From: SL500000@brownvm.brown.edu (Robert Mathiesen)
Newsgroups: alt.pagan
Subject: Re: Halloween
Date: 27 Sep 92 09:14:30 GMT
Organization: Brown University - Providence, Rhode Island  USA
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Interesting set of questions about Hallowe'en ...  Let me give you one set of
answers, which won't be typical of most people on this bboard, however.  For
background, bear in mind that I'm 50, of a family that lived in California
(Bay area) since the late 1800's, but spent some years of my early childhood
in a small town in NY.  My mother's side, half English, half Pennsylvania
"Dutch" (German), has been interested in occult and magic at least as far
back as my great grandmother, if not further.  Great grandma was as "odd" as
they come, from a conventional perspective -- presided over a household of
three generations of women, with dead or absent husbands, was a gypsy-friend,
hung out with carneys, took opium and kept a human skull in her closet.  Al-
though white (with an ancestor on the Mayflower), she lived in the middle of
a black part of Oakland so as to be free from any pressure of a surrounding
community and do what she wanted.  She used Christian Science as a "cover"
religion, but probably would have admittted to pantheism if she trusted
you, and certainly to psychism.  My father's side was Danish, consisting
largely of con-artists and petty criminals (justified by them along the
lines of one does what one must to survive), went more respectable in my
father's generation (he was a mechanical engineer); they were of no
religion.  The family on both sides gloried in "difference." -- we were
brought up knowing we were different from every other family, and it was
OK to be different from other members of one's own family, too.  I have
become even more respectable, despite efforts to avoid it, for I work as
a professor here at Brown teaching things Medieval.  The part of the
Medieval world I work in mostly lies in the east, among the Russians,
Bulgarians and such people; and almost all of the surviving material
from there is heavily Christian.  So most of my research and
publications are on Biblical and liturgical texts, which is pretty
ironical, considering my background and own beliefs.  -- So keep this
all in mind when you read my answers to your Hallowe'en questions, from
one who shouldn't be viewed either as a typical member of the pagan
community or as having a Judeo-Christian heritage.

1) Meaning of Hallowe'en.  A celebration of the harvest, of the
generations that have gone before us, and of the importance of death,
which wipes the slate and clears the land for next year's growth.  A
time for looking into one's crystal ball, or putting out a skull, if you
have a spare (my brother, who is also a professor, has our family's).
The most important holiday of the year, and the only one which -- in my
day -- had kept its religious overtones free from commercialism.  We
would walk through one of the town graveyards on Hallowe'en night and
read the tombstones by moonlight.  A lovely, peaceful time.  It's
changed a lot now, much for the worse.  There was no keynote of "evil,"
as there now is in all the commercial hype surrounding it.  Costumes are
important, or at least masks, for by contrast they teach how one's
everyday self is also costumed and masked, so that the hallowe'en mask
can be an approach to reality.  Appropriate costumes are supernatural or
harvest ones: scarecrows, ghosts, corpses, cornshocks, skeletons.  No
vampires, werewolves or superheroes in my youth, let alone "Freddies."
Gack!  As you may guess, I am a hallowe'en "fan" -- the most important
holiday in my own year.

2) Places with Hallowe'en legends?  None in my youth.  There were
places where people had died, but these legends were not connected with
Hallowe'en.  In Berkeley there are several parks around great boulders
or cliffs, and the highest of these is Cragmont rock park.  Cragmont
rock has, at its base, a fissure now to small for even a child to enter;
but when I was young children told one another about a child who had
crawled in a long time ago when the ground wasn't so high and the
fissure was bigger, and gotten stuck and died there, and is still
inside, since no adult could have managed to extract the remains.  I
have no idea whether there's any historical truth to this legend.  It
wasn't told to scare younger children; just an interesting fact about
the park, so it might well be true.  Children have their own oral
traditions which can last for generations and which, sometimes, no adult
ever hears about.  Certainly no one would go into *that* park on
Hallowe'en -- even the bravest of us wouldn't have wanted to pick up the
echoes of that child's terror at such a death.

3) True Hallowe'en stories?  None with us -- the veil is always
thin, if one has the skill to look behind it; Hallowe'en, however, feels
like a time when those behind it might remember their past and take a
look at *us.*  That's usually welcome, and sort of nice.  We have ghost
stories, of course, but not particularly connected with Hallowe'en.
Remind me to tell you about the rocking chair sometime ...

4)  Hallowe'en "capital" of the world?  Odd way of wording the
question, but the Brits make less of it than we do here.  I would say the USA
qualifies.

5)  Hallowe'en activities?  See (1) above.  Also parties with
apples to bob for and with square dancing (that, too,has changed since I
was young, and taken on "cowboy" overtones which it did not have then)
and a prize for the "neatest" costume.

6) Hallowe'en sadist?  Not at all part of the holiday when I was
young, but connected with the rise of movie and TV costume themes within
my lifetime.  Originally just a device to sell costumes by stirring up
the cesspool that everyone has down at the bottom of his or her being.
Probably by now, after 35 years or so of this cesspool-stirring, a few
people have become real-life Hallowe'en sadists.  This is, of course, a
real perversion, and Hollywood is to blame, not Hallowe'en.

7) Condemnation of Hallowe'en by organized religion?  Not so much
when I was young as now.  This too is relatively recent, and has to do
with a kind of emerging Christian totalitarianism.  This movement is
simply a heresy in traditional Christian terms, but an increasingly
popular one.  It is definitely evil in a way that goes beyond
run-of-the-mill evil

8)  Local boogeymen or myths?  This is all Hollywood hype, as far
as I'm concerned -- Hallowe'en is basically a good, comforting, lovely
day (and night).

9) Anything really to fear at Hallowe'en?  When I was young, the
only thing to fear was oneself -- some found it genuinely scary to look
at themselves and their own future deaths.  With even a slight
propensity towards wisdom, however, one soon learns not to fear such
things too much.  Nowadays, apart from the stray loony who has bought
into the Hollywood myth of Hallowe'en, there really is something to
fear, namely, misunderstanding and occasionally violence from Christians
(falsely so called) who feel that everything and everybody has to
conform to their God's "law."  Again, this is a heresy in the eyes of
traditional Christianity, and evil.


Robert Mathiesen, Brown University, SL500000@BROWNVM