134 Notes
This episode is a brief look at the development of what is now known as Halloween - starting with Samhain. The episode begins with a passage that Poe wrote about Stonehenge. It follows the development of Halloween as a holiday - from Samhain to All Souls day to “trick or treat.”
134 Notes
This episode is a brief look at the development of what is now known as Halloween - starting with Samhain. The episode begins with a passage that Poe wrote about Stonehenge. It follows the development of Halloween as a holiday - from Samhain to All Souls day to “trick or treat.”
Edgar Allan Poe's lines in italic
George Bartley in plain
00:00 Introduction
Welcome to Celebrate Poe. My name is George Bartley, and this is episode 134 - A Brief History of Halloween. The music for the intro and outro for this podcast is fron ‘Come Rest in This Bosom’ - said to be Edgar Allan Poe; favorite song.
For the rest of October, instead of looking at Poe’s life from a chronological standpoint, Celebrate Poe will take a look at some of the elements of the history and development of Halloween - especially some of those that have an Edgar Allan Poe connection
Next week Celebrate Poe will examine some works that have been referred to as Poe’s Halloween poems. The selection might surprise you - especially since Poe is frequently called The Halloween Poet. So join Celebrate Poe for Poe’s Haloween poems. Then during the last two weeks of October I want to delve into The Black Cat, one of Poe’s most familar stories. The Black Cat is a story that may seem simple at first, but is an incredibly complex psychological study.
01:45 Samhain
My first thought about this episode was that the tradition or celebration of Halloween began so far back that it couldn’t even remotely have anything to do with Edgar Allan Poe - at least that’s what I thought at first. You see, the tradition began with the ancient Keltic festival of SOWin, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. Let me stop here with a note about pronunciation - Celtic looks like it should be pronounced something like CELLtic, but the word is actually pronounced as Keltic - almost as though the word begins with a K. And the m is silent in SOWin - spelled S-A-M-H-A-I-N - I had to use a memory aid to say the word correctly - so here I go with one of my memory aids - think of a female hog - a SOW running along snorting in her attempts. to WIN a race. It seems to always help to put some sounds and physical actions into a memory aid.
So you have SOWin - kinda nonsensical - but you start pronouncing the word correctly as SOWin. You have to consciously think about it until it becomes second nature - for several weeks I would pronounce the word as Samhain - closer to Salmon - rather than SOWin.
Confused? Ok. SOWin is the ancient celebration that most scholars believe evolved into Halloween.
04:02 Stonehenge and Poe
Now getting back to the celebration of SOWin - and this is where a connection to Edgar Allan Poe comes in - You see, legend has it that Stonehenge, the structure of upright stones in England, was used in the celebrations of SOWin - Of course, Poe would not be born for hundreds of years, but in June of 1840, Poe wrote an account for Burton’s Gentlemen Magazine and American Monthly Review that was called an ACCOUNT OF STONEHENGE, THE GIANT’S DANCE, A RUIN IN ENGLAND.
GHOST ENTERS
Well, Hello Mr. Poe - right when we need you.
Hello, Mr. Bartley
I was talking about the celebration of SOWin - and mentioned how you wrote a piece for Burton’s Gentlemen Magazine and American Monthly Review about Stonehenge in 1840. Would you care to read the opening paragraph aloud:
Certainly.
“THE pile called Stonehenge is an assemblage of upright and prostrate stones on Salisbury plain, England, and is generally supposed to be the remains of an ancient temple. From its singularity, and the mystery attending its origin and appropriation, it has excited more surprise and curiosity than any other relic of antiquity in Great Britain. It is situated about two miles directly west of Amesbury, and seven north of Salisbury, in Wiltshire. When viewed at a distance it appears but a small and trifling object, for its bulk and character are lost in the extensive space which surrounds it; and even on a near examination it fails to fulfil the expectations of the stranger who visits it with exaggerated prepossessions. To behold this “wonder of Britain” it should be viewed with an artist's eye, and contemplated by an intellect stored with antiquarian and historical knowledge. Stonehenge, notwithstanding much that has been said to the contrary, is utterly unlike any monument now remaining in Europe.
And this might be as good a place as any to mention the transcripts that I always try to have for each episode. To read the actual script for each episode - go to www.buzzsprout.com and you can access a transcript for the episode by clicking on the title of that episode and then on the word transcript. You might want to note that I tried to spell Samhain using its proper spelling - SAMHAIN - but in my personal transcript that I follow when I record this episode, I have S O W in. Otherwise, I would probably mispronounce S O W in every time.
Anyway, getting back to Edgar Allan Poe and SOWin -
Poe - at least on the surface level - was aware of one of the physical relics that we associate with SOWin, and in turn Halloween. Sowhin specifically commemorated the end of the harvest season and the blurring of the physical and spirit worlds. This blurring of the physical and the spirt worlds - life on Earth and life after death - took on a new emphasis. The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.
By the way, my birthday is on November - which led to lots of bad jokes among my parents about calling me a treat - or, if I was naughty - a trick. No wonder I was confused - what kid likes to be known as a treat - or worse yet - a trick.
09:05 All Saints Day and other Roman influences
But getting back to the historical development of Halloween, in the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 - the day after Haloween as a time to honor ALL saints, and the holiday started taking on Christian influences. Soon, All Saints Day incorporated some of the traditions of Sowinn into what was called All Hallows Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a day of activities like trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, festive gatherings, and eating candy - often lots and lots of candy.
Besides taking on Christian influences, the holiday started also taking on European myth, and later even and American consumerism. I am sure that we all went trick or treating as kids - dressing in funny costumes with candy and maybe scary stories - and not really sure about the original meaning of Halloween. If our ancestors saw how we were remembering what most likely started as Sowwin, they would be completely baffled.
Now the original Sowin day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter. This was a time of year that was often associated with human death. Remember the belief had developed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31, it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.
In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, the Celtic race as a whole thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future.
We have to remember that these were a people totally dependent on the volatile natural world, and knowing - or at least thinking that they knew - how crops might fare. This would be an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.
To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. (By the way, I had to look up Celt - so I didn’t say celt instead of Kelt.) When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the long winter to come.
Now by 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of SOWin.
The first was Feralia. This was a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. Not surprisingly, this day often had its supernatural elements.
The second festival was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees - in other words, a celebration of growing life. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.
So you could say that the day before November the First is a combination of three holidays -
1) the Celtic holiday of SOWin
2) Feralia - the passing of the dead with its supernatural elements
3) Pomona - a celebration of growing life, such as crops to come
Then on May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated a special day at the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs.
Ah yes, the Rotunda at the University of Virginia, was modeled after the classical architecture of the Pantheon.
That’s right.
Mr. Bartley - it is not necessary to be so condescending.
My apologies, Mr. Poe. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.
By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and replaced older Celtic rites.
Then in 1000 A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.
All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas and the night before it, the traditional night of SOWin in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve. It did not take long before the day became known as Halloween.
16:15 Halloween in America
While Halloween developed into a regular celebration in Europe, the holiday was observed on a very limited basis in colonial New England. This was because the rigid Protestant belief systems there was so influential in the New England states.
But the celebration of Halloween was far more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.
As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.
Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories. I think it hails back to England - where you certainly did not want to go outside at night - but gather around the fire and tell ghost stories - especially at Christmas. For example, the most famous ghost story of them all, A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, l is associated with London and Christmas -
Of course, there was also mischief-making of all kinds.
By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities had become common in the United States, but Halloween was still not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.
In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween in this country.
18:13 Excerpt of letter from Mary Fowlds
Mr. Poe - not a great deal is known regarding how you celebrated the day as a young lad, so I was very excited to run across a letter from John Allan’s niece, Mary Fowlds, about how she spent their Halloween - the letter is from Kilmarnock, Scotland to John Allan when he lived at Southampton Row in London.
Ah yes, I would have been a young boy.
True. Would you read a portion of Mary Fowlds letter:
Certainly.
We are often wondering how you are all coming on indeed when we are all met together at night (as you know I am always engaged at school through the day) you generally engross part of our conversation. We dined and spent the evening at Mrs. Fowlds (grandmother) on Halloween and according to the custom of Scotland we burnt our nuts and pulled our stocks. I was just making the observation had you been here you would have enjoyed (it) highly.
I thought it was cool how she talked about burning chestnuts as a Haloween custom.
19:45 Halloween develops as a holiday
To continue this episodes look at Halloween’s development -
Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.
Then in the late 1800s, there was even more of a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday that emphasized community and neighborly get-instead of ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes.
By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague some celebrations in many communities during this time.
By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. And between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats.
Thus, a new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country’s second largest commercial holiday after Christmas.
22:10 Future episodes:
Today has been a brief look at the History of Halloween - but for the rest of October, Celebrate Poe will take a close look at some of Poe’s writings that are associated with Halloween - starting next week with some of the most famous poems in the English language. For the last two weeks of October, this podcast will take a close look at two of Poe’s short storiest that are often associated with Halloween - The Black Cat and The Tell Tale Heart.
22:47 Sources
Sources include The Works of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allan Poe, the The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore website, and A History of Halloween from the Inside History website.
Outro
Thank you for listening to Celebrate Poe - a deep dive into the life, times, and works of America’s Shakespeare - Edgar Allan Poe.
COME REST IN THIS BOSOM MUSIC
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-gay-is-halloween_b_4178221