A History of Halloween: Part 3

Halloween in the Victorian Era

Halloween thus entered the Victorian era of America: The 1870-1880's. Halloween all of a sudden became less about being scared, celebrating ancestors, and ghosts, but about having parties. Rich people parties. Most of the lore and modes of celebration were thrown out the window, being considered too un-Victorian. Halloween also became a holiday reinterpreted as the quaint practice of the English. They wanted to get rid of the Irish genesis of the holiday. Victorian upper crust hated the Catholics and wanted nothing to do with their evil holiday, so they changed it to fit their needs. On Halloween night, all the young Victorians would gather, have a nice dinner, bob for apples, and play fortune-telling games. These, again, were for the upper middle class and above. Most of the lower middle class to lower class people still celebrated Halloween like the people before them. The Victorians saw it as a holiday to be made safe for their children. It became more about what food to serve, what to decorate with, or how to break the ice at the party. Halloween was still seen as a mysterious night, filled with romance and divination. The tradition of predicting who a girl's husband would be was always popular. These parties, at first, were not for adults though, they were for the unmarried younger crowd. It would seem childish for grownups to be seen at a party of that sort. They were meant to help you find your husband or wife. Themed parties that were trying to be better than the other parties started to sprout up. People threw Cinderella parties, Black Cat parties, and even Mother Goose parties on Halloween night. The spirit of Halloween was starting to be lost among the vast amount of parties during that time of the year. Halloween at the time was extremely watered down, and became more for kids, though parents made sure that they gave a less spooky celebration to their kids. Think of it as the equivalent of your parents going through all your candy looking for razor blades. It was a downer.

It wasn't until the beginning of the 20th century that Halloween began to look like what we see it today. Thanks to groups like the Lion's Club, Boy Scouts of America, and countless other organizations and churches, Halloween became something for everybody, not just a holiday for the rich or for children.

Halloween in the 20th Century

The first town celebration of Halloween started in Anoka, MN, in 1921. The town decorated its streets, hosted two parades, held a Pumpkin Bowl football game and roped off a city square for dancing. Halloween parades and town celebrations became all the rage in America, and soon all regional differences were put aside and Halloween was a holiday for everyone. With this came the "Halloween Problem," which was the rise in pranks and tomfoolery around Halloween. Many organizations tried to get as many kids involved to do service projects as to keep naughty kids busy. Some towns even had the police hire boys who were the most likely to cause trouble, to patrol the streets on Halloween. In Detroit in 1935, the city invited 45,000 kids to 90 public Halloween parties, just to cut down on traffic deaths and false fire alarms. Even though best efforts were being made, vandalism was still a huge problem, especially in cities. The fun stopped in 1942 when the second World War was starting. All of a sudden it was more serious to waste things and vandalize. Kids were warned against letting air out of tires and souping windows, as soup was a valuable thing and Uncle Sam needed it to throw at the Nazi's or something. Halloween was even canceled in some areas, due to the seriousness of the times and people feeling that there should be no tomfoolery. Anything that could be used for the war was, such as materials that would of gone to making decor and other such Halloween things.

After the war, things winded down and everyone started to party again. Halloween was celebrated everywhere again and costume parties became all the rage. Along with that, people started to make "haunted" rooms in their houses to scare guests and children. By the 1950's, Halloween was considered a real national holiday, up there with Christmas and Fourth of July, and the attendance at town Halloween parties rivaled those of Fourth of July celebrations and Memorial day celebrations. With the sudden spurt of children due to all the men coming home from the war (correlation?), Halloween again became a celebration for children. Town parties started to disappear and were replaced by school parties and personal parties. The most important thing added to the Halloween festivities at this time though was Trick or Treating.

Contemporary Halloween

All of a sudden, all of the old traditions came back into the mainstream. Trick or Treating took over the collection of cakes and nuts and became a time for kids to acquire candy from neighbors. The Jack-O-Lantern became more widely used, and the use of fantastic costumes for children while they paraded through the streets became common place. Why did kids expect to get candy from strangers? In the preceding decades, children were given treats to just stay inside and not cause trouble, so, now they went to houses and basically said, "Hey big nose, give me some treats or you're going to get up close and personal with these eggs I got here." As time went on, the trick portion was left for Mischief night, the night before Halloween, or as we call it in Michigan, Devil's Night. In the 60's and 70's, stories started to pop up about people putting heroin or poison into kid's treats. This did happen twice in the span of the two decades, both being deaths attributed to action inside the home. In both cases, a family member tried to kill their relative or kids and used poison in their Pixy Stix. In one case, the father had put a life insurance policy on all his kids. So what does this teach us? That we should suspect our own parents or relatives of murder before we suspect complete strangers. Even though these were isolated incidents, people started to freak out about trick or treating. People started to come up with stories about finding Cyanide in their kid's candy, or glass and razor blades. Though these things never happened, there was a big push to cancel trick or treating out of fear for the children. It was only later after people realized that these were hoax's and that there were no reported trick or treating deaths in the last thirty years, that people warmed back up to Halloween. But, as we all know, the myths about dangerous things in our candy remains to this day.

Halloween has again become a time for charity though, as many children collect money for UNICEF, or United Nasty Imps Causing Evil Forever. It is only through sheer ignorance that the children collect money from equally ignorant people and further the Imp cause. And of course the dressing up like ancient dead has carried over to our own time, as we dress up like witches, demons, and Hannah Montana.
Halloween has now become a celebration of many things, candy, ghosts, costumes, spooky things, and oh yeah...candy. That's what kids mainly think of these days, is how best to stick it to their parents. Only by completely rotting their teeth can they hit their parents where it hurts...the billfold. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I have always loved all the spooky decorations, the ghost stories, walking around getting candy, dressing up like a pirate, and just having a good time being scared. That's something you don't get to do all the time. It's the one time of year where you can go around looking like a bum and actually get food from people as you go begging from house to house. I always enjoyed getting a pop from somebody. They were the ones who for some reason forgot or ran out of candy and had to give you something! Those kind of people also gave out apples, dental floss, pennies, and...sometimes...rocks.
Hope you enjoyed my history of Halloween! Please feel free to share some favorite Halloween memories that you've had.



Resource:

"Halloween: An American Holiday, an American History" by Lesley Pratt Bannatyne.

A History of Halloween: Part 2

Halloween in Early America

When the Puritans settled in New England, they, in the tradition of taking the fun out of everything, had Halloween abolished and replaced it with May Day. May Day happened to be a holiday that was no where near October and involved people making baskets. Oh goody. Though the Puritans didn't like Halloween or honoring ancestors, they did have an interest in the spirit world-an interest that manifested itself in a fearful fascination with witchcraft and divination. Case in point: Salem. Puritans went crazy and killed anyone they even remotely thought were witches. Halloween was eventually brought by the Catholics, and Guy Fawkes day was brought by the Protestants who mainly settled in New York. So, besides New England, Halloween was around in every colony.

After the Revolution and the signing of the Constitution into law, a new era of Halloween began due to the freedom of religion. The Puritan grasp on the ban on Halloween slowly lifted. Halloween became more of a celebration of past and future, where people got together and had cornhusking parties, apple paring parties, and sugaring and sorghummaking days. Otherwise known as "Ask your friends to come over and help you with your work, but you'll give them alcohol as payment" parties. There was ghost stories and fortune telling games, dancing and plenty of food to go around.

The prominence of ghosts and the dead being around Halloween night carried over to America, as did tricks and mischief. Many boys would go out of their way to frighten or trick one of their peers during the night. Halloween was not a national holiday though, not like Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July. It was just a celebration that individual faiths did. It wasn't until the emergence into the 19th century that Halloween would become as popular and widespread as it is today.

With the emergence of immigrants, most coming in the early 1800's, there was more and more stories and customs that went into Halloween. The custom of begging for soul cakes, turned into children going to houses and asking for treats, thus becoming trick or treating. The custom eventually took on the wearing of costumes brought on by the Irish.

Divination became a part of Halloween thanks to the British Isles. Divination was mostly used to predict who you would fall in love with or who your spouse would be. A woman would light a candle and look into a mirror at midnight on All Hallows Eve and see the person she was going to marry over her shoulder. Sounds terrifying!

The custom of hallowing out a turnip and giving it a gruesome face, eventually turned into a Jack-O-Lantern, using a pumpkin instead. The story behind the name Jack-O-Lantern has many variations but most involve a man named Jack and the Devil. Jack hoodwinks the Devil out of crops and the Devil makes Jack hold a lantern for eternity. Tough break.
Black cats and witchcraft and bad luck superstition caught on in America, mostly in the South at first. All of these old traditions were kept intact and spread throughout America, until the late 19th century, when America entered it's so called Victorian Era.

A History of Halloween: Part 1

With Halloween only a few weeks away, you may notice one thing in stores: The loads of Christmas decorations. Though Christmas may be slowly taking over every other holiday, we can relish in the fact that Halloween does get its fair share of attention. This will be the first in my series of Holiday Histories. I will look at our holidays in America and share their sometimes unlikely beginnings.

As most people know, Halloween is a very old holiday, dating back centuries before the birth of Christ. Halloween was first celebrated by the Celtic people, who inhabited present day U.K., and France. The Celtics had two main festivals; one to celebrate the start of winter, when they had to bring the herds in, and one to celebrate the start of summer, when they brought the herds out. In that area, the cold came earlier, in early November, so it became the start of winter and the beginning of the new year. The finest of the herd were put in the shelter, while the rest were slaughtered for the festival. The festival was called Samhain, or summer's end, and was considered the most sacred of their festivals. The point of the festival was also to link the people with their ancestors and past. The Celts believed that the dead rose on the eve of Samhain and that ancestral ghosts and demons were set free to roam the earth (Much like the dead coming back in "A Night on Bald Mountain" from the movie Fantasia. You know that gave you nightmares as a kid).The Celts made offerings to the spirit world in hopes that the spirits of their loved ones would make a brief visit home to enjoy a warm fire at the hearth. Food and wine were set out for the dead souls of the ancestors, sure to be weary from their travels in the netherworld. To avert unwanted guests-any malicious spirits set free on that night-the Celts hid themselves in ghoulish disguise so that the spirits wandering about would mistake them for one of their own and pass by without incident.

The Romans eventually came and conquered the Celts and their rituals combined. The Roman's with their belief in mythological beings, celebrated the Goddess Pomorum, or the Goddess of orchards and the harvest, around the same time as Samhaim was celebrated, November 1st. The Roman celebration of the orchard harvest contributed the bounty of apples and nuts that remains a part of Halloween to this day. In other words, the Romans are to blame for those people giving you fruit and nuts on Halloween night. The Roman and Celtic cultures created what we might identify as Halloween in its ancient form. It was a night devoted to the dead, yet a night for divination and romance as well.

Then came the Christians. When Christianity spread across the Roman empire, the priests had to find a way to wane the new converts off of this pagan stuff. So, instead of destroying their rituals, they let them be, and eventually the people celebrated All Saints Day instead of Samhain. Both being on November 1st, and the celebrations being on October 31st. They had feasts and celebrations, but it wasn't in the same realm as Samhain. All Saints Day was to be a day set aside to honor the martyrs who died for their beliefs. All Saints Day used to be in May, but was set to November 1st to help assimilate people into the Christian faith and celebrations. People were told to pray for the dead, not to sacrifice to them. Instead of setting out wine and food, they set out soul cakes, which were little pastries and bread. The soul cakes would be given to the poor, and in return, the poor would pray for their dead family members. Eventually the custom changed to young men and boys going from house to house singing "souling" songs and asking for ale, food, or money instead of soul cakes. People were asked to masquerade, but to honor the saints, not ward away evil spirits.

A Hollowmas Soul Cake Song

Soul day, Soul day,
We be come a-souling, Pray good people remember the poor, And give us a soul cake, One for Peter, two for Paul,
Three for Him that made us all
An apple, a pear, a plum or a cherry
Or any good thing to make us merry.

Soul day, Soul day,
We have been praying for the soul departed. So pray good people give us a cake
For we are all poor people,
Well known to you before.
So give us a cake for charity's sake,
And our blessing we'll leave at your door.

-from Poole, Customs, Superstitions, and Legends of Staffordshire

It was the Christians that gave Halloween its name. During medieval times, All Saints' Day was known as All Hollows, making the night before it All Hollows Eve, which became Hallowe'en, and then Halloween. The church decreed that all celebrations be held the day before Saints Day, thus placing Halloween where we know it today.

The new group off of the Catholics were the Lutherans and Calvinists who decided to get rid of All Saints Day, which meant no Halloween. Thus, for a time, Guy Fawkes Day became the fall festival for some Europeans. Guy Fawkes being the man who tried to blow up the Protestant-sympathetic House of Lords when Parliament met. The holiday was set up to celebrate the Protestants victory over the Catholics. The similarities between Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day were "scary." Sorry...no more puns. They had bonfires, celebrants carried lanterns of hollowed out turnips that had been fashioned into grotesque faces. The eve of Guy Fawkes Day became "mischief night" across most of northern England, an occasion of pranks and skylarking. Boys now begged for coal, so they could have something to burn their Guy Fawkes effigies. Some people even went as far as burning the Pope in effigy. The eve of Guy Fawkes night can be connected with Devil's night, being the night before Halloween, a semi-holiday that is only celebrated in Michigan. Instead of burning effigies of Guy Fawkes and the Pope, the people of Detroit in the 70's burned down small businesses. The day has been changed to Angel's night, but is still rife with pranks and vandalism.

The Catholic's All Hallows' celebration, the old pagan folk customs of the British Isles, and the secular Guy Fawkes Day festivities of the English protestants all helped give birth to the Halloween we know today.

George Washington

Here’s my first big series. I’m going to give an overview of our presidents, listing their main achievements, what they messed up on, and I give them my personal grade. Be sure to check back every couple days for a few more presidents. Hopefully you learn something you never knew about our nation’s past leaders.

Political Party: None

Term: 1789-1797

Nickname: Father of Our Country

Short Bio: Washington had been enjoying his retirement from national service, when he was asked to preside over the Constitutional Convention. He agreed, and that set him on track to become the President. The framers of the Constitution had made a strong government with Washington in mind actually, and he was the only choice anyone had ever had for the first President of the United States. To this day he is the only president to win unanimously. John Adams was chosen as his Vice-President. Washington realized early on that he was going to be setting many precedents for the presidents. Since Washington lacked much in the way of education, he had James Madison write his inaugural address. Washington was offered $25,000 a year for being president, but like when he was leading the Continental Army, he declined, saying that he would like his work expenses covered only since he was rich already. Congress eventually got him to take the money, since they didn't want this to be something that was perceived as precedents, which would take any poorer man out of the Presidential race.

Washington started the tradition of meeting regularly with his cabinent members, which has been done by every president since. An instance of precedents that was very harmful to America was Washington's unwillingness to visit Congress in person. He had terrible experiences when he did go and try and speak to everyone, so he never did it again. This set a trend for further presidents and caused a larger rift between the Legislative and Executive Branch. Washington helped build the new nation, while dealing with domestic issues including the creation of political parties. Washington was against the creation of political parties and was disdained to find that his secretary of state Thomas Jefferson and secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton had created the Democratic-Republicans and the Federalist, respectively. His cabinet became an all out war against Hamilton and Jefferson. Washington himself leaned more towards the Federalists side, which angered Jefferson, who felt the President relied too much on the advice of Hamilton. This large rift between all of this cabinet members ultimately led to it's demise, as Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton and many more would leave and have their seats filled with inadequate men. Hamilton was the last to go, but served with Washington during the Whiskey Rebellion. The rebellion was a controversial issue for the new nation, mostly on how to deal with it. After the rebellious were told that they would be put down with force if they didn't go back home, they still stayed, and Washington decided that this was a dangerous situation that needed to be put down. Washington and Hamilton led the standing army, though Hamilton led the men, and Washington hung out in back giving orders. This marks the only time in history that a Commander in Chief took part in any part of the military while president. Washington took a lot of heat for this from the Democratic-Republicans, as they felt that this was the government abusing its power.

Washington, though greatly loved in America, was not without detractors. Many Democratic-Republicans thought he was too much like a king, as did a few members of the press at the time, some who routinely wrote of how Washington was trying to be King of America for life. Washington heard these attacks, and though he had a tough exterior, he was internally tortured by them. Washington decided that he had enough and just wanted to go back to Mount Vernon. He knew he could of been reelected till he was too old to serve, but instead wanted to live out the rest of his days in peace. He had to get away from all the politics. Thus, Washington set the precedent of only serving two terms. This would go on until FDR, who was elected to four, though he was criticized for it, as his detractors found it to be a slight against Washington. Though it wasn't expected, Washington had a farewell address prepared, this time by Hamilton. This was the last piece of precedence that Washington set, as all presidents afterward would give one. Though during his two terms his cabinet and many others were torn between the two new parties, Washington endorsed and for the most part had a united America. He had claimed neutrality in the fight between Britain and France and was determined to instead build his nation up. He showed that he was able to tackle tough domestic issues like a rebellion, and able to keep a bunch of colonies together.

Grade: A: For his role in creating our nation and keeping the new nation afloat in the early years.