The horrors of Halloween

In amidst any warnings you may personally be giving, or hearing, on the dangers of Halloween, can I recommend you read this by Margaret.

Children going round with pumpkins on their heads (Hnaef - can you check, have I got this wrong?) is slightly charming. Children banging on your door is a nuisance one day of the year. Parents who spend 364 days of the year telling their kids that all strangers are fiends, and then one day of the year encouraging them to beg them for sweets, are odd. That is all.

Things you never knew about Halloween

This is another in our series of debunking the origins of modern festivals. Once again we're pleased to help you realise that everything you've ever known is wrong. And nowhere could this be more true than when it comes to Halloween.

Halloween was originally called "Holloween", and was so called because it was the evening when they all hollowed out the pumpkins. Americans speak funny, which is why it was changed to "Halloween" when it was re-imported to these shores.

The ancient Celts celebrated Halloween by hanging the heads of their enemies from trees. In order to make it look like they had plenty of heads, they decided they would hang up carved out pumpkins - hence the modern day use of punkies at Halloween. Unfortunately for the Celts, pumpkins originated in the New World - hence the attempts of such heroes as Madog to discover America so they can get some pumpkins.

Due to a by-law that was never rescinded, if you dress up as a vampire at Halloween in Chester you can be officially declared "Welsh".  This is an offence carrying a fine of 25 pumpkins, or 3 years in the Castle.

"Trick or treating" goes back 15,000 years to cave-person times. Small children would bang at cave doors demanding treats of fried dormice or badger's nose. Because this was still during the Ice Age, if you stayed at the door too long you would freeze to the doormat - and this was why the children had to threaten a "trick" (normally pushing a sabre-toothed tiger into the victim's house) to encourage the householder to deliver the goods.

Apple-bobbing was originally duck-bobbing, until it was banned by the RSPCA.

Dressing up as Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross is no longer the preferred way of dressing up to scare old people. These days the mask of choice to scare the vulnerable would be either David Cameron or Nick Clegg.

An Ecumenical Halloween

I think we're all set up for our Samhain celebrations.  The Wicker Person now looks scarily like Harriet Harman but it's too late to do much about that now.  The oven-ready chicken, spare ribs, potatoes, sweet corn, marshmallows etc are all ready to be put in the Wicker Person later.  The cider and spices are ready for mulling and we've all got umbrellas at the ready.

In a spirit of ecumenism (for we owe no man or woman ill) we have been sending some cards out. We've sent "You're making it all up as go along" cards to the neo-pagan folk down the road who think that this is the new year.  They also tell us that "Samhain" is pronounced "Saw-win" instead of being pronounced "Halloween" so what do they know?

We've sent "Happy All Saints" cards to the local vicars, and "Hope they're all out of Purgatory soon" cards to the local Rabidly Traditional Catholic splinter group, ready for All Souls.

We were also going to send "Hope you stop being so bonkers" cards to various American evangelicals for the claim that, among other things, Witches have prayed over most of the candy sold at Halloween -  but remembering that the good people of a Bible college in the Midlands once prayed for the soul of this site's author, we thought let's not - there's little enough decent irony in the world without going around wasting it.  Also it could be a giant set-up by militant atheists to make Pat Robertson and his friends look like they're bonkers....  As if they need to.

So now we just have the excitement of wondering whether the Moon Gibbon Folk will join us for tonight's celebrations.  They still keep telling us that we're a bunch of heretics and they're only staying for the money, but on the other hand the moon is nearly full now so they're cheering up nicely.  And I noticed they had their eyes on our Halloween masks this year.  The Nick Griffin one is of course really popular, and I wish Private Eye hadn't got there first, but I like the Ann Widdecombe, Christopher Hitchens and Jordan masks as well.  There's gonna be some terrified people down School Lane tonight.

Woodhenge and Halloween

We note the rather nice piece on Wood- and other henges on the BBC website. Especially the (necessarily conjectural) idea that the dead were carried from the forests of Durrington Walls (a wooden structure) to the stone and therefore permanent emplacement of Stonehenge - symbol of the dead. We are struck with the parallel with Swaledale's "Corpse Way", whereby once upon a time dead Northerners were carried in wicker baskets to their rest at Grinton Church. We also consider the irony that in the mid-19th century, almost the entire population was carried from this beautiful Dale down into the Durham Coalfields. We have been asked whether we might consider a similar long-distance transportation to a resting place.
So far we have said no. Partly because you don't like to think about such things, especially coming up to Samhain. Partly because the current crop of Beaker Folk look like lasting for years, thereby holding up any chance of getting our hands on their legacies. And partly because it's such a blooming long way to the crematorium along dangerous roads. I'm not carrying a dead Beaker Person along the A5 for any amount of tradition.

Meanwhile on the Halloween front, I notice that the Wicker Person (I've decided to change it from "Wicker Man" for the purposes of annoying everyone) is now at full height ready for the great burning on Saturday. Unfortunately it also seems to have taken on a decided resemblance to Simon Cowell, including the high-waisted pallets. On the bright side, as it sways in the wind our Wicker Simon has more mobility in its face than the real one. Still, we don't want to upset the rich and powerful. Please can somebody make the Wicker Person more anonymous.

Halloween Wicker Man

The Wicker Man is now rising nicely over Big Meadow.  By the time Samhain arrives we're wanting it to be 40 feet tall.  We're hoping the flames will be visible in Dunstable.

But this year there is extra urgency.  With all the excitement over the End of the World and the threatened schism (so far not actually happened) we've really rather left the Wicker Man a bit late.  So can all the Beaker Folk, as they finish their Data Mining, please swap their keyboards for nail extractors and hatchets.  We've a lot of pallets to split if we're going to get that Wicker Man up to size by Saturday.  As usual we're also looking for the sacrificial victims to put in it, so please can you all rack your brains.  A few oven-ready chickens would be nice, and obviously the normal potatoes and sweetcorns.  But what else does anyone fancy for tea on Saturday?