Tuesday, 4 November 2014

halloween : cultural/historical reading

llustrations may have copyright restrictions 
Old name por modern  name "all saints and all souls" : all HALLOWS
cf el padre nuestro actual en ingles :
Our Father 
who art in heaven 
hallowed be thy name ( en castellano , santificado sea tu nombre)
etc
All hallow's eve /evening  =  hallowe'en = halloween = visperas de todos los santos





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Modern  halloween 
is an American invention
from about 1910-1920.
INVENTED BY 
Who exactly?

American NonCatholic important public citizens  - 
(Por Lutero, los prtestantes llevaban cinco siglos EN CONTRA de celebrar
todos los santos y fieles difuntos - en inglaterra fue prohibido celebrarlo) 


Cambian algo que protestantes pijos, catolicos canadienses, y gamberros urbanos celebraban todos a su modo en algo 
  
FOR ALL THE FAMILY 
Vocabulary : with :
jack'o lanterns 

Pumpkin pie

Scary stories, scary movies

witches, 

Little children in (secular, pagan) costumes (=disfraces)

trick-or -treating, 

monsters,
  
ghosts

Apple bobbing: 
USA 1950 : Children in innocent costumes playing snapapple.(mira el diente!)

Snap apple 



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Teach children beauty?



































BUT   IN USA   100 YEARS AGO Hace todavia cien años 

Los ricos, en un 95% de tradiciones protestantes,  celebraban fiestas de Halloween media supersticiosas, contando cuentos de miedo,  esta tarjeta tipica es de 1884, en sus casas

Y en las cuidades de usa 

habia un desmadre padre  , de l patrte del trick or treat mas bien estaba el trick 

¿quienes? 

varones de 10 a vientepocos , no disfrazados , pero aprovechando la oscuridad 


Trick   or  Treat
trick & treat are FALSE FRIENDS
Trick = truco    or  Treat = trato  !
Treat = una invitacion a una consumicion
Trick= see  below, trampa, trastada, picia, timo

  trick  USA, about 1890,

Another traditional nasty Trick Here, glued to seat
Aqui con cola , pero siglo 19,! eran clavos en los asientos de madera de los excusados en los patios de las viviendas! 

u
USA about 1900 premodern halloween standard trick, removing gates- muy traditional , robar las puertas de las verjas etc 
..





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Tambien Soltar ganado, romper puertas y ventanas, tirar pintura...........

Halloween era el pretexto para alborotos y daños a la propriedad cada vez peores

Tambien hara siglo y pico 
Grupos de catolicos en NorteAmerica, por lo menos en lo mucha mas catolica Canada, celebran todos los santos y fieles difuntos con misas etc  con fiestas en la vispera en salones paroquiales    etc  con los niños disfrazados   de martires y santos, no monstruos.   Celebraban actas de martirios y vidas de santos, comian y bebian . 
in Canada at least Catholics - as well as masses!- have all hallows'eve,or halloween parties
 in schools, church halls, and farm buildings of several families together 
where children dress up as saints, especially their on name-saints, especially uncanonized  martyrs, 
AND put on a series of  playlets, like nativity plays, of the lives , and often bloody martyrdoms, of the saints and martyrs (think of St Thomas More: a beheading , ketchup blood, a papiermache head, children playing the devil tempting the saint and angels receiving him in heaven.......they had fun!)
 children reenacting the "pilgrimage of Grace", 1536.Protestant  Henry VIII's soldiers killed unknown tens of thousands of  of pacific, unresisting, unarmed men, women, children,religious, and clergy, from and in the North of england  


Hace un siglo grupos de no catolicos yankis civilizaban  Halloween, logrando combinar los elementos  de fiestas pijos, jackolanterns , disfraces,  y trick or treat , etc  tal como hoy dia conocemos, descontando las  misas  catolicas.  .

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¿De donde viene todo ?

El samheim celta son cuentos chinos mayor mente.

Ahora bien , la obsesion celta con las colecciones de cabezas humanas cortadas esta bien documentada desde tiempos preomanos


De alli el "jack o'lantern" primero , calavera de verdad, tiempos cristianos, solo de animales y de nabos ,  hoydia , de calabaza:

However, the celtic obsession with human heads is well documented by the Romans.click here to link to an example from google booksarcheology, and monastic collections of celtic folklore.. 

Apart from collecting   human headsclick for link genuine evidence of exact customs is difficult, deductive, and at present is manufactured to “justify” modern Halloween.
 reconstruction  of original jack o lantern
Lit turnip jack o lantern
 It does seem obvious that, (perhaps NOT at samheim,) the celts had  some  nasty human sacrifices, and rites involved skulls with candles or lamps inside,

 changing in Christian times to
 the custom  of Jacko'lanterns, 
            to animal ,not human, skulls, 
 or   made with turnips(nabos),  and almost certainly NOT limited to one single time of the year.
(Later, America: pumpkins were available)
Turnip jack o lantern ,unlit
    





























For example,  archeological evidence , mainly in Britain, confirms Roman stories of human sacrifies,
but NOT at exactly which feasts!


EL resto de halloween viene de las practicas de los catolicos legalmente  perseguidos en las islas durante dos siglos 



Historia para cuando podeis :

Around 440 AD St Patrick, a Christian Romano- British Celt,( what we now call Welsh,from the about one-third Christian,   abandoned , exRoman province of Britannia )evangelizes Ireland (which had never been Roman). From Ireland Chistianity is taken to what is now Scotland, from  there to the North of England, whilst the South of England  is evangelized from Rome.
Around 700+ AD evangelization of all parts of the British Isles complete.


1  

A favourable modern view of Henry VIII.
Forget the 100.000 catholics killed in England ALONE.
Forget his serial killing of his wives...... .
The "consulting parliament "was his FATHER, Henry VII: Henry the VIII emasculated Parliament , left it powerless, by carrot and stick methods: carrots for Yes-men: land and wealth from the church; the stick : his habit of killing anyone who opposed him.
Most libraries were burnt.


.1500s Luther , then  Reformation.
In England alone , 
100,000 Catholic martyrs.
Welsh martrys, Scots martyrs, Isish martyrs : numbers very large, estimation nearly impossible)
 Many feasts abolished  and or prohibited,
 including all saints and all souls,( but not christmas for the moment) 
all saints, aka all hallows , and all souls,
all saints, aka all hallows , and all souls,
all saints, aka all hallows , and all souls,
PROHIBITED

About 1530 onwards: "Penal times " for catholics in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland`.Until about1830, although the 1700s were quieter.
  Hidden on a hill top .Notice the watchman on the left, to see spies or  horsemen- the authorities -  from a distance. Penalty for being a priest: death. Penalty for "harbouring" a priest. Death. penalty for being catholic: Big fines, prison etc., and eventually, death. (Maggie black collection)


Christmas mass in the mountains in penal days. The watchmen
have seen a possible danger coming.(Maggie black collection.)


The penal laws stated, inter alia  that "no person of the popish religion shall publicly or in private houses teach school, or instruct youth in learning within this realm...  
Following hattip Roman Christendom blog:

all who maintained the spiritual or ecclesiastical authority of any foreign prelate, especially the Pope, were to forfeit all goods and chattels and all benefices for the first offence, or if below £20, to be imprisoned for one year; for a second offence, they were liable to the forfeitures of Praemunire, that is, exclusion from the sovereign's protection, forfeiture of all lands and goods, and arrest to answer to the Sovereign and Council and, for the third offence, to the penalties of high treason i.e. the barbaric savagery of hanging, drawing and quartering, corruption of blood by which heirs became incapable of inheriting honours and offices, and all property was forfeit; the penalty for women was to be burned at the stake.
The penalty for women, the same as for witches

The burning of women was not abolished until the Treason Act 1790 in Great Britain and by the Treason by Women Act (Ireland) 1796 in Ireland

Witchcraft act(=law) of 1747 PROHIBITED FOOD associated with all Hallows!

Witchcraft !

Catholics were Witches! 


Other Christians celebrated Sundays, Christmas and Easter,
 but only Catholics celebrated  All hallows.aka All Saints (+all Souls)

AND

They had to celebrate AT NIGHT,AFTER DARK , on the "Eve"  to avoid detection, AND because the next day was an ordinary working day.
If you are  a not very rich person, Finding a Catholic is like winning the lottery- 
but it's difficult to prove!

But a person celebrating after dark on 31st of October can only be one thing : Catholic!
So
you spy around people's houses  that night, , and find out:
 one origin of "trick or treat  " is
" pay me  or I'll inform the authorities you're catholic and you'll lose your goods, and  be imprisoned, even be killed."
THIS WAS  a non-Catholic  YOUNG MEN'S delightful and "honorable" night activity.
Meanwhile
NonCatholics  had two holes in their lives:
The social loss of traditional feasts, including All hallows, at the corresponding times of the year
-AND the hole in the faith, in this case  in the connections with saints and the dead and accepting their deaths.
They  became very supersticious, naturally:
(reputed ghosts and haunted houses multiplied ),
 and even perhaps  started  taking this period as an an ideal one to tell ghost stories, or scary stories, (like today's Scary films and Horror films) in the  darker eveningsThis certainly  spread(or originated in?) to the USA by around independance (1776) and probably before, and was probably commoner there  than in the home British Isles.

There WAS more superstition , among noncatholics, there was a big increase in witches( of all sorts!), but 
Were the big isolated old houses in the country really "haunted" 
or were they secret places for catholics, especially priests
They had Priest-holes (=zulus)
Tilting panel secret room in Harvington HallOne priest hole inHarvington hallclick for fascinating linkwith 7 priestholes  that was only discovered 300 years after it was built was concealed behind a pivoted timber beam in the room that is known as Dr. Charles Dodd's Library. (Real name Hugh Tootell). It was apparent found by two children who had been playing there in 1897. It still contained a small table for the use of the priests. 

Not only does Harvington Hall have some of the best preserved priest holes  in Britain, it also had a concealed chapel where Mass could be said by whichever priest was in the residence at the time.


Hidden Catholic chapel in Harvington Hall



Mass  , purgatory, all hallows etc,  were legally  considered witchcraft,  so that  Catholics were also taken to court as witches,( of whom there were genuinely  increasing numbers in the 17th century).
This identification  protected   Catholics  meeting  in the hills and hearing mass on the night of Oct 31st, people were afraid to investigate :
as late as  mid 1800s  in Northern  England  Catholics were still doing  this, going to meet in the hills,  this night,the 31st October, all hallows' eve, or "halloween" and their non-Catholic neighbours believed it to be meetings of ghosts, witches, and evil spirits!!!!!!
(1600s:Post civil war Puritan dictatorship also prohibits Christmas etc.,New England Puritans ban all hallows and all souls (and of course the eve), Christmas and etc. Note that outside their own immediate towns, colonials had few ways of enforcing such laws.)


It has to be admitted  that  In Ireland ,  with a catholic majority ,
 catholic young men   used these superstitions for the eve of all hallows  to cover up revenge,  anonymous  tricks ( with no treat!!):
 a lot of damage "mischief"(=trastadas, gamberradas)  to Protestants' and English bosses'  property : 
gates, barrels etc moved and "lost": 
the spirits did it!





 By about 1800  +Other Catholic  Irish had sedate parties, with silly games, at someone's home on halloween, and called it "snap-apple" night.

















1830 Catholic emancipation acts 
remove the worst penalties for being Catholic
But In nearly all the British Isles, many many years before that, the laws were not applied, so that 
 nothing public marked  anything around All Saints' and All Souls days, aka all hallows, 
Catholics went to mass, 
and noone else did anything! 

One exception:  
By the 19th century  in the north of England  the different young mens' practices combined (although only Catholics went to mass the next day, the first of Novemmber, and remembered all souls on the second )
All young men believed they had a right to riot and destroy and have destructive fun with impunity under cover of dark on Halloween. 
When the cities  suffered ever more damage, strong police tactics ended the paractice in but a few years.   "Mischief night" locally, often on Nov4th, inherited the idea. 


Otherwise, in 19th and 20th century British Isles" Halloween" , as a social event,was normally UNKNOWN.


Born in the USASinDisplay.com
EVERTHING, including probably some French and Scots and German traditions,
and every wicked or superstitious idea humanity has produced  
 COMBINED  AND   GREW  in America, especially after 1840s:
The Irish Potato Famine :  millions of  Irish  to America,  spreading and reinforcing  Halloween traditions. 
Cheap, large, round , abundant Pumpkins are far better than small turnips  for making  jack o'lanterns .

USA had become independant in 1776. Of the 13 original Colonies, 12 were  deliberately various types of protestant foundation; only one, Maryland had been intended to be  catholic. The population before independance was very mixed, but with very few Catholics, even compared to England, Scotland , or Wales.

1840s Irish immigrants , as immigrants, and as Irish,but mostly as as Catholics, were received with a violence similar to that of the later KluKluX Klan  against  negro exslaves.The anti-     movement was called the "Knownothings"click for link. 
A lot of burnings of houses, convents, churches, etc: 
Only a few nuns killed, 
relatively few murders, by american standards,  
but many beatings , and a lot of violence and damage to property.......
all this "socially accepted " anonymous violence , unrepressed by authority until scandalous, fomented by the media, 
all fed into the then American halloween:
Worse every year,  Halloween became a "popular "holiday, along with the ideas of "tricking",BY YOUNG  MEN only,  an excuse to cause mischief , street anarchy , especially in and around  the cities
.Unlike the UK , strong policing was NOT done to stop this. 
Judging by pictures, see above , the" young men " were getting younger year by year.
Meanwhile, middleclass adult noncatholic americans increasingly had halloween parties at home: they copied  their American  ancestors regarding parties with ghost stories, now incorporating Irish (and British) catholics', silly games, apples, jack o lanterns etc) and  all the whole world's superstitions, black cats, witches, etc:

1884 CARD , USA
Of course only catholics ( then perhaps 10%  of mostly the poorest Americans above negroes),  observe 
the next two days as part of their religion.
The vast majority of Americans, protestants continue to not merely not observe, but be totallyagainst purgatory , saints, praying for the dead, ........















An example :1912: The Dennison Manufacturing Co. of Framingham, Massachusetts publishes Halloween "Bogie" books that include party and decoration ideas and Halloween costume patterns

Around 1910-1920
 Elsewhere, and among the majority protestants ,(except for scots "guisers "in canada) halloween SOCIALLY  is ONLY for rebellious young menand some fashionable  adults' private parties.  


Around 1910-1920, USA, MODERN  HALLOWEEN   IS BORN: 
Responsible, protestant,  people in civic organizations, the Boy Scouts, etc,  decide to "organize" and "civilize" halloween, making what we know now,  bringing in the whole family, incorporating even small children in costume (not Saints costumes ! I suspect it was an envious imitation of Catholic practice!) and taking them door-to-door trick-or-treating in adult company, to  incorporate all the teenage boys and defuse their destructiveness...........
In this way they certainly OVERSHADOWED  Catholic practice, by making Oct 31st the big day  SOCIALLY , and not the 1st or 2nd !


For example 1921: Anoka, Minnesota becomes the first American city to officially sanction a citywide Halloween celebration,1923: New York begins citywide Halloween celebrations
1990s Modern American Halloween reaches British Isles in a big way as the old popular festivity , 5th november, is watered down and made tame and boring and "safe".
It has its roots in the British isles, but just is not a  national  tradition.












Click for link to a polically correct version of halloween, the same as in English textbooks and readers, and on internet for free!



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