It's one of those Monday Halloweens so there will be a long party weekend, why not look at the lumpy Halloween article on Wikipedia.
A Short, Lumpy Collection
A
holiday celebrated on the night of
October 31.
Evolved from a Druid harvest holiday, a Roman festival known as
Pomona Day and the Christian "Day of the Dead".
On October 31st after crops were harvested Druids in Britain would
light fires and offer sacrifices of crops and animals. As they danced
around the fires, the season of the sun passed and the season of
darkness would begin. When the morning of November 1 arrived, the Druids
would give an ember from their fires to each family who would then take
them home to start new cooking fires. These fires would keep the homes
warm and free from evil spirits. A 3 day festival called
Samhain (pronounced "sow-en") followed.
The Romans invaded Britain in the 1st century and brought with them
the festival known as Pomona Day, named for the goddess of fruits and
gardens. It was celebrated around the 1st of November.
In the 7th century,
Pope Boniface IV introduced
All Saints' Day to replace the pagan festival of the dead. It was observed on May 13. Later, Gregory III changed the date to November 1.
October 31st became known as All Hallow Even, eventually All Hallow's Eve, Hallowe'en, and then - Halloween.
The custom of
trick-or-treating
is thought to have evolved from the 9th-century European custom called
souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, Christians would walk from
village to village begging for "soul cakes" - square pieces of bread
with currants. Beggars would promise to say prayers on behalf of dead
relatives helping the soul's passage to heaven.
Irish emigrants from the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-46 brought with them the holiday of Halloween to the United States.
Some Christian groups consider Halloween a Pagan holiday and refer to it as "The most evil day of the year".
Halloween is associated with
trick-or-treating,
ghost stories,
pumpkins,
jack o'lanterns,
witches,
black cats,
costumes, and
parties. Children often dress up in costumes and knock on neighborhood doors saying, "Trick or Treat".
The holiday of
Samhain is celebrated by
Neopagans .
- originally written by
Trimalchio
After a lot of changes, by 2003 it looked like this:
Revision as of 01:55, 8 July 2003
This article is about the holiday. For the Halloween movies, see Halloween (movie).
Halloween or
Halloweve is a
holiday celebrated in much of the Western world on the night of
October 31, the night before
All Saints Day (Nov. 1). Originating in
Ireland, and brought to the
United States by Irish emigrants in the
19th century. It is now associated with
ghosts,
trick-or-treating,
candy corn,
ghost stories,
pumpkins,
jack o'lanterns,
witches,
black cats,
costumes,
parties and
banshees . Children often dress up in costumes and knock on neighborhood doors saying, "
Trick or
Treat" and receiving candy, originally in return for a joke, a song, or some other trick.
Customs
There are several traditional games associated with Halloween parties. The most common is
bobbing for apples, in which a tub or a large basin is filled with water in which
apples
float. The participants must remove an apple from the basin using only
their mouths. Naturally everyone gets wet. Another common game involves
hanging up
treacle or syrup-coated
scones
by strings. These must be eaten without using hands while they remain
attached to the string, an activity which inevitably leads to a very
sticky face.Another game,
Púicíní
(pronounced "pook-eeny"), a form of "Blindfold", is played in Ireland. A
blindfolded person was seated in front of a table on which are placed
several saucers.The saucers are shuffled and the seated person then
choses one by touch. The contents of the saucer determine the the
person's life for the following year.A saucer containing earth means
someone known to the player will die during the next year. A saucer
containing water foretells travel, a coin means new wealth and a bean
means poverty etc.
A Halloween custom which has survived unscathed to this day in
Ireland is the baking, or, more often nowadays, the purchase of a
barm brack (Ir. "báirín breac"). This is a light
fruit cake
into which a plain ring is placed before baking. It is said that
whoever finds this ring will find his or her true love over the
following year.
History
Although modern Halloween is a secular holiday, it evolved from several
pagan holidays.
Its earliest roots are found in the
Druidic holiday of death which took place each year on October 31 and was held in honour of
Samhain, Lord of the Dead. After the crops were harvested, Druids in
Ireland and
Britain would light fires and offer sacrifices of crops and animals. As they danced around the fires, the
season of the sun passed and the
season of darkness would begin. When the morning of
November 1
arrived, the Druids would give an ember from their fires to each family
who would then take them home to start new cooking fires. These fires
were believed to keep the homes warm and free from evil
spirits, as it was considered a time of year when the veils were thin between worlds. A three-day festival called
Samhain
(pronounced "sow-inn") followed. In Ireland it was believed to be the
night on which the invisible "gates" between this world and the Other
World were opened and free movement between both worlds was possible. In
the Other World lived the immortal "
Shee", the female members of whom were called Banshees.
Bonfires
played a large part in the festivities. Villagers cast the bones of the
slaughtered cattle upon the flames. (the word bonfire is thought to
derive from these "bone fires.") With the bonfire ablaze, the villagers
extinguished all other fires. Each family then solemnly lit their hearth
from the common flame, thus bonding the families of the village
together.
Like most Celtic festivals, it was celebrated on a number of levels.
Materially speaking it was the time of gathering in of food for the long
winter months ahead, bringing people and their livestock in to their
winter quarters. To be alone and missing at this dangerous time was to
expose yourself and your spirit to the perils of imminent
winter.
In present times the importance of this part of the festival has
diminished for most people. From the point of view of a tribal people
for whom a bad season meant facing a long winter of
famine in which many would not survive to the
spring, it was paramount.
This was the most evil time of the year. It was a Druidical belief
that on the eve of this festival Samhain, lord of death, called together
the wicked spirits that within the past 12 months had been condemned to
inhabit the bodies of animals. During the night the great shield of
Skathach
was lowered, allowing the barriers between the worlds to fade and the
forces of evil to invade the realms of order, the material world
conjoining with the world of the dead. At this time ghosts, witches,
hobgoblins, black
cats,
fairies and
demons
of all kinds roamed amongst the living. The dead could return to the
places where they had lived and food and entertainment were provided to
exorcize them. If food and shelter were not provided, these spirits
would cast
spells and cause havoc towards those failing to fulfill their requests.
It was the time to placate the
supernatural powers controlling the processes of nature. In addition, Halloween was thought to be the most favorable time for
divinations concerning
marriage,
luck,
health and
death. It was the only day on which the help of the
devil was invoked for such purposes. The pagan observances influenced the
Christian festival of
All Hallows Eve.
On the level of cosmic event, the rising of
Pleiades, the winter
stars, heralds the supremacy of night over day, the dark half ruled by the realms of the
moon.
In the three days preceding the Samhain month the Sun God,
Lugh, maimed at
Lughnassadh, dies by the hand of his Tanist (his other self), the
Lord of Misrule.
Lugh traverses the boundaries of the worlds on the first day of
Samhain. His Tanist is a miser and though he shines brightly in the
winter skies he gives no warmth and does not temper the breath of the
Crone,
Cailleach Bheare, the north
wind. In this may be discerned the ageless battle between the light and dark and the cyclic nature of life and the seasons.
In parts of western
Brittany Samhain is still heralded by the baking of
kornigou.
Kornigou are cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god
of winter shedding his "cuckold" horns as he returns to his kingdom in
the
Otherworld.
After the
Romans colonised much of Britain, elements of the Roman festival known as
Pomona Day were also introduced. Pomona Day was held on November 1, and is named for
Pomona, a Roman Goddess of fruits and gardens.
When Christianity eventually reached Ireland in
432 and Britain, conversion began among the local people, including Christianization of the old traditions. In the
7th century,
Pope Boniface IV introduced
All Saints' Day to replace the pagan festival of the dead. It was observed on
May 13. Later,
Pope Gregory III changed the date to
November 1. October 31 became known as
All Hallows Even, eventually
All Hallows Eve, Hallowe'en
(still used as the standard spelling in Ireland), and then Halloween in
the US. Obsevance of Halloween faded in Britain from the 17th cetury
onwards, being replaced by the commemoration of the
Gunpowder Plot on
November 5.
It is only in the last decade that it has become popular in Britain
again, although in an entirely Americanised version. It did, however,
survive unscathed in Ireland. Nowadays in Ireland, the last Monday of
October is a public holiday. All schools close for the following week
for mid-term, commonly called the Hallowe'en Break. As a result Ireland
is the only country where children never have school on Halloween and
are therefore free to celebrate it in the ancient and time-honoured
fashion.
The custom of
trick-or-treating is thought to have evolved from the
9th century European custom called souling. On
November 2,
All Souls Day, Christians would walk from village to village begging
for "soul cakes" - square pieces of bread with currants. Beggars would
promise to say prayers on behalf of dead relatives helping the soul's
passage to heaven.
Irish emigrants from the
Irish Potato Famine of
1845-
1846 brought with them the holiday of Halloween to the
United States.
Religious Viewpoints
Some
fundamentalist Christian
groups consider Halloween a Pagan holiday because of these early Pagan
origins, and refer to it as "The most evil day of the year", refusing to
allow their children to participate. Among these groups it is believed
to still have
Satanic influences, as are many other Pagan practices. Other Christians continue to connect this holiday with All Saints Day.
Neopagans
also do not practice Halloween, but for different reasons. Instead of
rejecting it because of its Pagan origins, they rather embrace the
earlier Pagan practice and celebrate a version of the older Celtic
festival of
Samhain.
See also
Day of the Dead
- article saved from "blanking" by
Jtdirl. The blanker was an IP address,
152.163.253.5 .
By 2005 the article looks like this:
Revision as of 21:25, 22 October 2005
Halloween is an observance celebrated on the night of
October 31, usually by children dressing in costumes and going door-to-door collecting candy. It is celebrated in much of the
Western world, though most commonly in the
United States, the
British Isles,
Canada and sometimes in
Australia and
New Zealand.
Irish,
Scots and other immigrants brought older versions of the tradition to North America in the
19th century. Most other Western countries have embraced Halloween as a part of American
pop culture in the late
20th century.
The term "Halloween" derives from
Hallowe'en, an old
contraction, still retained in Scotland and some parts of Canada, of
"All Hallow's Eve," so called as it is the day before
All Saints day (observed by some Christians, including
Roman Catholics), which used to be called "All Hallows," derived from All Hallowed Souls. In Ireland, the name was
Hallow Eve and this name is still used by some older people. Halloween was formerly also sometimes called
All Saints' Eve. The holiday was a day of religious festivities in various northern
European pagan traditions, until it was appropriated by
Christian missionaries (along with
Christmas and
Easter, two other traditional northern European pagan holidays) and given a Christian reinterpretation. In
Mexico, All Saint's Day, following Halloween, is the
Day of the Dead.
Halloween is also called
Pooky Night in some parts of Ireland, presumably named after the
púca, a mischievous spirit.
In the
United Kingdom in particular, the pagan
Celts
celebrated the Day of the Dead on Halloween. The spirits supposedly
rose from the dead and, in order to attract them, food was left on the
doors. To scare off the evil spirits, the Celts wore masks. When the
Romans
invaded Britain, they embellished the tradition with their own, which
is the celebration of the harvest and honoring the dead. These
traditions were then passed on to the
United States.
Halloween is sometimes associated with the
occult.
Many European cultural traditions hold that Halloween is one of the
"liminal" times of the year when the spirit world can make contact with
the natural world and when
magic is most potent (
see, for example, Catalan mythology about witches).
Anoka, Minnesota, USA, the self-proclaimed "Halloween Capital of the World," celebrates with a large civic
parade.
==Symbols==
Jack-o'-lanterns may be carved with a funny face.
Halloween's theme is spooky or scary things particularly involving death,
magic, or mythical
monsters. Commonly-associated Halloween characters include
ghosts,
ghouls,
witches,
bats,
black cats,
owls,
goblins,
zombies,
skeletons and
demons, as well as certain fictional figures like
Dracula and
Frankenstein's monster. Homes are often decorated with these symbols around Halloween.
Black and
orange are the traditional colors of Halloween. In modern Halloween images and products,
purple,
green, and
red are also prominent.
Elements of the
autumn season, such as
pumpkins and
scarecrows, are also reflected in symbols of Halloween.
The
jack-o'-lantern, a carved vegetable lit by a candle inside, is one of Halloween's most prominent symbols. In Britain and Ireland, a
turnip was and sometimes still is used, but immigrants to America quickly adopted the
pumpkin
because it is much larger and easier to carve. Many families that
celebrate Halloween carve a pumpkin into a frightening or comical face
and place it on their home's doorstep after dark. The practice was
originally intended to frighten away evil spirits or monsters. kkk
Trick-or-treating
The main event of Halloween is
trick-or-treating, also known as
guising in
Scotland, in which children dress up in
costume
disguises and go door-to-door in their neighborhood, ringing each
doorbell and yelling "trick or treat!" The occupants of the house (who
might themselves dress in a scary costume) will then hand out small
candies, miniature
chocolate bars or other treats. Homes sometimes use
sound effects
and fog machines to help set a spooky mood. Other house decoration
themes (that are less scary) are used to entertain younger visitors.
Children can often accumulate many treats on Halloween night, filling up
entire pillow cases or shopping bags.
In
Scotland, children or
guisers
are likely to recite "The sky is blue, the grass is green, may we have
our Halloween" instead of "trick or treat!", they will then have to
impress the members of the houses they visit with a song, trick, joke or
dance in order to earn their treats.
In parts of Canada, children are more likely to say "Halloween
apples" instead of "trick or treat." This probably originated when the
toffee apple was a popular type of candy. However, there are some
children today who say "Halloween apples" instead of "Trick or treat"
because sometimes if the latter was said, the person at the door would
take it as a question (i.e trick or treat?) and ask them to perform a
trick instead of giving them a treat.
Tricks play less of a role in modern Halloween, though the night
before Halloween is often marked by pranks such as soaping windows,
egging houses or stringing toilet paper through trees. Before indoor
plumbing was so widespread, tipping over or displacing outhouses was a
popular form of trick.
Typical Halloween costumes have traditionally been monsters such as
vampires,
ghosts,
witches, and
devils.
The stereotypical Halloween costume is a sheet with eyeholes cut in it
as a ghost costume. In 19th-century Scotland and Ireland the reason for
wearing such fearsome (and non-fearsome) costumes was the belief that
since the spirits that were abroad that night were essentially intent on
doing harm, the best way to avoid this was to fool the spirits into
believing that you were one of them. In recent years, it has become
common for costumes to be based on themes other than traditional horror,
such as dressing up as a character from a
TV show or
movie, or choosing a recognizable face from the public sphere, such as a politician (in
2004, for example,
George W. Bush and
John F. Kerry were both popular costumes in America). In
2001, after the
September 11 attacks, for example, costumes of
firefighters,
police officers, and United States
military
personnel became popular among children. In 2004, an estimated 2.15
million children in the United States were expected to dress up as
Spider Man, the year's most popular costume.
[1]
"'Trick-or-Treat for
UNICEF" has become a common sight during Halloween in America, Canada, and Mexico. Started by UNICEF in
1950,
the program involves the distribution of small boxes by schools to
trick-or-treaters, in which they can solicit small change donations from
the houses they visit. It is estimated that children have collected
more than $119 million for UNICEF since its inception.
BIGresearch conducted a survey for the
National Retail Federation
in the US and found that 53.3% of consumers planned to buy a costume
for Halloween 2005, spending $38.11 on average (up 10 dollars from last
year). An estimate of $3.3 billion was made for the holiday spending.
A child usually "grows out of" trick-or-treating by his or her
teenage years. Teenagers and adults instead often celebrate Halloween
with
costume parties, staying home to give out candy, scaring people half to death, or other social get-togethers.
Games and other activities
There are several games traditionally associated with Halloween parties. The most common is
bobbing for apples, in which
apples float in a tub or a large basin of
water; the participants must use their
teeth to remove an apple from the basin. Another common game involves hanging up
treacle or
syrup-coated
scones
by strings; these must be eaten without using hands while they remain
attached to the string, an activity which inevitably leads to a very
sticky face.
Some games traditionally played at Halloween are forms of
divination. In
Puicíní
(pronounced "pook-eeny"), a game played in Ireland, a blindfolded
person is seated in front of a table on which are placed several
saucers. The saucers are shuffled and the seated person then chooses one
by touch. The contents of the saucer determine the person's life for
the following year. A saucer containing earth means someone known to the
player will die during the next year, a saucer containing water
foretells travel, a coin means new wealth, a bean means poverty, etc. In
19th-century Ireland, young women placed slugs in saucers sprinkled
with flour. The wriggling of the slugs and the patterns subsequently
left behind on the saucers were believed to portray the faces of the
women's future spouses.
In North America, unmarried women were frequently told that if they
sat in a darkened room and gazed into a mirror on Halloween night, the
face of their future husband would appear in the mirror. However, if
they were destined to die before they married, a
skull would appear. The custom was widespread enough to be commemorated on
greeting cards from the late nineteenth century.
The telling of
ghost stories and viewing of
horror films are common fixtures of Halloween parties.
Television specials with a Halloween theme, usually aimed at children, are commonly aired on or before the holiday.
Foods
Because the holiday comes in the wake of the annual apple harvest,
candy apples
(also known as toffee apples) are a common treat at Halloween. They are
made by rolling whole apples in a sticky sugar syrup, and sometimes
then rolling them in nuts. At one time candy apples were a common treat
given to children, but this practice rapidly waned after widespread
rumors that some individuals were embedding items like pins and razor
blades in the apples that they would pass out to children. The vast
majority of the reported cases turned out to be hoaxes, and the few that
were real caused only minor injuries, but many parents were under the
assumption that the practice was common. At the peak of this hysteria,
some hospitals were offering to x-ray children's Halloween haul at no
cost in order to look for such items.
A Halloween custom which has survived unchanged to this day in Ireland is the baking (or more often nowadays the purchase) of a
barmbrack (Irish "báirín breac"). This is a light
fruit cake
into which a plain ring is placed before baking. It is said that
whoever finds this ring will find his or her true love during the
following year.
Other foods associated with the holiday:
Cultural history
Celtic observation of Samhain
In the
Druidic religion of the ancient Celts, the new year began with the winter season of
Samhain on
November 1.
Just as shorter days signified the start of the new year, sundown also
meant the start of a new day; therefore the harvest festival began every
year on the night of October 31. Druids in the British Isles would
light fires and offer sacrifices of crops. And as they danced around the
fires, the season of the sun would pass and the season of
Samhain would begin.
When the morning of
November 1
arrived, the Druids would give an ember from their fires to each family
who would then take it home to start a new cooking fire. These fires
were intended to keep the homes warm and free from evil
spirits such as "
Sidhe" (pronounced "shee," most notable of which are the
beán sidhe or
banshees),
because at this time of year it was believed that the invisible "gates"
between this world and the spirit world were opened and free movement
between both worlds was possible.
Bonfires
played a large part in the festivities. Villagers cast the bones of the
slaughtered cattle upon the flames; the word "bonfire" is thought to
derive from these "
bone fires."
With the bonfire ablaze, the villagers extinguished all other fires.
Each family then solemnly lit their hearth from the common flame, thus
bonding the families of the village together. Hundreds of fires are
still lit each year in Ireland on Halloween night.
Neopagans still celebrate the
sabbat of Samhain on Halloween, as well as also taking part in secular Halloween activities.
Norse Elven Blót
In the old
Norse religion and its modern revival
Ásatrú, the day now known as Halloween was a
blót which involved sacrifices to the
elves and the blessing of food.
A poem from around
1020, the
Austrfaravísur ('Eastern-journey verses') of
Sigvatr Þorðarson, mentions that, as a Christian, he was refused board in a heathen household, in
Sweden, because an
álfablót ("
elves' sacrifice") was being conducted there. However, we have no further reliable information as to what an
álfablót involved, but like other
blóts it probably included the offering of foods, and later
Scandinavian folklore retained a tradition of sacrificing treats to the elves. From the time of year (close to the
autumnal equinox)
and the elves' association with fertility and the ancestors, we might
assume that it had to do with the ancestor cult and the life force of
the family.
Halloween customs
Observance of Halloween faded in the South of England from the
17th century onwards, being replaced by the commemoration of the
Gunpowder Plot on
November 5.
However it remained popular in Scotland, Ireland and the North of
England. It is only in the last decade that it again became popular in
the South of England, but as an entirely Americanized version.
The custom survives most accurately in Ireland, where the last Monday
of October is a public holiday. All schools close for the following
week for mid-term, commonly called the Halloween Break. As a result
Ireland is the only country where children never have school on
Halloween and are therefore free to celebrate it in the ancient and
time-honored fashion.
The custom of
trick-or-treating is thought to have evolved from the European custom called souling, similar to the
wassailing customs associated with
Yule. On
November 2,
All Souls' Day, beggars would walk from village to village begging for
"soul cakes" - square pieces of bread with currants. Christians would
promise to say prayers on behalf of dead relatives helping the soul's
passage to heaven. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the
church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine
for roaming spirits at the Samhain. See
Puck (mythology).
In Celtic parts of western
Brittany, Samhain is still heralded by the baking of
kornigou.
Kornigou are cakes baked in the shape of antlers to commemorate the god
of winter shedding his "cuckold" horns as he returns to his kingdom in
the
Otherworld.
"Punkie Night"
"Punkie Night" is observed on the last
Thursday in
October in the village of Hinton St. George in the
county of
Somerset in
England. On this night, children carry lanterns made from hollowed-out
mangel-wurzels (a kind of
beet;
in modern days, pumpkins are used) with faces carved into them. They
bring these around the village, collecting money and singing the punkie
song.
Punkie is derived from
pumpkin or
punk, meaning
tinder.
Though the custom is only attested over the last century, and the
mangel-wurzel itself was introduced into English agriculture in the late
18th century, "Punkie Night" appears to be much older even than the
fable that now accounts for it. The story goes that the wives of Hinton
St. George went looking for their wayward husbands at the fair held
nearby at Chiselborough, the last Thursday in October, but first
hollowed out mangel wurzels in order to make lanterns to light their
way. The drunken husbands saw the eerie lights, thought they were
"goolies" (the restless spirits of children who had died before they
were baptized), and fled in terror. Children carry the punkies now. The
event has spread since about
1960 to the neighboring village of Chiselborough.
Sources: on-line report from the
Western Gazette and a
National Geographic radio segment. Chiselborough Fair is memorialized by Fair Place in the village.
The National Gazetteer of Great Britain and Ireland (
1868) reported that there was "a fair for horses and cattle on the last Thursday in October."
"Mischief Night"
The night before Halloween, known in some areas as "Mischief Night",
"Mizzie Night", "Gate Night", "Cabbage Night", "Goosie Night
(Goosy,Goosey)" or "
Devil's Night," is often associated with pranks or destructive activities performed by
adolescents. Some of the acts range from minor
vandalism to
theft, or even
arson. Many youths involved in mischief night would be considered too old for traditional
trick-or-treating. The most common wrong-doing is toilet papering or "T.P.ing", in which people's houses, lawns, and trees are covered in
toilet paper streamers.
Perhaps the most elaborate example of a Mischief Night prank was
Orson Welles'
radio dramatization of
The War of the Worlds, originally aired on October 30,
1938. Welles' broadcast, which purported to be a live
newscast detailing the invasion of the United States by
Martians, was accepted as real by many listeners and created a public panic in some areas of the country.
A dialect
survey begun in 1999 by
Harvard University
indicates that there are a number of terms for this particular day of
the year, but that the vast majority (70.38%) have no special word for
it.
Religious viewpoints
The majority of Christians ascribe no doctrinal significance to
Halloween, treating it as a purely secular entity devoted to celebrating
imaginary spooks and handing out candy. The secular celebration of
Halloween may loom larger in contemporary imagination than does All
Saints' Day.
The mingling of Christian and pagan traditions in the development of
Halloween, and its real or assumed preoccupation with evil and the
supernatural, have left many modern Christians uncertain of how they
should react towards the holiday. Some
fundamentalist and
evangelical along with many Eastern Orthodox Christians and Orthodox Jewish believers consider Halloween a pagan or
Satanic
holiday, and refuse to allow their children to participate. In some
areas, complaints from fundamentalist Christians that the schools were
endorsing a pagan religion have led the schools to stop distributing
UNICEF boxes at Halloween.
Other Christians, however, continue to connect the holiday with All
Saints Day. Some modern Christian churches commonly offer a "fall
festival" or harvest-themed alternative to Halloween celebrations. Still
other Christians hold the view that the holiday is not Satanic in
origin or practice and that it holds no threat to the spiritual lives of
children: being taught about
death and mortality actually being a valuable life lesson.
Ironically, considering that most fundamentalist sects are
Protestant in nature, many Protestant denominations celebrate October 31 as
Reformation Day, which commemorates the October 31,
1517 posting of
Martin Luther's
Ninety-Five Theses. Many
mainline churches and religious schools, particularly
Lutheran ones, meld the two holidays without worrying about "Satanic influences."
See also
External links
Further reading
- Diane C. Arkins, Halloween: Romantic Art and Customs of Yesteryear, Pelican Publishing Company (2000). 96 pages. ISBN 1565547128
- Diane C. Arkins, Halloween Merrymaking: An Illustrated Celebration Of Fun, Food, And Frolics From Halloweens Past, Pelican Publishing Company (2004). 112 pages. ISBN 158980113X
- Phyllis Galembo, Dressed for Thrills: 100 Years of Halloween Costumes and Masquerade, Harry N. Abrams (2002). 128 pages. ISBN 0810932911
- Jean Markale, The Pagan Mysteries of Halloween: Celebrating the Dark Half of the Year (translation of Halloween, histoire et traditions), Inner Traditions (2001). 160 pages. ISBN 0892819006
- Lisa Morton, The Halloween Encyclopedia, McFarland & Company (2003). 240 pages. ISBN 078641524X
- Nicholas Rogers, Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, Oxford University Press (2002). 198 pages. ISBN 0195146913
- Jack Santino (ed.), Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life, University of Tennessee Press (1994). 280 pages. ISBN 0870498134
Actual photographs have now shown up!
A Product of Endless Gnoming
It goes without saying that this article
on a simple one-night folk holiday has become a ridiculous epic unto itself, full of deletes, rev-deletes, good edits buried by crap only to be uncovered again - in fact
it is being worked on right now, after Halloween itself has ended. I looked and found no names I recognized, so this appears to be a fetish of the sorts of people who look like they just walked out of a Siouxie Sioux video, the people for whom Halloween is the Grand Day of the Year. Doesn't really matter, the gnoming will go on until Wikipedia collapses and the page is turned into a file on a thumb-drive sold to the Third World for "education" purposes.
