Written by awneitsch on November 16, 2021

Halloween II – Christmas 0

Mutterings And Murmurs . Social Studies

I get Christmas.

I sort of grew up with it. When I was older, I came across a picture from the 60’s showing a decorated Christmas tree in what turned out to be the house I was born into. My older brothers were in the picture seemingly happy and looking at the tree, and especially at the gifts that were underneath it. There were no similar pictures to indicate that this was an annual event. I would have remembered if it was. I grew up experiencing Christmas vicariously through the experiences of my peers and even learned to carefully lie about my own experiences at home. “What did you get for Christmas?” “Um, two Hot Wheels and a G.I. Joe.” Dad thought Christmas was a waste of money as was taking us to church that had a German school in the basement. This from a man that smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Mom always tried to make a nice dinner on Christmas day. Easter too. She knitted socks and mittens for us to give as gifts at Christmas. She sewed clothes for us. I got the hand-me-downs. She baked. She had some rough Christmas times when she was a child. She and her family, less the father that was beaten to death by rogue soldiers at a refugee train stop in the last days of the war, had to make do with what was available. She brought and carried some sense of tradition and kindness into our family. Life was sub optimal. It was a semi-brutal bucolic existence. Mom played opera records and Heinje on Sundays. We had farm fresh roast chicken. We ate real food.

In retrospect, I think that in spite of the lack of the usual trappings of Christmas, the simplicity and sometimes uncomfortable realities of the season carried over until I was much older and saw Christmas develop into the commercialized hot shopping glutton and waste fest that it was, right up until the beginning of the apocalypse. Black Fridays and Boxing Days became Black Christ Mass without Christ. My perceptions changed somewhat when I became a father. There were kids to introduce the tradition to. There is something special about seeing youngsters get excited when they help decorate the tree and open up gifts on Christmas eve and learning to be thankful. There were also times spent, not without comfort and joy, spent in various church services that spoke and sang of events that we adults didn’t quite believe in. During the apocalypse, the church, Christianity in particular, has been attacked, suppressed, and marginalized. Churches were burned or closed, pastors imprisoned, and Christmas cancelled. Carolling was forbidden. Many Christians, including Catholics have embraced invasive, AntiChrist COVID measures and Cultural Marxist Degradationist culture. The number of houses in the neighbourhoods that decorate their homes for Christmas are becoming fewer. Families are losing their jobs and running out of available credit with which to compete. Families have, by and by, given up on having the greenest lawn or the showiest light show or the biggest inflatable character at Christmas. Winter used to be the time when most lawns and yards were equally covered with varying layers of white snow. Remember sledding as a child on Christmas day and then with your own children? Snow can be cleansing that way. It covers the typically clean and well groomed landscapes as well as the poorly tended and litter strewn tracts of weeds and brown grass. The poorly tended yards are usually owned or rented by people who also own dogs. Sloppy yard owners are usually negligent dog owners. In winter, the sloppy yard keepers and negligent dog owners will allow their dogs to do their business on the clean or dirty snow. Whether it’s cold or not, you can often see bedheaded, pyjama clad creatures snapping the leashes of their dogs, yelling at them to “Go already!”. Now, symbolic masks litter the neat and messy yards alike. Such decoration for the holidays. Home owners and renters alike will also put up inflatable, illuminated snowmen and Santas. I always found Santa Claus to be as weirdly creepy as Ronald McDonald, especially when they handled children.

Festive!

Merry Christmas!

I sort of get Halloween.

*** Halloween is a holiday celebrated each year on October 31, and Halloween 2021 will occur on Sunday, October 31. The tradition originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints. Soon, All Saints Day incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows Eve, and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, festive gatherings, donning costumes and eating treats.

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.

This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.

In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.

When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

All Saints’ Day

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.

By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.

All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

Halloween Comes to North America

The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.

As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.

Did you know? More people are buying costumes for their pets. Americans spent $490 million on costumes for their pets in 2019—more than double what they spent in 2010.

Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.

History of Trick-or-Treating

Borrowing from European traditions, many nations including Americans and Canadians, began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. ***

From Howard –

In recent years, Halloween surpassed Christmas as the festive season to ‘go all out’ on the festive and ghoulish decoration and celebration of pagan ritual. Some households build entire ‘haunted’ houses or shrines to some Satanic creature or another. The costumes worn by the faithful can range from Lil Bo Peep to Marilyn Manson, real blood optional. The whole occasion focused on mischief and candy…lots of candy for the greedy ghouls that are likely to be malnourished at home. Mischief in many forms was enacted on the houses and people that were not overly generous with the candy. There were cases of creeps that tampered with the already poisonous confection they were giving out to the greedy ghouls. Needles in apples, Ex Lax or ecstasy in chocolate, or hash in home made cookies. Houses were toilet papered, egged, and soaped. Flaming bags of dog shit were placed on doorsteps to see the fun of homeowners trying to put on the fire using their slippered or sock feet. Things got much worse for some people. There were masked robberies, and muggings of loot carrying Halloweeners. There were assaults and rapes, fights at drunken parties between anonymous revelers. It will be bitter irony if future Halloween events require a death certificate or vaccine passport to participate. Masked zombies abound. It’s always best to hide behind a persona and chemicals when you become an asshole. Some people just come as they are. Some people are just in it for the ‘Spooktacular’ sales events that invited the mob to spend even more money they didn’t have. Halloween sparked the enhancement of horror films with the bar for blood and gore being raised with every release. Halloween sparked the ‘Halloween’ franchise of ‘B’ grade slasher flicks and caused several serials to be launched against a blood fear hungry audience. They probably launched a few copycat wannabes too.

As if people need another excuse to be less than human.

Didja see that PSYCHO, JASON walking down ELM STREET on HALLOWEEN engaged in a TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE?

Watch the ‘Hannibal’ series.

Boo!

Fun!

*** Originally appeared in A&E Television Networks website ‘History’ on Nov. 18, 2009, updated Oct. 25, 2021.

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