My most memorable Halloween story happened when I stayed home one year to give out candy to the goblins. Our own goblins were out with their Dad to canvass for treats… I looked up and there was a man in a trench coat with a death mask walking alone, slowly coming through our fence to the front door… I was terrified as he stepped on the porch.
The night of October 31 every year is unlike any other. It is haunted by ghosts, spirits, demons, mass murderers, goblins, witches, zombies, vampires, and any other malevolent entity the human imagination can conjure. It is also not unusual to see Hollywood movie characters, politicians, princesses, and pirates on the prowl. It is Halloween time in the U.S., a time for children and adults to don their most imaginative costumes and frighten friends, neighbours, and strangers. Even though it’s not a holiday, the preparation for it marks the beginning of the holiday season, since Americans are expected to shell out $9 billion this year for this festival, second only to Christmas celebrations, in terms of holiday spending. Parents and their children put a lot of hard work into Halloween, making costumes, or going to several stores to find that perfect floating ghost or the witch outfit complete with pointed hat, gnarled fingers, and the broom. No respectable witch would be seen without her broom. While our own witches fly like birds, the witches here fly on brooms.
This strange dusk ritual had its origins in the religious traditions of the Celts who lived in the British Isles and France thousands of years ago. In those pre-Christian times, they worshipped their gods and ancestors, just like we do now. In a religious festival called Samhain, they devoted a night to invoking the spirits, believing there was only a thin line between humans and the spirit world. So, on that sacred night, people and spirits commingled as they crossed boundaries. Celebrants wore masks of animal heads for the festivities. Because they were agrarian, their gods were associated with nature, like those of most people in the world. A good harvest meant survival and good health, and a bad one meant starvation and death. This time of year, autumn, is the transition between summer, when the sun is warm in the sky and life is verdant, and winter, with endless snow. To propitiate the spirits, they burnt animals and some of their harvests as sacrifice, while their priests, known as Druids, divined with the spirits to foretell the future. This was the state of things until they were conquered by the Romans and became a part of the Roman Empire. The Romans, too, had a religious tradition of celebrating their Dead. They saw the similarities between the two traditions, and grafted the Celtic tradition onto theirs. The Celts, even though under a new management, kept honouring their own dead and conferring with their own spirits.
Then came Christianity, and Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. Through him and subsequent emperors, Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire. But as Catholic priests found out, it was easier to make edicts than to change people’s religious traditions that had existed for thousands of years. The Celts kept practicing their pre-Christian rituals, even though they proclaimed themselves Christians, not unlike some of our own contemporary Nigerian Christians who secretly consult with our traditional diviners, and also blend traditional religion rituals with their Christian practices, while going to church to rail against “paganism.”
The Catholic Church thought hard about the matter and found an ingenious solution. They decided to borrow a leaf from the Romans and coopted Celtic religious rituals. If people persisted in celebrating their dead on October 31, then they figured the Church could invent a day where this could be made possible in a different way. They invented November 1st as the day to honour Catholic saints, Hallowed entities. October 31 became Hallowed Eve, the night before All Saints Day. In fact, they went further and made November 2nd All Souls Day, which now meant all souls, not just the Saints, would be venerated. It worked, because since then the night of October 31 has been designated as Halloween, where, good and bad, come out to visit.
The festival also generates some controversy. People with evil intentions use it to display their cruelty to other people. Some white people paint their faces black to caricature people of that hue – a reenactment of their immigrant forebears in the 19th Century who painted their faces black in the theatre to lampoon black Americans.
Everybody in America, except Native Americans like the Cherokees, Sioux, and Apaches, came from somewhere else. As people emigrate to this country, they bring their customs and traditions with them, which eventually become Americanised. Millions of Irish people fled Ireland for the United States in the 19th Century because of a devastating famine in their land. At least a million people perished during the Great Irish Famine caused by the failure of the potato crop and the policy of their British colonisers. The Irish brought their traditions with them, and one of these is Halloween. It has evolved over centuries and lost its sacred purpose. Back in Ireland, poor children and adults went from door to door begging for sweets and offering prayers for the soul of the departed who were in purgatory, if they were given treats. If not, they pulled tricks, which is why American children in the 21st Century wear hideous masks and frightful costumes to knock on doors and announce their presence with a piercing ‘trick-or-treat’. In my years of participating in this ritual, I have never witnessed a trick because any adult who opens the door is ready with bottomless bowls of candy and chocolate to appease the young revelers. An adult who doesn’t want to participate signals this by turning off the light in front of the house. Children know to avoid such houses.
Halloween Candy
Some adults, too, take this event seriously, decking their homes and yards with truly gory decorations. A former neighbour’s front porch was covered with Miss Havisham-like cobwebs, big black spiders, bats and ravens, all symbols of superstition in America. In the yard were severed human limbs or skulls and a coffin, over which any child who wanted candy had to navigate. The desire for candy was often far stronger that the fear of eerie laughter, that children did not hesitate to enter this house to collect candy from the skeletal inhabitants. Another neighbour had a steaming cauldron filled with body parts in a dimly-lit living room, with witches standing around, stirring and sending out laughter that chilled the bones. It was all theatre and Halloween fun, and the children seemed to love it. Most houses at this time of the year had large orange pumpkins hollowed out and carved with menacing human faces and candles placed in them to heighten the effect.
The festival also generates some controversy. People with evil intentions use it to display their cruelty to other people. Some white people paint their faces black to caricature people of that hue – a reenactment of their immigrant forebears in the 19th Century who painted their faces black in the theatre to lampoon black Americans. Just this week, a major media personality, Megyn Kelly, was forced to resign from NBC when she endorsed blackface. Recently, the police were called on someone who hanged a black effigy with a noose on a tree in his yard, its legs and arms tied. This, too, is a throwback to the horrific violence of lynching black people by white mobs, until the early part of the 20th Century. The noose is a symbol of great distress among black people and decent white people at any time.
Nature also plays its own tricks on us during this season. Before the leaves disappear from the trees in preparation for winter, the foliage turns into a kaleidoscope of spectacular colours, producing one of the beautiful sights on earth. To an undiscerning tropical eye, those colours represent a vigorous display of life…
My most memorable Halloween story happened when I stayed home one year to give out candy to the goblins. Our own goblins were out with their Dad to canvass for treats. For some reason, our street was momentarily quiet as the roving bands of children left for other neighbourhoods. I looked up and there was a man in a trench coat with a death mask walking alone, slowly coming through our fence to the front door. Hardly does anyone go out alone on Halloween night. It is a social event. I was terrified as he stepped on the porch. All I could do was offer him the bowl of candy, mute and trembling. He stood there for a few minutes, not uttering a word. Then, he laughed. To my relief, it was our friend and next-door neighbour dressed up as a serial killer, Hollywood movie style.
Costume manufacturers, candy and chocolate makers, sugar producers, corn farmers, and dentists must love Halloween because of the huge profits it generates for them. The ginormous quantities of candy and chocolate consumed contain sugar and high fructose corn syrup which necessitates dental services to fill tooth cavities. We had a rule in our house that our children were only allowed to eat their favourite five out of their candy haul, which was often large enough to start a small candy business. Till this day, our kids consider the five-candy rule a cruel and unusual punishment. To remove temptation out of everyone’s sight, I took the rest of the candy to my office and left it on the communal table as my own seasonal offering to the goddess of sweet tooth. Within a week, my colleagues and I had gotten to the bottom of the bowl.
Nature also plays its own tricks on us during this season. Before the leaves disappear from the trees in preparation for winter, the foliage turns into a kaleidoscope of spectacular colours, producing one of the beautiful sights on earth. To an undiscerning tropical eye, those colours represent a vigorous display of life, when in fact, they are the last hurray before the leaves fall off and die.
Bunmi Fatoye-Matory was educated at the Universities of Ife and Ibadan, and Harvard University. She lives with her family in Durham, North Carolina. She is a writer and culture advocate. Email: bunmimatory@yahoo.com
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