Elves and Fairies
Halloween
by Ælf
HORROR films have
given many people a dread of Halloween, as well as popularising outside North
America the activities that people in the United States associate with it.
Yet its most
familiar symbol, the grinning jack-o’-lantern (a carved-out pumpkin with a
candle inside) stands for good, not evil.
In the United
States, however, Halloween is a time when children are exposed to the dangers
of playing at witches and monsters
and the very real danger of being poisoned or shot while out trick-or-treating.
Halloween can
also be found celebrated in the Harry Potter stories, so this aspect will need
looking into as well.
The old
Celtic year-end festival of Samhain, which is the origin of much Halloween
revelry, was a time for much light – in the form of bonfires and flaming
torches and, when the celebrations were taken indoors, candles aplenty.
The bright flames were supposed to
welcome good spirits and prevent evil ones from coming near. In mediæval
England, candles would often be placed inside grinning or scowling
jack-o’-lanterns, which in those days were carved out of turnips.
In America,
where pumpkins are in season at this time of year, they came to take the place
of turnips as jack-o’-lanterns. When these often scowling faces are used to
frighten folk, it is well to remember their original meaning.
Another pagan
survival is that of dressing up. It was believed that ghosts and evil spirits
appeared as summer departed, to celebrate the arrival of longer nights, and
that to avoid detection one had to adopt a disguise in order to pass as a
member of the spirit world.
It is clear,
then, that the custom so prevalent in the US of dressing up as witches, ghosts
and other weird creatures at Halloween is not to be encouraged among
Christians.
However,
trick-or-treating – the custom of going door-to-door and asking for gifts of
food while dressed in these costumes – is a practice borrowed from All Souls
Day (2 November).
An important
part of mediæval Halloween festivities was the appearance as a guest at the
Halloween banquet of a person dressed up as a king – King Crispin or Crispian.
How St Crispin and his brother St Crispian (their day is 25 October) came to be
rolled up in one and crowned to boot is not clear.
But boots do
come into it, for these two saints are the patrons of bootmakers and cobblers.
“King Crispin” would customarily wear a medallion with a boot emblem, and
similar boot emblems would be worn in his honour by the other guests.
So much for
Halloween in general. But does it do harm when children read about it in the
Harry Potter books, or see it in the movies starring Daniel Radcliffe?
Well, since
the Potter stories are largely set at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and
Wizardry, and the celebration of Halloween takes place during the school term,
one might expect there to be a great deal of emphasis on its customs and
rituals.
But what do
we find? A small bit of dressing up in costume, to which no great importance is
attached, and a feast.
The feasts at
Hogwarts are all great celebrations, with appropriate decorations visible in
the Enchanted Ceiling of the Great Hall, and seasonal delicacies that suddenly
appear on the tables at the command of headmaster Albus Dumbledore.
But aside
from an extraordinary emphasis on pumpkins
– in the form of floating jack-o’-lanterns providing light for the feast, and
as pumpkin pie – there is little to associate Halloween as celebrated at
Hogwarts with the same season as portrayed in horror movies.
If the Harry
Potter books really were intended to be handbooks in “How to be a Witch”, they
would be a great disappointment – or, as an English schoolboy might put it:
“What a swiz!”
