author of "And the Whippoorwill Sang"
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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 screech-owl, 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.
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.
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Halloween signified the return of the herds from the pasture, renewal of laws and land tenures, and the practice of divination 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 each divination 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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
Something wicked this way comes.
Open, locks,
Whoever knocks!
-Shakespeare
Happy Halloween, my pretties!
