Question: What does a fella with (still) no broadband access and limited time do at this time of the year?

Answer: Repost his Halloween observations from last year. Hoorah!

#1 - Halloween Games:

Though "bobbing for apples" is a pursuit commonly associated with the festival, in our house the usual activity was (as I recall) "Hanging Apple" or "Snap Apple", which went pretty much as follows:

Crab apples are suspended at the end of a long string from the ceiling and with hands ties behind their backs, youngsters chase the swinging apple with their open mouths and the first one to get a grip of it with their teeth is the winner.¹

In fact, according to the above source, the game is so prevalent hereabouts that, "in parts of counties Cork and Limerick , [Halloween] is known as snap apple night." I don't ever remember using that expression to describe the night, but the game is certainly indelibly impressed on my memory. After all, a large, hard, swinging apple can leave lumps, bruises, and black eyes that are hard to forget…

An interesting side-note on the importance of the apple in such games is suggested by the (not-especially-reliable) History Channel website:

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. 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.²

An alternative theory is offered by the good people of celticspirit.org:

At the heart of the Celtic Otherworld grows an apple tree whose fruit has magical properties. Old sagas tell of heroes crossing the western sea to find this wondrous country, known in Ireland as Emhain Abhlach, (Evan Avlach) and in Britain, Avalon. At Samhain, the apple harvest is in, and old hearthside games, such as apple-bobbing, called apple-dookin’ in Scotland, reflect the journey across water to obtain the magic apple.³

A more rewarding activity (at least in financial terms) was the somewhat disgusting practice of "diving for pennies". This basically followed the "bobbing apple" model, with 'pennies' replacing fruit as the objects one attempted to seize between one's teeth. Unlike apples, however, pennies are not particularly prone to 'bobbing', preferring (instead) to adopt a static position on the bottom of the basin.

Thus, capturing the pennies involved immersing one's head completely in water and hoping one could hold one's breath long enough to either emerge with a coin or two, or (at the very least) resurface alive and undrowned. An additional danger, of course, was the risk of hepatitis (or something similar) from the fetid and filthy water itself…but this was a risk we were happy to take in our pursuit of riches.

Now I think of it, perhaps this rather hazardous exercise was meant to be a sobering reminder of the dangers involved in over-zealously pursuing money, or simply a means of forcing young children to face up to their own mortality (appropriate enough for the night in question)!

#2 - Jack O'Lanterns:

My childhood impression of a North American Halloween was largely formed by seeing E.T. in the cinema, in 1982. The costumes were lavish, the 'Trick or Treating' was extensive, and (most importantly) there were pumpkin Jack O'Lanterns by the bucketload. This occasioned great envy in our house, for not only were we lacking 'pumpkins' (plural), we didn't even have 'pumpkin' (singular).

If one were to compile a list of "Top Ten Most Modest Vegetables" (and why not in these list-obsessed times?), one would struggle to look beyond the turnip when awarding the number one spot. Yet, it was this particularly un-sexy root that took pride of place in our family home when the 31st of October rolled round: a modest lantern, overshadowed (somewhat) by its North American cousin….

Little did we realise then that by honouring the much-maligned turnip, we were actually engaging in a 'purer' form of Halloween celebration than that practiced by those cute Spielbergian kids. To clarify, we must go back to the legend of "Stingy Jack":

People have been making jack o'lanterns at Halloween for centuries. The practice originated from an Irish myth about a man nicknamed "Stingy Jack." According to the story, Stingy Jack invited the Devil to have a drink with him. True to his name, Stingy Jack didn't want to pay for his drink, so he convinced the Devil to turn himself into a coin that Jack could use to buy their drinks. Once the Devil did so, Jack decided to keep the money and put it into his pocket next to a silver cross, which prevented the Devil from changing back into his original form. Jack eventually freed the Devil, under the condition that he would not bother Jack for one year and that, should Jack die, he would not claim his soul. The next year, Jack again tricked the Devil into climbing into a tree to pick a piece of fruit. While he was up in the tree, Jack carved a sign of the cross into the tree's bark so that the Devil could not come down until the Devil promised Jack not to bother him for ten more years.

Soon after, Jack died. As the legend goes, God would not allow such an unsavory figure into heaven. The Devil, upset by the trick Jack had played on him and keeping his word not to claim his soul, would not allow Jack into hell. He sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the Earth with ever since. The Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as 'Jack of the Lantern,' and then, simply 'Jack O'Lantern.'⁴

Intriguing, no? If the turnip was good enough for the Devil, then it certainly should have been good enough for my siblings and I. It proved perfectly adequate to generations of Halloween 'celebrators' from these islands, until they were confronted with a more impressive fruit on the other side of the Atlantic…

In Ireland and Scotland, people began to make their own versions of Jack's lanterns by carving scary faces into turnips or potatoes and placing them into windows or near doors to frighten away Stingy Jack and other wandering evil spirits. In England, large beets are used. Immigrants from these countries brought the jack o'lantern tradition with them when they came to the United States. They soon found that pumpkins, a fruit native to America, make perfect jack o'lanterns.⁵

So, in the spirit of a traditional Oíche Shamhna, I have returned once again to the bosom of the honest turnip. It (rather than the more ostentatious pumpkin) shall take its place in my window this very night, warding off malign spirits, and casting a cheery / eerie glow to boot.

#3 - Samhain:

Well Oíche Shamhna (the eve of Samhain) is now behind us, and, apart from the strange 'Jack O' Lantern incident' (see yesterday's comments), the night passed off without too much intrusion from ghosts, divils, and demons.

Thoughts now turn to the long, dreary, winter ahead…a time to light the fire and curl up around the Playstation. But anyway, on to Samhain itself…take it away, Wikipedia:

Samhain is the word for November in Irish; the Scottish Gaelic name Samhuinn is closely related. The same word was used for the first month of the ancient Celtic calendar, and in particular the first three nights of this month, the festival marking the beginning of the winter season. Elements of the festival are continued in the traditions of All Souls Day and Halloween.⁶

Those not ready to let go of Halloween just yet need not despair, for there are still opportunities for supernatural shenanigans: "Samhain was a significant time for divination, perhaps even more so than May or Midsummer’s Eve, because this was the chief of the three Spirit Nights."⁷

My personal favourite act of Samhain-related divination has to be the following, as it simply screams of something deeply ill-advised (at least according to conventional 'Horror Film' logic):

The Apple and the Mirror - Before the stroke of midnight, sit in front of a mirror in a room lit only by one candle or the moon. Go into the silence and ask a question. Cut the apple into nine pieces. With your back to the mirror, eat eight of the pieces, then throw the ninth over your left shoulder. Turn your head to look over the same shoulder, and you will see and in image or symbol in the mirror that will tell you your answer.

(When you look in the mirror, let your focus go "soft," and allow the patterns made by the moon or candlelight and shadows to suggest forms, symbols and other dreamlike images that speak to your intuition.)⁸

Talk about asking for trouble…if this doesn't suggest itself as the perfect opening for Samhain - The Movie I don't know what does. A group of teens, an apple, an act of divination gone horribly wrong…the thing practically writes itself!

If anyone's willing to have a crack at this foolhardy exercise then please post your findings here…assuming you haven't succumbed to a terror-induced coma…

Newsflash 31/10/06: The man from eircom is due to call at chez Fústar next week so (with the help of the pagan gods of Samhain) I'll be back in the warm embrace of internetia then.

1. Irish Halloween Folklore [back]
2. The History of Halloween [back]
3. Samhain [back]
4. History Of The Jack-O'Lantern [back]
5. Ibid. [back]
6. Samhain - Wikipedia [back]
7. Samhain - Celtic Spirit [back]
8. Ibid. [back]