Trick or Treat? (Lessons from History 6: Halloween Edition)

Today is the 31^st of October (as those of you who have calendars will no doubt be aware). Likewise those with any knowledge of popular culture will be aware that today is Halloween; the one day of the year when it’s totally appropriate for little children to take sweets from strange men. It’s also a time when there is nothing but Horror Films on TV and people actually buy pumpkins.

As you might expect, behind all the modern secular traditions, ruthlessly exploited by soulless supermarkets and commercialised almost to the same extent as Christmas, there is some historical explanation as to why little children dress up and threaten people into giving them unhealthy food and why we carve comically ugly faces into large hollowed out vegetables.

You might remember from my discussion of the origins of Christmas last December that the newly founded Roman Catholic Church was really rather fond of adapting Pagan festivals into their newly popularised religion. I also alluded to the fact that Roman Polytheism had a habit of absorbing local cults into its Parthenon. While last time the cult in question hailed all the way from Syria, this time the festival is very Celtic indeed, which explains why Halloween is celebrated mostly in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and to a lesser extent England, as well as the USA; which was highly populated with Scottish and Irish immigrants in the early 20^th century.

The festival in question is Samhain, which mean’s summer’s end. The end of October and the beginning of November have long been associated with the end of summer and the start of winter, especially in cold of Northern Europe. The Celtic calendar divides the year in half, the winter months from November through to April are the dark half of the year, whereas the months from May through to October are the light half of the year. As such Samhein marks the transition from the light half to the dark half, just as Bealtaine in late April, early May, marks the transition from the light half of the year to the dark half.

Samhain is known as a festival for honouring the dead, because it is believed to be the time when the barrier between the living and the dead are closest. The symbolism here is pretty standard; the dark half of the year is associated with death, because darkness and the colour black are pretty synonymous with death. Darkness is essentially nothingness, just like death in many ways. Similarly the winter months are characterised by lifeless trees and coldness, which is also associated with death. By contrast, the light half of the year is associated with life, for the opposite reasons. As such, the day in which the light half of the year and the dark half of the year meet is bound to be associated with the thinning of the barrier between life and death.

So what has this got to do with Halloween? Well when the barrier between life and death meet, evil spirits have a horrible habit of escaping their dark prison and infiltrating the world of the living. In order to protect oneself from these evil spirits, it become customary during Samhain to dress up as an evil spirit, so that they didn’t realise that you were actually living, because apparently evil spirits are not only dead, but incredibly stupid. It also became customary to protect your houses by placing a guard carved out of turnip (the Pumpkin is a later, American innovation). Bonfires were also lit around this time, but that has not transferred over to Halloween, but another common celebration that happens in a few days (I’m sure you all know what I’m talking about, if not, tune in next week!)

I alluded to the Roman habit of absorbing conquered rituals and cults into their own Parthenon earlier, and Samhain was no exception. When the Romans conquered Britain they associated the practice with their own Festival to celebrate their dead, Feralia. Unfortunately this took place in February, so they also associated it with the day honouring the autumnal Goddess Pomona, which fell in October. The Goddess’s association with apples is thought to be the reason why Apple Bobbing is popular around Halloween.

The Roman influence is not as strong as the Christian one on the festival however. While the Catholic Church was trying to establish itself over the whole of the Roman Empire, many common cults and practices were morphed into Christian celebrations. Samhain, then, was turned into All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day, a day for celebrating the entire Catholic Parthenon of Saints and all dead people respectively. These days fell on the first and second of November, so the 31^st of October became All Saint’s (or Hallow’s) eve, what we now call Halloween. All the spiritual stuff about revering one’s ancestors became associated with first two days in November, whereas the slightly more spooky stuff about guarding against evil spirits continued to be practiced in more Celtic areas like Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall and was later commercialised into what we now know as Halloween.

So dressing up and Jack-O-Lanterns come from Celtic traditions, Apple bobbing probably comes courtesy of the Romans, and the tradition of children begging for sweets probably dates back to the tradition of the poor begging for food from the rich on All Saint’s Day. So we owe the bizarre celebration of Halloween to the Celts, the Romans, Medieval Christians and an awful lot commercialisation.

The more you know, eh?

Hey, priest, leave those kids alone!

I’m sure you’ve all come across the jokes about catholic priests abusing alter boys, and I’m sure you’re all aware that, in recent weeks, these jokes have been revealed to be largely based on fact. The best jokes are always based in reality, which is then ridiculed, taken too far or misconstrued. The facts in this case, however, are probably too chilling to joke about in good taste. It started in Ireland, where reports published last year revealed the extent of child abuse, and more worryingly, the extent to which it has been covered up. Since then the rot has spread across Europe and America, with more and more allegations of abuse and cover-up coming out of the woodwork. So far the main response of the Catholic Church has been to send out an apology and mumble something about not interfering with secular prosecution, when it seems to me hard to argue against excommunicating the abusive priests, and severely punish those involved in covering it up.

The allegations against the priests are universally sickening. For years, hundreds, probably thousands of young, vulnerable boys were systematically abused by people in authority. Often these boys had no-one to turn to and were too afraid to speak out. What was done to them has left them traumatised for life in many cases. The worst thing is that the many senior members of the Church knew that this was going on and turned a blind eye, even helped to cover up the appalling abuse.

Priests accused of abuse were moved onto a different parish so they could continue their abhorrent activities elsewhere. Reports to authorities within the Church were largely ignored or dealt with in such a way as to favour the priest, not the victim. The pope himself has been dragged into it, facing allegations of ignoring accusations of child abuse against priests in Wisconsin. It seems that child abuse is not only something done by sick individuals abusing their power over young boys, but something which has become institutionalised within the church. Rather than trying to face these allegations and accusations head on, the church has, for years, tried to cover them up and pretend they didn’t exist. They’ve put the interests of the Church ahead of those for whom the church is responsible. They seem to care more about an abstract concept; the church, than the individuals who make it up.

It is ironic that of all the institutions it is the Catholic Church which is awash with allegations of sexual deviance, the very same institution which prides itself in the celibacy of its priests and the specialness of sex, which must be exclusive to the marriage relationship. The Catholic Church prides itself on being a moral authority, especially when the issue of sex is involved. It is deeply ironic and also very disturbing that the world’s most sex-obsessed institution and the one so keen to give unbreakable rules to everyone, no matter how impractical, is the one rife with sexual deviance.

I’m not sure this is entirely surprising though. Can we really expect that people abstain from sex for their entire lives? Sex is not only something which we are hardwired to want as animals; it is also the greatest act of love one can partake in. That Catholic Church’s long time fear of sex and something which is to be avoided by those most holy is born of a misunderstanding of sex as a necessity for reproductions and little else, and has led to appalling sexual abuse of vulnerable people. Priests who abuse young boys are undoubtedly evil, but the Catholic Church should look very hard at itself in order to see why such abuse is rampant in such a supposedly celibate group of people.

That is for the long term. In the short term the church should excommunicate anyone who is guilty of child abuse and hand them over to the civil authorities for punishment. It’s my hope that very few of them ever get to see the outside of a prison ever again. The church must also look very hard at the process for dealing with such allegations. It cannot continue to put the credibility of the church ahead of the wellbeing of its most vulnerable; it must face allegations of abuse honestly and critically. Anyone involved in the mass cover-up, yes, even the Pope, must be punished for what they have done. I’m sure the church has internal means of punishing people who have sinned; they should use them to show the world that they do not accept child abuse. Overall, as a result of this scandal, the church has a lot to answer for and must hold itself accountable, or be held accountable by everyone else.

To all your lovers out there (lessons from History 4, valentine's day edition)

A cursory look at your calendar (and most shops) will inform you that Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. You might have noticed that last year I completely ignored this holiday, because back then I was bitter and alone. This year I’m bitter but slightly less alone so 14th February means something to me. Fortunately I have managed to suppress my awful soppiness about the holiday and actually done some research into the origins of this celebration of love and all things red (which basically means I googled it).

Anyway, 14th February is Saint Valentine’s Day, the patron saint of, inevitably, marriages, love, lovers, affianced couples, engaged couples and young people. However he is, rather bizarrely, also Patron Saint of bee keepers, epilepsy, fainting, greetings, plagues and travellers. Don’t ask me why. Saint Valentine, like all good saints, was a Roman Christian who was martyred for some crime or other. The problem is that there are at least three that know of. The one we know most about was imprisoned by Emperor Claudius II in the third Century AD for marrying young people. This seems like an innocuous enough offence, but it came after the Emperor had banned young people from marrying because he noticed that unmarried soldiers fought better (maybe they spent less time moping and more time raping and pillaging). He needed all the soldiers he could get because the Roman Empire was, as always, fighting almost everyone who bordered their territory and some who didn’t. Valentine soon realised that this was unjust and so went around marrying young Christians. Although he was imprisoned, he managed to make a good enough impression on Claudius that he was not executed, until he tried to convert him to Christianity, at which point he was promptly beaten with clubs, stoned and then beheaded.

It is reported, but not certain, that he, or one of the saints of that name, sent the first ‘Valentine’. Apparently he fell in love with the jailor’s daughters and sent her a note signed ‘From your Valentine’. Combined with the marrying of younger couples there is some ground for having the Saint be the patron of lovers, but it still seems pretty tenuous. The marrying (you’ll excuse metaphor) of Saint Valentine with a festival dedicated to love may have more to do with the date than anything else. February was seen, in the roman world at least, as the start of spring and hence fertility. The Roman festival Lupercalia happened on the Ides of February (the 15th) and was a celebration of fertility, a time for purification and an occasion for matchmaking, in a slightly more random way than that used today. It would be perhaps justifiably cynical to accuse the early church is simply hijacking a festival which already existed and repurpose it as a Christian festival; they did much the same for Christmas after all. Saint Valentine died in February, or at least one of them did, probably, so it made sense to make Saint Valentine the patron of love and make his Saint’s Day a celebration of love, marriage, couples and plague… no I still don’t know why that last one is even there.

So where does that leave us? A little more educated about the slightly haphazard and pretty incoherent history of what has become a painfully commercialised celebration of love, which millions of couples worldwide indulge in and have indulged in throughout history because they wanted an excuse to celebrate their relationship, and who can blame them.

Shame I wont be able to do the same because I leave for France in the morning for a very poorly timed family ski holiday, which is why this is uncharacteristically early and why next week will probably be a collection of holiday photos. I may change this slightly cop-out tradition because you get a photo from my life every day here anyway. I won’t be updating that at all next week for lack of internet (I expect) so I will do a massive update next Saturday.

Well I’m rambling now, so I hope all those couples out there have a wonderful Lupercalia and I hope all those singles out there can impress members of the opposite sex enough with knowledge of the origins of Valentine’s Day that they find someone to celebrate it with by next year.

Merry... Saturnalia? (lessons from history 3, festive edition)

or the ‘birthday of the unconquered sun’, normally referred to as Sol Invicta. December has always been a month of celebration. With the sun getting lower and lower there has always been a tendency to try to make sure the sun does actually come back. Plus it’s cold, dark and food is short, so a celebration is quite nice to keep everyone’s spirits up. Celebrating the winter solstice has long been a feature of human society.

Christmas is no different. The date of Christmas is supposed to be the date of Jesus’ birth, but this is probably not the case. Festivals in late December had long been a feature of the Roman world; in fact there were at least two of them.

The first one was called Saturnalia. It took place in late December and saw the exchange of gifts and the relaxing of formalities. In fact it was tradition to reverse social roles; the wealthy were expected to pay the rent for those who couldn’t afford it. Master and slave exchanged clothes, family households threw dice to decide who would play the role of family monarch. Overall, a rather Christmassy affair.

Saturnalia was originally a festival to celebrate the end of the autumn planting season. It came later and later as the years went on and the scale of the festivities also increased. By the birth of Jesus it was a two day festival around mid-December. A hundred years later it lasted for a week. Changes to the Roman calendar placed the festival at 25th December, around the date of the winter solstice. From the third century AD there were public banquets in celebration of Saturnalia. The authorities tried in vain to restrict the festivities. By the end of the first century however they had embraced the festival and emperors started using it as a tool to improve their own popularity by putting on typically lavish celebrations at their own expense.

Even with the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity in the fourth century, Saturnalia continued to be celebrated. The Roman Empire did not turn Christian overnight. The majority of the empire remained Pagan for years after the official religion became Christian.

The second contender for the Roman forerunner for Christmas is called the festival of dies natalis solis invicti It was not actually a roman festival to start with, but originated in Syria as a celebration of the God Mithras. Typically of the Roman Empire, the cult was soon assimilated into the Roman Parthenon. Celebrations of Sol Invicti took place on the 25th of December, the day after the winter solstice on the Julian calendar. It was first introduced to Rome in the late third century and took over many of the features of Saturnalia. Sol Invicti is linked with the monotheistic cult of Mithras, which strongly resembled Christianity and indeed many of the non-biblical catholic rituals; celebrating a festival on 25th December being one of them, derive from this cult.

When the Roman Empire became Christian in the fourth century, the new Christian religion had to be made to fit with current religious practices. Christianity was made more acceptable by simply not changing much for most people. This cynical pragmatism does not however indicate a lack of belief, simply an acceptance of the difficulties of imposing such a radical change on people.

Fear not though, there is some Jewish basis for having Jesus birthday on 25th December. In Judaism the time of a prophet’s death is often associated with the time of their conception, so if Jesus was conceived in late March, he would be born in late December.

Why am I telling you this you ask? Because I can and because knowledge is always good to have. It’s Christmas, so my gift to you all is something to impress family and friends with next year; knowledge of the roman origins of Christmas. All that remains is for me to wish you all a very happy Sol Invicti and hope that Santa gave you lots of pressies. Maybe next year I’ll talk about why Santa Clause is part of the Christmas festivities. Meanwhile, goodbye the 00’s next time I write it will be 2010. Isn’t that exciting?

Poor Bill Nye

To be honest, I have very little to talk about this week, so, as normal when I don’t have much to say, I went and looked around on the BBC website and then Reddit to see if I could steal a story from there and write about it. Thankfully Reddit provided me with a solution to my troubles!

Bill Nye was booed, actually booed, in Texas recently for making that laughable claim that the moon does not actually emit light, and merely reflects light. This appalling piece of science clearly offended members of the ‘moon is a small ball of burning gasses’ sect of retards down in Texas. Well actually it offended some Christians because Nye made the equally laughable claim that the statement in Genesis 1:16 that ‘God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night.’ Is in fact wrong, how silly of him. We all know that the bible is the infallible word of God and any apparent scientific truth which appears to contradict the bible is clearly false. Well that or we need to skilfully reinterpret the words of God to be contingent with reality, which is exactly what Jethro! (probably not of Jethro Tull fame) did. In a comment in the aforementioned news article he said: If Nye claimed that Genesis 1:16 said God created two "light sources," then Nye is wrong -- it says: "God made two great lights..." That the "lesser light" is reflected light, does not make it any less a "great light." Aside from the fact that he put a comma in where it’s not needed, he managed to misquote Nye; Nye never said ‘light sources’ and the article never actually claimed that he did, Jethro! completely lied to get his point across. His point is still wrong because the moon is a reflector, not a ‘light’. If everything that reflects light is a ‘light’ then, well everything that isn’t black is a reflector. Jethro! failed pretty hard there huh?

Back to the actual story instead of taking the piss out of people who comment on these news stories (because that is a little too close to home given that I’m writing a blog about the damn thing), not only was Nye booed, several people stormed out of the room in fury at Nye’s attempt to educate their children. One woman even yelled “we believe in God” on her way out, just in case we thought she was an extremely stupid atheist who didn’t like it when people insulted a book that she doesn’t believe is in any way important. I’m not even sure why she decided to yell that, I mean it’s not like you have to believe that every word in the bible is absolutely from the mouth of the Almighty Himself and therefore any science which contradicts it is the work of the Devil. Christ (if you’ll excuse the irony of my choice of profanity) if that were the case most people I know who are devout Christians would be burned at the stake for heresy.

This story really proves that people are stupid. It actually worries me that there are so many people out there who would choose to believe what it says in a book, which claims to be the word of God but cannot be proven as such, over science that is extremely well founded in reality. The fact that some people willingly choose to believe the creation myth of a random tribe from the Levant who happen to have survived long enough for their wacko religion to survive, over something that is scientifically proven is pretty worrying. You don’t even need to believe the bible is the direct word of God to be a Christian; most don’t, most Christians simply say the bible is a human attempt to understand God, rather that his dictated Word. Admittedly they’re deluding themselves (in my not-very-humble opinion), but at least they’re not failing as hard as the fundamentalists.

Most Christians today say that the Genesis stories are just that, stories. They don’t claim to make any statement about how the world was created, instead they simply teach people about the true nature of their God. The claim that Genesis is how it really happened is laughed at by most Christians let alone us cynical Atheists.

And now for something completely different; given that I have had the last week off I have been investigating a website called Loading Ready Run. It’s basically a bunch of people doing funny sketches and putting the videos on the net. I discovered them from the new videos on the Escapist website called Unskippable, which is done by the same people. You should all check it out. You should also check out Neutral Milk Hotel; they’re a band from the 90’s who probably kicked off the whole indie music thing in a big way. Their album ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’ is pretty sweet. You should all listen to it.