HP Lovecraft meets Charles Schultz [via the null device]

A reprise of my Halloween post of last year:

It is that time of year again. What has become a time of disinhibited hijinx and mayhem, and a growing marketing bonanza for the kitsch-manufacturers and -importers, has primeval origins as the Celtic New Year’s Eve, Samhain (pronounced “sow-en”). The harvest is over, summer ends and winter begins, the Old God dies and returns to the Land of the Dead to await his rebirth at Yule, and the land is cast into darkness. The veil separating the worlds of the living and the dead becomes frayed and thin, and dispossessed dead mingle with the living, perhaps seeking a body to possess for the next year as their only chance to remain connected with the living, who hope to scare them away with ghoulish costumes and behavior, escape their menace by masquerading as one of them, or placate them with offerings of food, in hopes that they will go away before the new year comes. For those prepared, a journey to the other side could be made at this time. It is fortunate that Hallowe’en falls on a Friday Sunday this year, as there is evidence that the pagan festival was celebrated for three days.

With Christianity, perhaps because with calendar reform it was no longer the last day of the year, All Hallows’ Eve became decathected, a day for innocent masquerading and fun, taking its name Hallowe’en as a contraction and corruption of All Hallows’ Eve. All Saints’ Day may have originated in its modern form with the 8th century Pope Gregory III. Hallowe’en customs reputedly came to the New World with the Irish immigrants of the 1840’s. The prominence of trick-or-treating has a slightly different origin, however.

The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death, and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to heaven.

Jack-o’-lanterns were reportedly originally turnips; the Irish began using pumpkins after they immigrated to North AMerica, given how plentiful they were here.

The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.

According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer.

Folk traditions that were in the past associated wtih All Hallows’ Eve took much of their power, as with the New Year’s customs about which I write here every Dec. 31st, from the magic of boundary states, transition and liminality.

The idea behind ducking, dooking or bobbing for apples seems to have been that snatching a bite from the apple enables the person to grasp good fortune. Samhain is a time for getting rid of weakness, as pagans once slaughtered weak animals which were unlikely to survive the winter. A common ritual calls for writing down weaknesses on a piece of paper or parchment, and tossing it into the fire. There used to be a custom of placing a stone in the hot ashes of the bonfire. If in the morning a person found that the stone had been removed or had cracked, it was a sign of bad fortune. Nuts have been used for divination: whether they burned quietly or exploded indicated good or bad luck. Peeling an apple and throwing the peel over one’s shoulder was supposed to reveal the initial of one’s future spouse. One way of looking for omens of death was for peope to visit churchyards

The Witches’ Sabbath aspect of Hallowe’en seems to result from Germanic influence, and fusion with the notion of Walpurgisnacht. (Who knows the magnificent musical evocation of this, Mussorgsky’s Night on Bare Mountain?) Although probably not yet in a position to shape mainstream American Hallowe’en traditions, Mexican Dia de los Muertos observances have started to contribute some delightful and whimsical iconography to our encounter with the eerie and unearthly as well.

What was Hallowe’en like forty or fifty years ago in the U.S. when, bastardized as it has become with respect to its pagan origins, it retained a much more traditional flair? For my purposes, suffice it to say that it was before the era of the pay-per-view ‘spooky-world’ type haunted attractions and its Martha Stewart yuppification with, as this irreverent Salon article from last year [via walker] puts it, monogrammed jack-o’-lanterns and the like. Related, a 1984 essay by Richard Seltzer, frequently referenced in other sources, entitled “Why Bother to Save Halloween?”, argues as I do that reverence for Halowe’en is good for the soul.

That would be anathema to certain segments of society, however. Halloween certainly inspires a backlash by fundamentalists who consider it a blasphemous abomination. ‘Amateur scholar’ Isaac Bonewits details academically the Halloween errors and lies he feels contribute to its being reviled. Some of the panic over Hallowe’en is akin to the hysteria, fortunately now debunked, over the supposed epidemic of ‘ritual Satanic abuse’ that swept the Western world in the ’90’s.

The horror film has become inextricably linked to Hallowe’en tradition, although the holiday itself did not figure in the movies until John Carpenter took the slasher genre singlehandedly by storm. Googling “scariest films”, you will, grimly, reap a mother lode of opinions about how to pierce the veil to journey to the netherworld and reconnect with that magical, eerie creepiness in the dark (if not the over-the-top blood and gore that has largely replaced the subtlety of earlier horror films).

In any case: trick or treat!

This is doing the rounds as an email chain letter and is being posted to many places on the web. It is supposedly a plea to vote for Kerry from a “very conservative” Orlando Sentinel columnist. The email I got says,

“He’s a Conservative Republican who is anti-abortion, anti-tax-and-spend, loudly critical of legislation by the judiciary, doesn’t think much of ulticulturalism or secularism, has suggested Clinton “turned the Oval Office into a whorehouse,” thinks Ronald Reagan is the greatest thing to come down the pike since canned beer, and voted for Bush in the last election.”

Reese’s ‘column’ begins,

“Americans should realize that if they vote for President Bush’s re-election, they are really voting for the architects of war – Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of that cabal of neoconservative ideologues and their corporate backers. I have sadly come to the conclusion that President Bush is merely a front man, an empty suit, who is manipulated by the people in his administration. Bush has the most dangerously simplistic view of the world of any president in my memory.”

The only problem is I cannot find anything like this piece, or anything by or about Charlie Reese, by searching the Orlando Sentinel site. Much as I would love to believe in this religious conversion from the dark side, it sounds to me like a spam troll by an anonymous Kerry supporter to get conservatives to give the Democratic candidate another look. Snopes, my favorite debunking site for the abuse of the credulous (like myself!), has nothing about “Charlie Reese.” Does anybody know any more?

Addendum: It turns out I couldn’t find anything because it is “Charley Reese”, not “Charlie…” (Thanks to the comment from reader NWD). Reese was with the Sentinel until 2001 but has posted his columns on lewrockwell.com since then. Here is a link to “Vote for a Puppet, Not a Man.” Here is a more accurate capsule biography of Reese:

“Charley Reese [send him mail] has been a journalist for 49 years, reporting on everything from sports to politics. From 1969–71, he worked as a campaign staffer for gubernatorial, senatorial and congressional races in several states. He was an editor, assistant to the publisher, and columnist for the Orlando Sentinel from 1971 to 2001. He now writes a syndicated column which is carried on LewRockwell.com. Reese served two years active duty in the U.S. Army as a tank gunner. Write to Charley Reese at P.O. Box 2446, Orlando, FL 32802.”

I apologize for my initial skepticism.

“In the long run, is it sometimes better for a party to lose an election than to win?” (Boston Globe)

This is where I grew up in the ’60’s.

“A British stockbroker in jail in the United States has been lifting the lid on a controversial prison regime through a compelling weblog.” (BBC)

“A pair of Mississippi women challenge the army brass on behalf of their soldier-husbands in Iraq” (Village Voice)

“A brief history of the ultimate pop faux pas” (Village Voice). And also see the story below, also about lip-synching:

“Physicist says imaging techniques prove the president’s bulge was not caused by wrinkled clothing.” (Salon) I don’t think you actually need the Photoshop enhancement techniques to tell that he is wearing a wire. It is even evident on the original (left) photo.

The article goes on to detail Bunning’s history of bizarre and erratic behavior behind Democratic innuendoes that he is demented (in the clinical sense; not just name-calling). Republicans counter with homophobic smears about his Democratic challenger.

With our Byzantine electoral college system, it is actually possible that John McCain will end up inaugurated as the next president in January. Here’s how. (Tech Central Station)

Bush’s One-Finger Victory Salute

Australia requires citizens to vote. Should the U.S.? — Eric Weiner (Slate)

Related:

“A tiny conical tooth embedded in a pterosaur neck bone is all that remains of a 100-million-year-old battle between a flying reptile with a 12-foot wingspan and a 26-foot-long crocodile-snouted spinosaur.” (Discover)

A recent New York Times article said that prominent webloggers, including Kevin Drum and Glenn Reynolds, have increasingly moved to a ‘feline Friday’ model of weblogging in which Friday is given over to posting pictures of their cats. Now we are cat lovers; we have two at home (as well as our dog) but I have never thought they are very blogworthy. This, however, is a cat-related item interesting enough to post: