a bit anti-authoritarian and therefore a pretty good fit for a nation founded in revolution, democratic and desiring to be free and progressive, Under God but not recognizing or forbidding any specific religion.

Our Halloween became far less sedate after our Civil War (War of Northern Aggression or Late Unpleasantness, if you like) because Americans, shocked by the deaths of hundreds of thousands on both sides of the terrible internecine struggle, could hardly bear to think about all the lost who would never return. Now many Americans still fly the Confederate flag and both the blue and the gray turn out for Civil War re-enactments and spend lots of money to visit the battlegrounds of the war. Who does that for the War of 1812 or the War with Mexico? Nevertheless everyone gets together on Halloween.

Today, on average, Americans spend on the upbeat holiday of Halloween about $60.00 per person. New Yorkers are reputed to spend twice the national average. Americans are not remembering when Americans slaughtered Americans and burned American cities or when the British came down from Canada and burned the White House or when we stole a lot of Mexico that immigrants now appear to be taking back. At Halloween politics are best put aside. People are joined in having a good time. Just after the fall of the Twin Towers, New York’s mayor Guiliani insisted that the 2001 Halloween parade go on to express the city’s determination not to descend into the doldrums. Halloween has since become a notable non-political US export, as you know.

Some old customs (bring an onion when you visit a home at Halloween) have been forgotten. The onion was related to divination because it used to be thought that you could tell whether the coming winter would be hard, or warmer, by the thickness of an onion layer. The average person does not care about onions, etc., but the intellectual stays curious and feels rewarded if and when some explanation can be found, some further