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Life IS history in the making. Every word we say, everything we do becomes history the moment it is said or done. Life void of memories leaves nothing but emptiness. For those who might consider history boring, think again: It is who we are, what we do and why we are here. We are certainly individuals in our thoughts and deeds but we all germinated from seeds planted long, long ago.
Thursday, October 30, 2014
The Witching Hours
With tonight being the eve of Halloween, it's time to finish gearing up and get ready for the witching hours. Each year Awakenings features the writings of Micki Peluso, author of ...And the Whippoorwill Sang. Read more on Micki at the end of the article.
This is a story
of the origins of Halloween from olden times up to the present.
Photo Credit: photobucket.com
Strange shadows dart
stealthily across sparely lit streets, as dusk settles heavily on quiet
neighborhoods of tree-lined sidewalks and cheerful well-kept homes. The eerie
scream of a screechowl, more likely the brakes of a passing car, echoes deep into
the night. Looming ominously from nearly every window is the menacing glare of
smirking Jack-o-lanterns, while the often nervous refrain of "Trick or Treat"
rings out in repetitious peals. Halloween is here, and with it the shivery
remembrance of things that go bump in the night.
Halloween, a holiday once favored second to Christmas, is not as much fun as it
used to be. The last few Halloweens have brought tampering scares, such as
finding razors in apples and poisoned candy. A sick segment of society has
forced many parents to hold neighborhood parties, instead of allowing their
children to trick or treat. The tricks have been turned on the children, ruining
an a once magical evening.
Photo Credit: photobucket.com
Gone are the days when children, dressed up hideously, or gaudily beautiful,
could enter the home of a stranger, and be offered chilled apple cider with
cinnamon stick straws, and homemade gingerbread, or cupcakes with orange icing
and candy corn faces. No longer can mischievous children creep up on
neighborhood porches to toss corn kernels against the front door, or generously
soap window panes, without triggering house alarms and angering guard dogs kept
behind locked fences. The mystical lure of Halloween is becoming a commercial enterprise for the sale of candy, costumes and decorations.
Photo Credit: photobucket.com
Halloween is a Christian name meaning All Hallows, or All Saint's Day, but the
custom of Halloween dates back to the Celtic cult in Northern Europe. As the
Roman conquest pushed north, the Latin festival of the harvest god, Pomona,
mingled with the Druid god, Samhain. Eventually, the Christians adopted the
Celtic rites into their own observances. Halloween signified the return
of the herds from the pasture, renewal of laws and land tenures, and the
practice of divinations with the dead, presumed to visit their homes on this
day. For both the Celts and the Anglo-Saxons, Halloween marked the eve of a new
year. The Britains were convinced that divinations concerning health, death and
luck, were most auspicious on Halloween. The devil, himself, was evoked for such
purposes. The Druid year began on November first, and on the eve of that
day, the lord of death gathered the souls of the dead who had been condemned to
enter the body of animals to decide what form they should take for the upcoming
year; the souls of the good entered the body of another human at death. The
Druids considered cats to be sacred, believing these animals had once been
human, changed into cats as punishment for evil deeds.
Photo Credit: photobucket.com
The Druid cults were outlawed by the Romans during their reign in Great Britain,
but the Celtic rites have survived, in part, to the present day. By the time
these ancient rites migrated to America, the mystic significance was lost, and
all that has remained is an evening when children can dress in outrageous
costumes, and collect candy from obliging neighbors; yet a tiny part of every
child still believes in witches, ghosts, and the nameless entities that creep
about on Halloween, relatives, to their young minds, of the monster that lives
under every child's bed.
In the ancient days, it was believed that
Halloween was the night chosen by witches and ghosts to freely roam, causing
mischief and harm. Witchcraft existed before biblical times, believed in by
ancient Egyptians, Romans and American Indians. The Christian Church held
varying opinions on witchcraft, at one time accrediting it to be an illusion,
later accepting it as a form of alliance with the devil. As late as 1768,
disbelief in witchcraft was regarded as proof of atheism.
Halloween
customs varied from country to country, but all were related to the Celtic
rites. Immigrants to this country, particularly the Scotch and Irish, introduced
some of the customs remaining today, but there were many more that are
unfamiliar. On Halloween in Scotland, women sowed hemp seed into plowed land at
midnight, repeating the formula: "Hemp seed I sow, who will my husband be, let
him come and mow." Looking over her left shoulder, a woman might see her future
mate.
Photo Credit: photobucket.com
Apples and a six-pence were put into a tub of water, and whoever succeeded in
extracting either of them with his mouth, but without using his teeth, was
guaranteed a lucky year. In the highlands of Scotland in the 18th century,
families would march about their fields on Halloweem, walking from right to
left, with lighted torches, believing this would assure good crops. In other
parts of Scotland, witches were accused of stealing milk and harming cattle.
Boys took peat torches and carried them across the fields, from left to
right(widdershins), in an effort to scare the witches away. The Scots strongly believed in fairies. If a man took a three-legged stool to an
intersection of three roads, and sat on it at midnight, he might hear the names
of the people destined to die in the coming year. However, if he tossed a
garment to the fairies, they would happily revoke the death sentence. Scotland's witches held a party on Halloween. Seemingly ordinary women, who had
sold their souls to the devil, put sticks, supposedly smeared with the fat of
murdered babies, into their beds. These sticks were said to change into the
likenesses of the women, and fly up the chimney on broomsticks, attended by
black cats, the witchs' familiars.
Photo Credit: Wikipedia (Click thumbnail to enlarge.)
In Ireland, a meal of callcannon, consisting of mashed potatoes, onions and
parsnips, was solemnly served on Halloween. Stirred into this concoction, was a
ring, a thimble, a coin, and a doll. The finder of the ring would marry soon,
the finder of the doll would have many children, the thimble finder would never
marry, and the one fortunate enough to find the coin would be rich.
Jack-o-lanterns originated from Ireland, where according to newspaper editor and
writer, George William Douglas, "a stingy man named Jack was barred from Heaven
because of his penuriousness, and forbidden to enter Hell because of his
practical jokes on the devil, thus condemned to walk the earth with his lantern
until Judgement Day."
A more serious custom was the holding of the General Assembly (Freig) at Tara, in
Celtic Ireland, celebrated every three years and lasting two weeks. Human
sacrifices to the gods opened the ceremonies, the victims going up in
flames. England borrowed many of the Scotch and Irish customs, adding
them to their own. Young people bobbed for apples, tied a lighted candle to
one end of a stick and an apple to the other. The stick was suspended and set
spinning, the object of the game being to bite the apple without getting burned
by the candle. This custom was a relic of the fires lighted on the eve of
Samhain in the ancient days of the Celts.
The only customs bearing no
relation to the ancient rites is the masquerade costumes of today, and Halloween
parades. But the custom of masked children asking for treats comes from the
seventeenth century, when Irish peasants begged for money to buy luxuries for
the feast of St. Columba,a sixth century priest, who founded a monastery off the
coast of Scotland.
From the north of England comes the activity known as "mischief night", marked
by shenanigans with no particular purpose, or background. Boys and young men
overturned sheds, broke windows, and damaged property. Mischief night prevails
today, but is mostly limited to throwing eggs, smashing pumpkins, and lathering
carswith shaving cream. The custom of trick or treat is observed mainly by small
children, going from house to house. The treat is almost always given, and the
trick rarely played, except by teenagers, who view Halloween as an excuse to
deviate from acceptable behavior.
Children today, knowing little or
nothing of the history and myths behind Halloween, still get exited over the
prospect of acting out their fantasies of becoming a witch, ghost, devil, or
pirate. It is still pleasurable for an adult, remembering Halloweens past, to
see the glow on a child's face as he removes his mask and assures you that he's
not really a skeleton. Watching the wide-eyed stares of young children warily
observing flickering candle-lit pumpkins, is an assurance that even today,
thousands of years beyond the witch and ghost-ridden days of the Druids, a
little of the magic of Halloween remains. Children need a little magic to become
creative adults; adults need a little magic to keep the child in them alive. So
if, on this Halloween, you notice a black cat slink past your door, trailing
behind a horde of make-believe goblins, it probably belongs to a neighbor. And
the dark shadow whisking across the face of a nearly full moon is only the wisp
of a cloud, not a witch riding a broom... probably.
By
the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes. Open,
locks, Whoever knocks!
-Shakespeare
Happy Halloween, my pretties!
Written by
Micki Peluso, author of "...And the Whippoorwill Sang" Happy times, a sunny day, a driving drunk, eight lives forever changed. A
mother’s account of actual events of her family, filled with laughter,
love, loss, and survival. It is a day like any other, except the
intense heat wave has broken and signs of early fall are in the air.
Around the dining room table of her 100 year old farmhouse Micki
Peluso's six children along with three of their friends eagerly gulp
down a chicken dinner. As soon as the last morsel is ravished, the lot
of them is off in different directions. Except for the one whose turn it
is to do the dishes. After offering her mother a buck if she’ll do
them, with an impish grin, the child rushes out the front door, too
excited for a hug, calling out, "Bye Mom," as the door slams shut. For
the Peluso’s the nightmare begins.
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