I repost this each October in the hope that the complexity of Halloween's origins and customs are more widely appreciated. Claims of a simple historical & mononational genealogy for this celebration are themselves examples of contemporary folklore/mythmaking. limerick1914.medium.com/customs-vary... - ThreadSky

liamhogan.bsky.social • 148 days ago

I repost this each October in the hope that the complexity of Halloween's origins and customs are more widely appreciated. Claims of a simple historical & mononational genealogy for this celebration are themselves examples of contemporary folklore/mythmaking. https://limerick1914.medium.com/customs-vary-wi-the-times-at-hallowe-en-6137752ed653

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darkandwondrous.bsky.social•135 days ago

📌

paulduggan.bsky.social•110 days ago

📌 agus grma Liam

priva.cat•148 days ago

@lisagrimm.bsky.social fyi, if you hadn't already seen it.

lisagrimm.bsky.social•148 days ago

Excellent! I hadn’t seen it yet this year, and wasn’t sure where it lived, so perfect timing.

ferles.bsky.social•148 days ago

Very interesting, but I am missing the "German spinal cord" that is referenced

maruhkati.bsky.social•123 days ago

Also, very little about Christmas as it is now celebrated dates before the 19th century, and basically none of it dates before the Early Modern period. That goes double for the stuff people think is ancient and pagan.

starsea.quest•148 days ago

📌

emptywheel.bsky.social•148 days ago

One of these days can you explain how Halloween became American-style commercialized here? It unsettles spouse (who left in the early 1990s) every year.

liamhogan.bsky.social•148 days ago

I think I lived through that change. It just reflects the growing Americanisation of Irish consumer society and mass media, and how a culture change followed.

liamhogan.bsky.social•148 days ago

Growing up in the 1980s, Halloween was a hybrid of trad games, bonfires and harvest fare (from parents/community) while the commercial/consumption side was increasingly American influenced & that has only accelerated since then.

siobhanmcelduff.bsky.social•148 days ago

I'm just sad that we don't do fortune telling via cabbage theft anymore.

catphrodite.bsky.social•135 days ago

📌

nomist.bsky.social•147 days ago

📌

thriftonaut.bsky.social•148 days ago

No mention of Hallowe’en 3!!!

liamhogan.bsky.social•148 days ago

It's the endless layers and loops of storytelling that make this festival fascinating to me. Some related myths are approx one thousand years old, products of politics and religion, not historical study, yet they have still resurfaced in modern media as representations of Samhain.

liamhogan.bsky.social•148 days ago

Which brings me neatly(!) to the 1982 horror film Halloween III: The Season of the Witch. In the closing act the villain (a 'druid') reveals his motivation for planning the murder of thousands of children by claiming that child and animal sacrifice was an integral part of the festival of Samhain.

liamhogan.bsky.social•148 days ago

In this soliloquy, delivered in a gloriously over-the-top manner by Dan O’Herlihy, #Halloween is equated with Samhain and then Samhain is associated with blood sacrifice which was apparently done “to control our environment.”

So where is this gruesome concept coming from?

liamhogan.bsky.social•148 days ago

I’ve obviously dealt with the false conflation of Halloween/Samhain in the blog above, but what about child sacrifice? Did the screenwriter just invent this or has such a tale a much older origin?

paulduane.bsky.social•148 days ago

Halloween 3 is very much a 'corrupt text' as Nigel Kneale wrote an original script, based on his own Manx origins & a somewhat anti-Irish bent I am told (the original script isn't available) which was heavily rewritten by the filmmakers, with Kneale refusing a script credit.

liamhogan.bsky.social•148 days ago

The root of this mythology is the Lebor na Nuachongbála (more recently known as the Book of Leinster) a 12th century medieval manuscript authored by Irish abbots. It includes dinnseanchas poems (lore of places), one of which covers Mag Slécht in Co. Cavan.

liamhogan.bsky.social•148 days ago

Translated by Edward Gwynn, it reads:

Link: https://celt.ucc.ie//published/T106500D/index.html

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