The Origins of Halloween & La Dia de Los Meurtos

The word "Halloween," is a corruption of the name "All Hallow’s Eve."

Say "Hallows Eve" three times fast, and quicker than a black cat can cross your path you've said "Halloween".

"Hallow’s" means: holy, as in "Hallowed be thy name."

On the Catholic calendar November 1st is "All Hallow’s Day" (or "All Saints Day") a day to honor the souls of departed saints. Therefore the evening before, Oct. 31st was called All Hallow’s Eve. It’s a short linguistic hop from “Hallow’s Eve” to “Halloween.” As I’ve pointed out in previous blog entries many Christian Holy days were instituted to override existing Pagan Holy days, and that is the case here.

In Ireland in the 5th century, summer officially ended on October 31st. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New Year. In Irish folklore it was believed that the portal between this world and the next was left open for that one night. The disembodied spirits of all those who had died the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess. So on the night of October 31st, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes and dress up in ghoulish costumes and go wilding around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits.

An interesting aside…the reason people wore black at funerals was for very much the same reason. It was believed that when night fell the departed soul would roam around looking for a body to possess. If you wore black they couldn't see you in the dark. A variation of this is the concept of a wake. It was believed that evil souls would possess the body of a dead relative; so one family member or friend would sit by the coffin to ward off evil spirits. The trusted family member had to stay awake throughout the night and thus today we have "Wakes."

Some eagerly awaited the night of the dead in the hopes they could party on down with former family members. In parts of Ireland, giant burial mounds called “sidhe” were opened and lined with torches to help the dead find their way home. Favorite foods and drink were placed on the family table for the visiting deadhead. (Remember that when we talk about the Mexican Day of the Day below.)

Over time, Celtic Halloween folklore was assimilated into the story of man. It is believed that Irish monks roaming through Europe brought the festival of Samhain along with them. The Christian Church would eventually institute All Hallows Day to replace this decidedly Pagan celebration. The Irish custom of costumes and rowdy behavior (tricks and pranks) clung to the Christian Holy Day like foam on a pint of Guinness.

Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine brought the custom of Halloween to America in the 1840's. At that time, favorite Halloween pranks included tipping over outhouses and unhinging fence gates. This eventually became soaping windows, throwing eggs at houses, progressing on to shaving cream, silly string and the occasional arson if you lived in Detroit-Metro area.

The custom of trick-or-treating wasn't Irish.

It originated with a ninth-century European Christian custom called “Souling”. On November 2nd, All Souls Day, folks would walk around town begging for "soul cakes," (square pieces of bread with currants.) The more soul cakes the beggars collected in their goody bags, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives in purgatory. (For non-Christians, Purgatory was kind of like a Department of Motor Vehicles in the hereafter. You had to sit around waiting while folks on earth said prayers for you. After a sufficient number of prayers were accumulated, you got to pass "Go" and collect $200.)

The Jack-o'-lantern, however, does come from the Irish. The Irish love their stories and in this one a notorious drunkard and trickster named Jack, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. He then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the devil out on a limb. Jack cut a deal with Beelzebub, if he would never tempt him again, he'd let him down. When Jack died, God wouldn't let him into Heaven because of his evil ways and the Devil told him Hell had no vacancies (It was full of Advertising People). Instead, the Dark Prince gave Jack a single ember to light his way through the night. Jack put it inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it lit and roamed the land for eternity. The Irish carried illuminated turnips with designs of frightful faces carved on them to scare off the ghoulies. The Irish used turnips as their "Jack's lanterns". But when the immigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful and a hell of a lot easier to carve. And thus the Jack O' lantern pumpkin was born.

We Americans have not only added pumpkins to the collective myth but also candy corn as well as flashlights with Jack O' Lantern heads, and the horror movie "Halloween I, 2 and 3"

So to summarize, once again we've taken an old pagan myth and turned it into what in America has become a $5 billion a year industry.

This All Hallow's Eve as you scurry home in fear clutching your precious soul close to your shivering body, remember the old Scottish prayer:

From Ghosties and Ghoulies

And long leggety beasties,

And things that go bump in the night

Dear Lord preserve us

Happy Samhain everyone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Notice in your calendar that Nov. 2nd is listed as

“The Day of the Dead”

No, this is not Jerry Garcia’s Birthday.

Rather, La Dia de Los Meurtos is the Mexican Day of the Dead an ancient festival that predates the Spanish invasion. The original Aztec celebration, dedicated to children and the dead, can be traced to the festivities held during the Aztec month of Miccailhuitontli, The head deadhead at these festivities was the goddess Mictecacihuatl ("Lady of the Dead") In the Aztec calendar, this ritual fell near the end of July. The Spanish forced the Indians to covert to Christianity and moved the date of their celebration to coincide with the Christian holiday of All Hallows Eve (in Spanish: "Día de Todos Santos,") The result is that Mexicans now celebrate the day of the dead during the first two days of November, rather than at the beginning of summer. But the holiday remains a happy, joyous, festive celebration of the cycles of life and remembrance of ancestors---- as opposed to the Freddie Kruger blood, gore and ooze celebrations north of the border.

Basically families visit the graves of family members, clean up the place. decorate it with flowers, then spread out a blanket and party on down with the deceased member’s favorite food and drink. Families remember the departed by telling stories about them. They build Family altars in the home and decorate them with bright flowers.

Gifts of sugar skeletons are passed around. A Mexican child’s favorite this time of year is the "Bread of the Dead" (pan de muerto). A plastic skeleton is hidden in a loaf of bread, whoever bites into it is blessed with good luck.

The original Aztec holiday was all about celebrating life, not fearing death. So to me this Pagan holiday was much more civilized than its Christian replacement.

Of course, the irony is that Halloween was invented to smother a Celtic pagan holy day ---Samhain and then in an attempt to smother an Aztec pagan Holy day it was moved to coincide with Halloween.

The result being Mexicans celebrating on an Irish Holy Day.

So crack out the Guinness and the Coronas and

Vaya con dios –even if that dios is Mictecacihuatl

Dano

The Origins of Columbus Day

The Origins of Colon Day, ummm, Columbus Day.


Nowadays, Columbus Day is sort of the Italian-American Pride on Parade Day. Kind of a kiss me I'm Italian day.

Which is nice.  Questo è bello.

However, it conveniently omits the fact that even though he was born in Genoa, Cristoforo Colombo sailed for Spain, spoke and wrote in Spanish (not his native Ligurian dialect) lived as a Spaniard and died in the land of Ferdinand & Isabella. He is buried in Santo Domingo Cathedral and his headstone lists his Spanish name -- Cristóbal Colón. His wife was Philippa Moñiz , his mistress Beatriz Enriquez. His son Diego and his illegitimate son Fernando considered themselves Spaniards as well.

Before Columbus was adopted by the Italian-American community, he was adopted by the entire American community. Columbus worship reached a high here after our War of Independence ended in 1784 (and then once again in the 1890’s just after we’d killed off most of the folks that Chris had tagged “Indians”.)

After our wars with England (1776, 1812) we were looking for something non-English to hang our origins on. So Columbus was, dare I say it, discovered. The myth of a lone pioneer/navigator leaving the old world behind and discovering a new paradise far from Europe was a heck of a nice thing for Americans to identify with. So much so, that they named the area of their new Capital-- the District of Columbia.

America’s first corporate identity character (pre-Statue of Liberty) was a woman in a toga named Columbia (Columbia Pictures swiped her as a logo). King’s College in New York wanted to shed its Royal English name after the war and so went native by renaming itself --Columbia.

Columbus Avenue and Columbus Circle wouldn’t appear till years later when in the 1890’s we celebrated the 400th anniversary of the “discovery” of America. The big gig was at the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. (Devil in the White City and all that.)

One problem Americans had with Columbus was he was non-WASP. He was Catholic and sailed for Catholic Spain. You’ll notice that the Spanish history of the Americas got short shrift in your grade school textbooks. (The same is true of French Catholic history i.e. where did Terre Haute, Indiana and Des Moines, Iowa get their names? Never mind Le Detroit (le détroit du Lac Érié .. the strait of Lake Erie.)

Most Americans are surprised to learn that L.A. is way older than Chicago.

Los Angeles was founded in 1781. Its real name is El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de Los Angeles (try putting that on an Airport Destination tag) -- in Anglo-- the Village of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels. But you didn’t know that because they don’t cover Spanish history in the American narrative.

So in the early 1800’s those who couldn’t cotton the Columbus story of America’s creation began to spin the Plymouth Rock/Pilgrim fable as the story of the Protestant origins of America. The story told of a band of religious pioneers leaving the old world behind and discovering a new paradise far from Europe...

I’m sure by now you’ve realized that you were fed a bunch of bunkum in your youth, a lot of never-happened history. You now know there never was a Plymouth Rock, and that during Columbus’s time sailors really didn’t think the world was flat.

Columbus knew the world was round, he just made a major miscalculation about the size of the earth, thought it was much smaller than it actually was, and so thought a trip to the Indies would be a piece of cake. Which is why he thought he was in the Pacific Ocean and had landed on an island near India and called the natives: Indios… Indians.

It ‘s unclear if CC ever figured out he had discovered a continent— a new world.  His fourth and final voyage was to find the Strait of Malacca, a passageway that connects the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean. He thought he’d find it somewhere near present day Nicaragua.

Another explorer /navigator/banker Amerigo Vespucci would get credit for sailing along the coast all the way down to South Amerigo near the Falkland Islands and discover that this was in fact a big MO-FO continent, not some barrier island off India. The map of his exploits printed by a German mapmaker placed his name --Amerigo --on the spot of the map where this Novus Mundus was located  and that’s how we got our moniker. By the way,  Amerigo was Italian ---born in Florence. He doesn’t get much play in the Italian-American community. 

Weird aside: Vespucci was a WASP, the name Vespucci and the name of the Italian scooter “Vespa” both mean “wasp” in Italian.

The first recorded celebration of the discovery of the "New World" by Columbus was in 1792. It was held by the Colombian Order here in New York.

FAST FORWARD to October 12, 1866 when Italian New Yorkers organized a big celebration. On October 12, 1869 Italians in San Francisco celebrated and declared it “Columbus Day.”

So, Happy Columbus Day to those who celebrate it.

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day for those who celebrate that.

For those of you who only know the Nina, Pinta, Flat Earth story I’ve pasted below some excerpts from Howard Zinn’s classic: A People’s History of the United States, which might round out your view, so to speak.

Or if you are a contrarian you can always join the Flat Earth Society:  theflatearthsociety.org



















Dano
Vice Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

 








 

Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress

by Howard Zinn


Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

"They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want."

These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.

Columbus wrote:

"As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts."

The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold?

****

The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."

Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.

The chief source-and, on many matters the only source-of in formation about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty.

*****

In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length:

"Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives.... But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then.... The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians..."

Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and after a while refused to walk any distance. They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings."

Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards "thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades." Las Casas tells how "two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys."

The Indians' attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports. "they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could turn for help." He describes their work in the mines:

"... mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside....

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died. While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.

Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides . . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile ... was depopulated.... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write...."

When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...."

Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas-even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe?) is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure-there is no bloodshed-and Columbus Day is a celebration.