September 29, 2025 • 34 mins
In this spooky episode, we go over the haunted history of Halloween. Where does Halloween come from? How does a Celtic holiday morph in the Christian Middle Ages to become what we celebrate today? Where do trick-or-treating, Jack-O-Lanterns, and scary costumes come from? Fact is stranger than fiction.
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0:00 Exploring The Haunted History And Modern Traditions Of Halloween
6:15 Origins and Traditions of Halloween and Samhain
11:14 The Syncretic Origins and Christianization of Halloween
13:29 Origins and Evolution of Halloween Traditions and Symbols
18:58 The Evolution of Halloween from Ancient Rituals to Modern Traditions
21:38 The Evolution of Halloween from Mischief to Horror
28:50 Exploring Dia De Los Muertos and Its Cultural Significance
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:08):
Hello and welcome to another edition of Ideological.
I am your host Zach O Lantern Lee, and today we have a very
spooky fun session as we're going to be talking about the
haunted history of Halloween. So where did Halloween come
from? What does it mean?
It it it's a really weird holiday if you think about it.
(00:29):
Like if a kid comes up to you and says dad, why do we?
I mean, I guess a kid wouldn't just come up to you and say dad,
unless it was your kid. But a kid comes up to you and
says, why do we celebrate the 4th of July or Independence Day?
You can give them a reason. When someone comes up to you and
says, why do we dress up as weird things and light hollowed
out pumpkins and pass out candy?Aren't you supposed to not take
(00:53):
candy from strangers and all this kind of stuff?
It's it's a very strange holiday, but I love it.
It is one of my favorite holidays.
It's right up there, you know, with Christmas for me.
So we're going to be talking about the haunted history of
Halloween. Where did it come from?
What does it mean? What about the symbolism?
Is it Pagan? Is it Christian?
(01:13):
How's modern Halloween differentthan ancient Halloween?
All the fun things. So for this special spooky
Halloween episode, I will be drinking blood.
Just kidding, that's V8. Which is kind of gross, right?
If a company came to me and saidI want to make a drink that
tastes like celery and lettuce and tomato, I would say get out
(01:36):
of my office. That's going to be terrible.
But no, it's for Halloween. It's blood.
This episode's brought to you byblood, Blood.
Try to keep it in your body. OK, Halloween.
I always use a bunch of different sources whenever I'm
preparing for a lesson because Iam a researcher.
But I want to give a shout out sometimes when I use a source to
(01:58):
an inordinate degree. One source that I use is
published by Oxford. It is Halloween from Pagan
ritual to party night by Nicholas Rogers.
He's a history professor I thinkat York or was.
But I use that that resource more than more than the other.
So all right, are we ready Let'sjump into Halloween.
I'm excited about this one fun facts first of all, American
(02:19):
spend about $12 billion a year on Halloween.
That's wild. That's a lot of money for a
holiday that is just freaking weird.
They spend, listen to this, $700million on costumes for pets.
Pets are already like wearing a costume like they're animals.
(02:40):
Like people dress up like animals.
So pets, pets naturally are always in Halloween.
They're always dressed up as an animal.
And then we put other other, youknow, costumes and such on them.
One of the funniest ones I've seen is where they take a small
dog and they put like a big spider costume on him and then
he runs around and chases peopleand people freak out.
(03:04):
Oh my God. OK, it's happening.
Everybody stay calm. What's the procedure?
Go on. What's the procedure?
Calm down. It's really hilarious.
It is the second largest holidaywhen it comes to decorations
after Christmas. Christmas is king as far as cost
and decorations. Listen to this.
About 159 people in the US die from drunk drivers on Halloween
(03:29):
each year. So the, the drunk driving deaths
actually go up on Halloween because people are, you know,
drinking and partying and doing all the things.
I don't know if you've ever seenthat.
There's a really cool clip of a doctor.
He's an OBGYN that was at a Halloween party and he got a
call where he had to go help oneof his patients.
So he delivered a baby while fully dressed like the Joker
with Joker makeup and all of that.
(03:49):
It's really awesome. And so probably a scary thing
for the baby to see. Like that's your that's your
intro to the world, but also kind of hilarious where he's
like, we got to get this baby out now and I don't have time to
take off my Halloween clothes. Amazing.
You can Google that. Well, listen to this.
About 70 people ish are murderedeach year on Halloween, some of
them in murderous rituals. Now that's rare.
(04:09):
Let me be really clear. The the most people that get
murdered on Halloween just get murdered because they live in
Chicago or Detroit or Baltimore,one of these places that's
terrible to live and so but there are a few ritual killings
each year on Halloween. I actually have a buddy that
doesn't like Halloween because in his neighborhood growing up a
girl was like ritually murdered on Halloween, which is wild.
(04:32):
What candy is the most popular? In order, it is Reese's Good
choice, M&M's Snickers, Twix, and #5 candy corn, which is just
a fake bitch trash candy. I hate candy corn.
I think it's horrible that there's a quote that's
attributed to Voltaire that the Holy Roman Empire was neither
holy nor Roman nor an empire. I think candy corn is neither
(04:56):
candy nor corn. It's kind of like the phrase a
celebrity pastor. They're neither real celebrities
nor real pastors. But Brax makes about 7 billion
candy corns. I guess that's the plural for
individual candy corns each yearfor this fake, horrible,
horrible candy. OK, it's it's not great.
So all right, let's get into thehistory of Halloween.
(05:17):
By the way, whenever you study the history of something that's
as diverse as Halloween, legend kind of gets mixed in with the
facts. So I've tried to primarily have
facts and and leave out some of the legends, but I'm sure that
there's something in here that'sa little bit hyperbolic, but
here we go. Are you ready?
I'm going to break up the history of Halloween into really
three time periods, the Celtic time period, the Christian or
(05:39):
Catholic medieval time period, and then the modern period.
So let's start with Halloween. Where does it originally come
from? Well, a long time ago, if you
were a Celt, they believed that there was this transitional time
from summer warmth, light, you know, all the fun things where
(05:59):
you go to the pool. They didn't go to the pool and
all that kind of stuff to wintertime, which is like cold and
darkness and death. There's this transition period
where you go from summer and life and light to winter and
death and scary and these kind of things.
And, and so they believed that there was this overlapping of
the life of the, the world of the dead and the world of the
(06:22):
living. There was this kind of overlap,
this transitional point as you move from summer into winter.
And so the boundary became a little bit blurry between the
living and the dead, so that they so they believed and they
called this this celebration, bythe way, Sawin, OK, it is, it is
spelled Samhain S AM HAINS AM Hain, but it is pronounced Sawin
(06:45):
because Celtic language stuff isvery strange.
So in Sawin they believed that the the dead and the living that
that boundary became somewhat liquid and that spirits would
travel about. So you would do several things.
First of all, you want to ward off the bad spirits, but you
want to draw in the good spirits, meaning you're going to
(07:05):
wear a mask to scare off or confuse the bad spirits.
You're going to light a bonfire to scare off the evil spirits,
but you might not want to scare off the spirit of your sweet
grandmother Hildeberg. I don't know if that's a a
Celtic name. So you would put a candle in
your window to kind of draw her and maybe you would even offer
her food or water, right. You know, her spirit might be
(07:28):
thirsty after, after, you know, all the, the, the days of being
dead. In some parts of Ireland, they
actually still did this as far as setting out things like food
or water or candles in the window even as recent as a
century ago, which is wild. So you got Salwin and the
spirits are wandering about. We got a light.
Bonfires have masks. It's kind of a celebration, but
(07:50):
we're also kind of scared and wealso want to draw in the good
spirits. So that is where Halloween
really begins. Now, there's a lot of legend as
far as did they offer sacrificeson Salan, maybe did they offer
human sacrifices? The the evidence for that that
is scant, but that was part of Druid Celtic practice.
(08:13):
So listen to this. Strabo, Diodorus and Tacitus
mentioned the Druid practice of stabbing their victims and then
watching the ways that their body contorts as a way of
divining and telling the future.That's wild.
So, you know, augury and trying to tell the future and fortune
(08:35):
telling. All that is common in in Pagan
practice, but it was it. It's interesting that druids
would stab a victim and depending on how your body
contorted in your death throes would determine what's going to
happen, which is crazy. Julius Caesar mentions the Celts
creating men shaped Wicker statues and then putting people
inside them and then lighting the Wicker statues on fire.
(08:59):
Again. Wild stuff.
Now that's Druid Pagan practice.That's not necessarily linked to
Salan, but it's fascinating. In 43 AD, the Romans conquered
the Celts, and Salan was combined with two Roman
holidays. The first holiday, Feralia, was
a day to honor the dead. That makes sense because we're
(09:19):
doing Halloween stuff, so that makes sense.
There was another Roman holiday,though, that celebrated the
goddess Pomona. OK, who is Pomona?
She's the goddess of fruit and trees.
Some of the Greek gods get cool things to be the God over, you
know, lightning or the sky or something or whatever.
But, you know, some people just have to be over, like apples and
stuff. And so she's the goddess of
(09:39):
fruit and trees. Some people think that that's
where the idea of bobbing for apples came from, that water
boarding like activity where kids stick their head in the
water and try to bite an apple, and then another kid does like,
and everybody spits in the waterand it's gross and you chip a
tooth or whatever. Like something that that might
be linked to this festival celebrating Pomona.
Most people just think, though, it's a fun activity that people
(10:02):
did 'cause it's kind of funny and it's difficult and it's like
a little game. So it's most likely a little
game, but it might be linked to this other Roman festival the
Celts listen to this would carveturnips and put candles in them
to ward off spirits. What does that sound like?
Are you catching a hint of something?
We're going to visit later when we talk about pumpkins and Jack
(10:22):
O lanterns and such. Well, that started with Sow and
maybe you want to carve the faceof your grandmother and light
that to draw her in the house. Or maybe you just have a just
hollowed out turnip. They use turnips though,
originally and put candles in there, you know, as little
lanterns to kind of scare away the evil spirits.
Apparently the evil spirits don't like light, so a tiny
(10:43):
candle in a turnip will turn away the most vicious of the
evil spirits. OK, that's where it starts.
That's its Pagan origin. And then it gets combined in
Roman Catholic ideology. That's our word, ideological in
the in the Middle Ages. OK.
So something you need to know that's really interesting is in
a sense what we think of as Halloween today.
(11:06):
It has a bunch of different routes.
It doesn't doesn't just have oneroute.
Again, it's not like the 4th of July where we know what it means
and it just comes from one idea,etcetera.
It has several different things that are being merged.
There's a lot of syncretism whenit comes to this holiday, but it
is going to become a Christian holiday, so you should remember
that. So I think we all have like a
friend or a neighbor that's thatlike weirdly fundamentalist
(11:29):
Christian that like won't, doesn't want to celebrate
Halloween and doesn't drink and doesn't do all the things that
are awesome. You should tell that person
Halloween is a Christian holiday.
Maybe do your research before you be weird.
OK, let's talk about it. It's name Halloween.
Where do we get the name Halloween?
It is a derivative of All Hallows Eve, which is the
(11:50):
evening before All Hallows. So if something's hallowed, that
means it's made holy. So it's the evening before All
Saints Day, which was at a time in a time of celebration in the
Roman Catholic Church. So again, the the name Halloween
comes from All Hallows Eve, which is the evening before All
Hallows, All Holies basically, or All Saints Day.
(12:10):
So what? What is that?
Early Christians would celebratethe lives of martyrs on May
13th, which by the way, means that this was not a holiday that
was just taken over wholesale from paganism.
It it did already have kind of aan origin that was other than
that. But by the year 800, they were
celebrating not just martyrs, but All Saints, OK.
(12:31):
They were celebrating Christianswho had died in England and
Germany. This was celebrated on November
1st. So you've got November 1st,
which is All Saints Day, where you celebrate dead Christians
and they celebrate their lives and that they were faithful in
whatever it might be. And the night before that is
before All Saints Day, All Hallows or Sacred or Holy Eve,
(12:52):
hence the term Halloween. There were two holidays actually
in Roman Catholicism, one on November 1st and one on November
2nd. All Saints Day celebrated those
who were in heaven. And then All Souls Day, which
was the day after that, Novemberthe 2nd, celebrated those who
were in purgatory. So All Saints, you're
celebrating those in heaven. They've, they've made it All
(13:14):
Souls. The very next day you're you're
celebrating and praying for souls in purgatory.
In Roman Catholic theology, whenyou die, if you're a Christian,
you don't go directly to heaven.You still have all these sinis
all this yuck to burn off. Can't be in the presence of a
holy God when you got all this yuck.
And so you have to go to a placeto have that purged, hence the
name a purgatory. Purgatory.
(13:35):
And so you would remember those who had died and we're still in
purgatory and you would pray forthem and do certain things to
try to speed up that process to get them, you know, a get out of
jail early card for good behavior, which you could kind
of do on their behalf. Now to remember this time, how
would people celebrate it? Well, a few things.
First of all, they would dress up like angels, devils and
(13:58):
Saints. So you have these costumes
reminding us of death, remindingus of religious figures.
You still have today a lot of people dressing up as angels,
devils, Saints, but also Batman and different things like that.
They would go throughout the town on All Hallows Eve, what's
called Souling or asking for soul cakes.
It's kind of a, it's kind of a, a nascent form of, of trick or
(14:21):
treating. So you go to your neighbor's
door and you're like, hey, give me a soul cake and I will pray
for your dead relatives so that they can get out of purgatory a
little bit quicker. Again, this episode brought to
you by Blood Blood. Not just a gang, by the way,
There's a hilarious joke. There's a comedian I like.
(14:41):
His name's Anthony Jeselnik. He's a big fan of the show, by
the way, and he he has really dark humor and I'm a big dark
humor guy and he's got this great joke where he goes, I have
O negative blood. It's the best blood in the
entire world because I'm a universal donor.
I can give my blood to anyone else in the entire world who
also has AIDS. It's a great joke.
(15:01):
So blood, OK, so they're sewing,they're trick or treating.
They're asking for what are called soul cakes, which are
this, this type of like bread treat thing.
And what what they're saying is,hey, if you will give me
something to eat, I will pray for your dead relative.
And so trick or treating kind ofstarts as a way to pay off.
(15:23):
It's almost a bribe to get people out of purgatory.
Really, really fascinating. To ward off evil spirits, they
sometimes rang bells all night. Again, evil spirits apparently
don't like light or bells. In some places they even opened
caskets and would put flowers among the dead remains of their
loved ones. OK, kids would use bladders of
(15:43):
animals that were killed for thecelebration as like a sports
ball, like a play ball. Again, there's a there's a scene
from what is it, Parks and Rec where Ron Swanson wants to kill
a pig in a public park and he's like children, you can take the
bladder and blow it up and use it as a children's play ball.
That's kind of what they did. So you got these fun things and
activities going on. Now listen to this.
(16:04):
Where do Jack O lanterns and such come from?
We've already saw a scene that in we already saw that in Sawin
Samhain this this holiday. It's not pronounced Samhain.
It's just how it's spelled that people would hollow out turnips
and put candles in there to scare off evil spirits.
Well, at this time, as kids weregoing door to door, they would
hollow out turnips and put a candle in there.
(16:26):
But here's what it represented. It represented souls that were
stuck or imprisoned in purgatory.
So they go throughout the town with these little lanterns.
Again, turnips originally with candles in there to represent
souls in purgatory that needed to be let out.
Give me a soul cake. Here's even a representation of
your loved one's soul in purgatory being imprisoned when
you got to get it out of there. So this is where the idea of
(16:49):
Jack O lanterns come from. OK, Why did it move to pumpkins?
Well, in the New World, pumpkinswere more plentiful and it was
easier to carve a pumpkin than it was a turnip, which is a lot
smaller. And so pumpkins ended up
replacing turnips as these things you would put candles in
on Halloween. Now, what about the idea of a
(17:10):
Jack O Lantern? So all of that, you've got
salwin, you've got turnips, you've got purgatory, you've got
candles inside of things. We start using pumpkins.
They're bigger. You know, it's very pilgrimy to
use a pumpkin, although the pilgrims have totally been
against Halloween. Protestants were against
Halloween for the longest time. It was primarily a Catholic
holiday. What happens to bring about the
(17:30):
idea of a Jack O Lantern? Well there was this Irish legend
of a guy, a night watchman if you will, and his name was
Stingy Jack. Now every time I read that I
could not help but think of simple Jack from Tropic Thunder.
OK, but Stingy Jack is a different guy supposedly.
The legend goes, and this is I guess just a scary story you
would tell kids. Stingy Jack had tricked the
(17:51):
devil and so as a curse he couldn't go to heaven because he
was bad, but he couldn't go to hell because the devil didn't
want him either. So he was cursed to roam about
the world forever and he would carry and he was given actually
a a coal all right, the to put inside of a hollowed out turnip.
And he was like this scary watchman that would go with this
(18:12):
coal inside of a turnip throughout the land 'cause he
couldn't go to heaven or hell scaring kids as this night
watchman. And it was old stingy slash
simple Jack. And that's where you get the
idea of a Jack O Lantern. So all of that get gets mixed
together and that is a Jack O Lantern.
There you go. Candles were thought to ward off
witches in some places and were carried about the hills the hour
(18:33):
before midnight called the witching hour.
So if you lit a candle and it stayed lit, then you'd be
protected from witches for the following year, which is
convenient. Like, there's so many things
going on in life. There's, you know, the economy
and there's political division and there's like, you know what?
We got a pair of bills and now we got to worry about witches.
It's just what to quote Forrest Gump, it's just one less thing
(18:54):
to worry about now that you you know that you're not going to be
attacked by the witches. This also got combined with a
celebration on November the 5th called Guy.
Well, it was it was actually called well, Guy Fawkes Night
is, is really what the the common parlance was Guy Fawkes
Night. So brief history.
Have you ever seen like V for Vendetta or anytime somebody
(19:17):
hacked something online, they wear that mask of that guy who
looks kind of French. That guy's name is Guy Fawkes.
FAWKS, sometimes spelled ES, depending on British and
English. And what what time it is Fawkes
or FAWKS. Guy Fawkes did not like
Protestantism. And so there was a Gunpowder
(19:37):
Plot where he tried to blow up Parliament, but it failed.
So Guy Fawkes Night was a time to celebrate the fact that this
Catholic guy failed to blow up aProtestant Parliament.
Everyone doesn't realize that like people will wear that mask
and they think they're being allrebellious.
That just means you like, love Catholicism, but it failed.
And so people would celebrate that it failed because they hate
(19:57):
Guy Fawkes because he was tryingto blow up their leaders.
And, and so they would like bonfires, they would shoot off
fireworks and they would make effigies like these
representations of Guy Fawkes and burn them in the streets.
So that got added into the Halloween shenanigans as well.
And there was also something that happened a lot in the
Middle age Middle Ages, especially in places like
(20:18):
Ireland, Scotland, some in England.
People would try to figure out who they were going to marry by
trying to tell the future, by divining the future, OK, They
would do certain things, look atcertain things in the fire.
You know it. It was a kind of a form of
casting lots to see who your beloved would be.
OK. So that was a a popular thing to
do as well. So you do have some kind of
(20:39):
witchy divination stuff going oneven in Catholic Europe.
OK, That's two of the three periods.
This is like a hockey game. We are coming into the last one
here. So Celtic period, Salon
Christian period, mixed with these other things.
Now we get into the modern period.
Let's talk about the modern period of Halloween.
(20:59):
But first let me quench my vampire thirst.
Of course, drinking V8 doesn't ever quench your thirst.
It's salty. It just makes you thirstier.
OK, the modern period in early America, instead of Snickers and
such, they didn't have that yet.What would they pass out on this
day? They would pass out cakes,
(21:21):
apples, nuts and money. That's great.
Gothic fiction led to the rise of cats, magic and witchcraft
being associated with Halloween today.
Cats were not originally associated with that, but today
we think of bats and Black Cats and, you know, a little eye of
Newt and kind of these witchy things.
Listen to this. Let's talk a little bit about
the genre of horror, which is popular in movies and novels,
(21:44):
etcetera, that there's an interesting thing I want to
point out as a, as a history of ideas, philosophy guy that I
think is fascinating. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was
transformational regarding the horror genre because things
listened to this are scarier thecloser they are to us.
What do I mean by that? Here's what I mean.
Before Frankenstein, a lot of the stories, and there are some
(22:06):
other ones. It's not just Frankenstein
there. There's some other stories
where, you know, kind of humans are the bad guy, but a lot of
stories when it came to the genre of horror were about
things outside of humanity, right?
So we think of goblins, ghosts, ghouls, witches.
They're things that are other. The reason Frankenstein was so
interesting. And by the way, Frankenstein's
(22:27):
the the scientist, the monster is you.
It's always been you. It's Frankenstein's monster,
Frankenstein's the scientist. The reason Frankenstein was so
shocking because if you read it today, it's not scary from a
modern perspective. We've got way scarier movies.
But it was shocking because you have this thing made-up of human
parts, so it's a little bit morelike a human, which is scary.
(22:49):
OK, So the closer something is, the more it is like us, the
scarier it is. What do you get after things
like Frankenstein? Well, you have the things you
have today, Psycho or Halloween,right?
Where you have a human who's crazy, well, that's even
scarier. I'm not expecting to run into a
goblin, but humans actually do kill people.
That is scarier because it's even more like us.
And then you get things like Saw, where you have innocent
(23:11):
people who are having to kill others as a game, and it just
gets more and more twisted the closer it gets to you.
I find that to be fascinating. So you have those things like
Psycho and Halloween with Michael Myers, right?
The guy who's Austin Powers. We all know that in the 1920s
and 1930s, trick or treat was actually a threat.
So it's a night where kids are doing mischief.
(23:31):
They're up to some no goodery and some tomfoolery and some
shenanigans and all the fun words that mean you're getting
into trouble. And trick or treat originally
was, hey, give me a treat so I don't do some shenanigans
against you. Maybe I try to scare you.
Or, you know, today people like egg houses and throw toilet
paper, whatever. They used to just do random crap
(23:53):
like they would unhook train cars and they would like flip
stuff over and just tear down your fence.
They were just kind of destructive.
So trick or treat originally wasa threat.
Give me a treat or I'm going to harm you or harm something that
you have or own. In 1938, this is very famous.
There was a radio broadcast based on HG Wells War of the
(24:13):
Worlds that was adapted to saying that aliens that we were
undergoing an alien invasion in New Jersey on the way to New
York. Many people, this is
fascinating, mistook the story for an actual broadcast and it
led to widespread panic across the US.
So they're just doing this fun thing close to Halloween and
they're they're, you know, adapting War of the Worlds,
(24:36):
which is this famous novel. But people tune in late and
don't realize that it is actually just a for fun kind of
scary story. They think they're actually
being invaded by aliens and there is mass panic across the
country. And then Orson Welles, the guy
that was producing it, got like death threats and stuff the next
day. So it was wild.
Let's talk about safety when it comes to candy.
(24:59):
I think we've all heard that people will put, you know, razor
blades in apples or people will put poison in kids candies.
What are the facts behind that? Well, I'll summarize it for you
and then I'll tell you some interesting stories.
There have been sometimes where somebody has poisoned a kids
candy or put crushed up glass orrazor blades or something like
(25:19):
that in candy. That has happened.
That is extremely rare. So yes, check your kids candy,
especially if they're little kids and can't check it
themselves. But the fear of this is super
overblown. Let me tell you the some famous
stories and and specifically onefamous story related to this in
the 60s and the 70s. Again, kind of the fault line of
American history was the 60s. There were several reports of
(25:41):
people putting bad things in kids candy and it almost led to
the end of trick or treat. It's horrible.
You can't lose trick or treat. The first case was a dentist in
California, California who gave laxatives to 16 trick or
treaters, which is hilarious. OK, less hilarious.
(26:04):
Listen to this one. This guy's a bastard.
In 1974, a dad named Ronald Clark O'Brien laced his son's
Pixie sticks with cyanide to collect life insurance money.
OK, which is really sad. What a terrible, terrible guy.
This led to the idea of, you know, candy you get trick or
(26:24):
treating, possibly being poisoned, although that is
overblown. Halloween originally was more
about chaos. We talked about these different
elements and there's All Souls and like, it's kind of a raucous
night, Guy Fawkes Night, all that stuff.
But in the 1900s it became scarier due to cinema, due to
new novels, due to haunted houses and the like.
(26:45):
Especially after the 1970s, you saw a rise in violent slasher
style Halloween movies. So Halloween going to Hollywood
is something that that that kindof made it more about fear and
scary. So you get originally it's a
night of chaos to be raucous, and now it's more like scary and
demony and fear and witches and,you know, vampires and monsters
(27:08):
and that kind of stuff. One fascinating thing.
So again, if you haven't heard my history of sex lecture, you
should do it. Don't listen to it in front of
your kids. It's very X-rated.
But there is something interesting with Halloween.
And this is again, kind of the the intellectual history thing
behind it. Violence in sex.
Violence and sex often go together, so sex in nature, like
(27:31):
if a a lion is trying to mate with a female lion, it is very
violent. Sex is inherently an aggressive
act. For whatever reason, there's
something in humanity where sex and violence are often linked.
This is why so many people are into things like BDSM.
You even have this in Greek mythology.
(27:51):
So if you think of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and like
sexy stuff, she cheats on her husband.
With whom Aries, the God of War,again, the violence and the
sexuality go together. I just mentioned that because
it's interesting because you seethat in Halloween you'll have
like a woman who's beautiful, who's showing a lot of skin, but
she also is a witch and has her face covered in blood there.
(28:13):
You'll see this in horror movies, right?
Right before the killer stabs the woman, you know, she's
always like naked, taking a shower.
And so there is something interesting there with, with how
violence and sex go together. Maybe some brave doctoral
candidate can make that their thesis if they're in the UK or
dissertation if they're in America.
OK, That is the history of Halloween.
(28:35):
Fascinating. We're not done yet, though.
We have to get into Halloween South of the border.
All right, El dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.
Maybe you've heard of this, maybe you haven't.
Pay attention because it is alsofascinating.
Dia de Los Huertos, the Day of the Dead is sometimes called,
and this is not exactly correct,but it's a helpful analogy for
(28:58):
Americans or Europeans. Mexican Halloween.
By the way, there is a hilariousclip from the show Community,
which is a great show, where they're in Spanish class, and
the professor of that Spanish class is a guy named Senior
Chang. So he's this Asian guy, and he
conned his way into being a Spanish professor, all from
phrases that he learned on Sesame Street.
(29:19):
So he doesn't actually know Spanish well.
But they're all taking a Spanishclass, and it's Dia de Los
Muertos. And Annie gets up and she's
like, this is also called Mexican Halloween.
And he interrupts her. And he goes, I'm sorry.
That's very offensive to everyone who knows Mexican
Halloween as the sexual position.
It's it's a great line. And then the kids in the class
are looking around and Troy's like, yeah, like, I know what
(29:40):
that is. Yeah.
We we've all done Mexican Halloween, Dia de Los Muertos.
It's not actually Mexican Halloween.
It's got different roots. It's celebrated primarily in
Mexico, so it's not just a Spanish speaking thing.
It is more isolated, specifically to Mexico, but it's
also practiced and celebrated inthe Southwestern United States
and in a few Latin American countries.
It's typically between November 1st and November 2nd again.
(30:03):
So like right after Halloween. Where does it come from again?
In the same way that Salwin was blended with Catholic and
Christian elements, the same thing is true of Dia de Los
Muertos. The natives in Central and South
America were very into death, right?
Like a lot of them would do human sacrifice daily, RIP out
people's hearts, cut off their heads.
(30:25):
They would create these lines ofskulls.
They were very comfortable with death.
They created a lot of human rights violations.
The colonization that happened was bad, but what they were
doing was bad. So, you know, pick your poison.
So there was already some indigenous beliefs when it comes
to death. They very much believed that the
land of the dead and the land ofthe living, if you will, had a
(30:47):
very thin border. And so when the conquistadors
came in and brought Roman Catholicism, that got blended
again with All Saints, All Soulsand some Catholic practices.
What is Dia de Los Muertos? It's primarily a community and
family event. So what they do is yes, they
party, yes, they have good food,yes, they have good drink, yes,
they dance, yes, there's a lot of music, all that's fun.
(31:10):
Yes, they paint their faces likeskeletons and this kind of
stuff. It's it's it's actually really
cool holiday. But the, the it's not just about
scaring people and and getting candy and that kind of stuff.
Kind of like in America, what they do is they set up altars
ofrendas. Forgive me if my, my, my Spanish
is bad. I, I know other languages, but
my Spanish is a little, little Mal.
(31:32):
They set up altars to dead family members called ofrendas.
And what they'll do is they'll, they'll take Marigold flowers,
which are bright so that they can find their way.
You know, the spirits of their ancestors can find their way.
They'll have what's called breadof the dead.
They'll have sugar skulls, whichare these little treats, these
little candies, candles, pictures, and you might have
things that that relative that you lost really enjoyed.
(31:56):
So if they were a a Carpenter, maybe you have a hammer up on
this altar or you know, if they really loved music, maybe you
have a guitar or something like this.
A, a great if you're unfamiliar with Dia de Los Huertos, this is
not a historical source, but it is a fun, a fun movie that that
actually heightened people's awareness of this holiday is the
movie Coco from Disney where they you, you kind of get to see
(32:18):
this altar, this ofrenda, what they put there, what they, you
know, it's mainly about remembering and celebrating.
It's not a sad or scary holiday.It's primarily about remembering
the lives of those that you've lost.
But but many people do believe that their dead ancestors visit
them on that night. They come and check out the
(32:38):
altar and they're, they're kind of among us, you know, the, our,
our dead grandma and uncle and these kind of things.
They are among us on that day orthose two days.
And that is Dia de Los Muertos, the skeleton pictures that are
very common and the way they do their makeup and that kind of
stuff was originally taken from an etching in 1913 by a guy.
He's famous in Mexican culture. His name is Jose Posada, and
(33:01):
Posada had created these pictures and these etchings with
skeletons dancing and making it joyful and that caught on with
Dia de Los Muertos. That is, that is the
fascinating, I think fascinatinghaunted history of Halloween,
where it comes from, why we do the things that we do.
I love Halloween. I hope that you have a fantastic
(33:22):
Halloween drop comments like subscribe, read, post, smash
that like button. I hate when podcast people or
social media people are like, oh, go ahead and smash that like
button. You'll get 10 years of good
luck. And you know, but seriously, you
need to subscribe and share withyour friends to make me famous.
I have big things to do. So I'm wearing this black shirt
for Halloween in honor of that this year.
(33:43):
So thanks for joining us Halloween slash dia de Los
Muertos slash sawin, whatever you celebrate.
Thanks for joining us on Ideological and we will see you
next time.
Hello and welcome to another edition of Ideological.
I am your host Zach O Lantern Lee, and today we have a very
spooky fun session as we're going to be talking about the
haunted history of Halloween. So where did Halloween come
from? What does it mean?
It it it's a really weird holiday if you think about it.
(00:29):
Like if a kid comes up to you and says dad, why do we?
I mean, I guess a kid wouldn't just come up to you and say dad,
unless it was your kid. But a kid comes up to you and
says, why do we celebrate the 4th of July or Independence Day?
You can give them a reason. When someone comes up to you and
says, why do we dress up as weird things and light hollowed
out pumpkins and pass out candy?Aren't you supposed to not take
(00:53):
candy from strangers and all this kind of stuff?
It's it's a very strange holiday, but I love it.
It is one of my favorite holidays.
It's right up there, you know, with Christmas for me.
So we're going to be talking about the haunted history of
Halloween. Where did it come from?
What does it mean? What about the symbolism?
Is it Pagan? Is it Christian?
(01:13):
How's modern Halloween differentthan ancient Halloween?
All the fun things. So for this special spooky
Halloween episode, I will be drinking blood.
Just kidding, that's V8. Which is kind of gross, right?
If a company came to me and saidI want to make a drink that
tastes like celery and lettuce and tomato, I would say get out
(01:36):
of my office. That's going to be terrible.
But no, it's for Halloween. It's blood.
This episode's brought to you byblood, Blood.
Try to keep it in your body. OK, Halloween.
I always use a bunch of different sources whenever I'm
preparing for a lesson because Iam a researcher.
But I want to give a shout out sometimes when I use a source to
(01:58):
an inordinate degree. One source that I use is
published by Oxford. It is Halloween from Pagan
ritual to party night by Nicholas Rogers.
He's a history professor I thinkat York or was.
But I use that that resource more than more than the other.
So all right, are we ready Let'sjump into Halloween.
I'm excited about this one fun facts first of all, American
(02:19):
spend about $12 billion a year on Halloween.
That's wild. That's a lot of money for a
holiday that is just freaking weird.
They spend, listen to this, $700million on costumes for pets.
Pets are already like wearing a costume like they're animals.
(02:40):
Like people dress up like animals.
So pets, pets naturally are always in Halloween.
They're always dressed up as an animal.
And then we put other other, youknow, costumes and such on them.
One of the funniest ones I've seen is where they take a small
dog and they put like a big spider costume on him and then
he runs around and chases peopleand people freak out.
(03:04):
Oh my God. OK, it's happening.
Everybody stay calm. What's the procedure?
Go on. What's the procedure?
Calm down. It's really hilarious.
It is the second largest holidaywhen it comes to decorations
after Christmas. Christmas is king as far as cost
and decorations. Listen to this.
About 159 people in the US die from drunk drivers on Halloween
(03:29):
each year. So the, the drunk driving deaths
actually go up on Halloween because people are, you know,
drinking and partying and doing all the things.
I don't know if you've ever seenthat.
There's a really cool clip of a doctor.
He's an OBGYN that was at a Halloween party and he got a
call where he had to go help oneof his patients.
So he delivered a baby while fully dressed like the Joker
with Joker makeup and all of that.
(03:49):
It's really awesome. And so probably a scary thing
for the baby to see. Like that's your that's your
intro to the world, but also kind of hilarious where he's
like, we got to get this baby out now and I don't have time to
take off my Halloween clothes. Amazing.
You can Google that. Well, listen to this.
About 70 people ish are murderedeach year on Halloween, some of
them in murderous rituals. Now that's rare.
(04:09):
Let me be really clear. The the most people that get
murdered on Halloween just get murdered because they live in
Chicago or Detroit or Baltimore,one of these places that's
terrible to live and so but there are a few ritual killings
each year on Halloween. I actually have a buddy that
doesn't like Halloween because in his neighborhood growing up a
girl was like ritually murdered on Halloween, which is wild.
(04:32):
What candy is the most popular? In order, it is Reese's Good
choice, M&M's Snickers, Twix, and #5 candy corn, which is just
a fake bitch trash candy. I hate candy corn.
I think it's horrible that there's a quote that's
attributed to Voltaire that the Holy Roman Empire was neither
holy nor Roman nor an empire. I think candy corn is neither
(04:56):
candy nor corn. It's kind of like the phrase a
celebrity pastor. They're neither real celebrities
nor real pastors. But Brax makes about 7 billion
candy corns. I guess that's the plural for
individual candy corns each yearfor this fake, horrible,
horrible candy. OK, it's it's not great.
So all right, let's get into thehistory of Halloween.
(05:17):
By the way, whenever you study the history of something that's
as diverse as Halloween, legend kind of gets mixed in with the
facts. So I've tried to primarily have
facts and and leave out some of the legends, but I'm sure that
there's something in here that'sa little bit hyperbolic, but
here we go. Are you ready?
I'm going to break up the history of Halloween into really
three time periods, the Celtic time period, the Christian or
(05:39):
Catholic medieval time period, and then the modern period.
So let's start with Halloween. Where does it originally come
from? Well, a long time ago, if you
were a Celt, they believed that there was this transitional time
from summer warmth, light, you know, all the fun things where
(05:59):
you go to the pool. They didn't go to the pool and
all that kind of stuff to wintertime, which is like cold and
darkness and death. There's this transition period
where you go from summer and life and light to winter and
death and scary and these kind of things.
And, and so they believed that there was this overlapping of
the life of the, the world of the dead and the world of the
(06:22):
living. There was this kind of overlap,
this transitional point as you move from summer into winter.
And so the boundary became a little bit blurry between the
living and the dead, so that they so they believed and they
called this this celebration, bythe way, Sawin, OK, it is, it is
spelled Samhain S AM HAINS AM Hain, but it is pronounced Sawin
(06:45):
because Celtic language stuff isvery strange.
So in Sawin they believed that the the dead and the living that
that boundary became somewhat liquid and that spirits would
travel about. So you would do several things.
First of all, you want to ward off the bad spirits, but you
want to draw in the good spirits, meaning you're going to
(07:05):
wear a mask to scare off or confuse the bad spirits.
You're going to light a bonfire to scare off the evil spirits,
but you might not want to scare off the spirit of your sweet
grandmother Hildeberg. I don't know if that's a a
Celtic name. So you would put a candle in
your window to kind of draw her and maybe you would even offer
her food or water, right. You know, her spirit might be
(07:28):
thirsty after, after, you know, all the, the, the days of being
dead. In some parts of Ireland, they
actually still did this as far as setting out things like food
or water or candles in the window even as recent as a
century ago, which is wild. So you got Salwin and the
spirits are wandering about. We got a light.
Bonfires have masks. It's kind of a celebration, but
(07:50):
we're also kind of scared and wealso want to draw in the good
spirits. So that is where Halloween
really begins. Now, there's a lot of legend as
far as did they offer sacrificeson Salan, maybe did they offer
human sacrifices? The the evidence for that that
is scant, but that was part of Druid Celtic practice.
(08:13):
So listen to this. Strabo, Diodorus and Tacitus
mentioned the Druid practice of stabbing their victims and then
watching the ways that their body contorts as a way of
divining and telling the future.That's wild.
So, you know, augury and trying to tell the future and fortune
(08:35):
telling. All that is common in in Pagan
practice, but it was it. It's interesting that druids
would stab a victim and depending on how your body
contorted in your death throes would determine what's going to
happen, which is crazy. Julius Caesar mentions the Celts
creating men shaped Wicker statues and then putting people
inside them and then lighting the Wicker statues on fire.
(08:59):
Again. Wild stuff.
Now that's Druid Pagan practice.That's not necessarily linked to
Salan, but it's fascinating. In 43 AD, the Romans conquered
the Celts, and Salan was combined with two Roman
holidays. The first holiday, Feralia, was
a day to honor the dead. That makes sense because we're
(09:19):
doing Halloween stuff, so that makes sense.
There was another Roman holiday,though, that celebrated the
goddess Pomona. OK, who is Pomona?
She's the goddess of fruit and trees.
Some of the Greek gods get cool things to be the God over, you
know, lightning or the sky or something or whatever.
But, you know, some people just have to be over, like apples and
stuff. And so she's the goddess of
(09:39):
fruit and trees. Some people think that that's
where the idea of bobbing for apples came from, that water
boarding like activity where kids stick their head in the
water and try to bite an apple, and then another kid does like,
and everybody spits in the waterand it's gross and you chip a
tooth or whatever. Like something that that might
be linked to this festival celebrating Pomona.
Most people just think, though, it's a fun activity that people
(10:02):
did 'cause it's kind of funny and it's difficult and it's like
a little game. So it's most likely a little
game, but it might be linked to this other Roman festival the
Celts listen to this would carveturnips and put candles in them
to ward off spirits. What does that sound like?
Are you catching a hint of something?
We're going to visit later when we talk about pumpkins and Jack
(10:22):
O lanterns and such. Well, that started with Sow and
maybe you want to carve the faceof your grandmother and light
that to draw her in the house. Or maybe you just have a just
hollowed out turnip. They use turnips though,
originally and put candles in there, you know, as little
lanterns to kind of scare away the evil spirits.
Apparently the evil spirits don't like light, so a tiny
(10:43):
candle in a turnip will turn away the most vicious of the
evil spirits. OK, that's where it starts.
That's its Pagan origin. And then it gets combined in
Roman Catholic ideology. That's our word, ideological in
the in the Middle Ages. OK.
So something you need to know that's really interesting is in
a sense what we think of as Halloween today.
(11:06):
It has a bunch of different routes.
It doesn't doesn't just have oneroute.
Again, it's not like the 4th of July where we know what it means
and it just comes from one idea,etcetera.
It has several different things that are being merged.
There's a lot of syncretism whenit comes to this holiday, but it
is going to become a Christian holiday, so you should remember
that. So I think we all have like a
friend or a neighbor that's thatlike weirdly fundamentalist
(11:29):
Christian that like won't, doesn't want to celebrate
Halloween and doesn't drink and doesn't do all the things that
are awesome. You should tell that person
Halloween is a Christian holiday.
Maybe do your research before you be weird.
OK, let's talk about it. It's name Halloween.
Where do we get the name Halloween?
It is a derivative of All Hallows Eve, which is the
(11:50):
evening before All Hallows. So if something's hallowed, that
means it's made holy. So it's the evening before All
Saints Day, which was at a time in a time of celebration in the
Roman Catholic Church. So again, the the name Halloween
comes from All Hallows Eve, which is the evening before All
Hallows, All Holies basically, or All Saints Day.
(12:10):
So what? What is that?
Early Christians would celebratethe lives of martyrs on May
13th, which by the way, means that this was not a holiday that
was just taken over wholesale from paganism.
It it did already have kind of aan origin that was other than
that. But by the year 800, they were
celebrating not just martyrs, but All Saints, OK.
(12:31):
They were celebrating Christianswho had died in England and
Germany. This was celebrated on November
1st. So you've got November 1st,
which is All Saints Day, where you celebrate dead Christians
and they celebrate their lives and that they were faithful in
whatever it might be. And the night before that is
before All Saints Day, All Hallows or Sacred or Holy Eve,
(12:52):
hence the term Halloween. There were two holidays actually
in Roman Catholicism, one on November 1st and one on November
2nd. All Saints Day celebrated those
who were in heaven. And then All Souls Day, which
was the day after that, Novemberthe 2nd, celebrated those who
were in purgatory. So All Saints, you're
celebrating those in heaven. They've, they've made it All
(13:14):
Souls. The very next day you're you're
celebrating and praying for souls in purgatory.
In Roman Catholic theology, whenyou die, if you're a Christian,
you don't go directly to heaven.You still have all these sinis
all this yuck to burn off. Can't be in the presence of a
holy God when you got all this yuck.
And so you have to go to a placeto have that purged, hence the
name a purgatory. Purgatory.
(13:35):
And so you would remember those who had died and we're still in
purgatory and you would pray forthem and do certain things to
try to speed up that process to get them, you know, a get out of
jail early card for good behavior, which you could kind
of do on their behalf. Now to remember this time, how
would people celebrate it? Well, a few things.
First of all, they would dress up like angels, devils and
(13:58):
Saints. So you have these costumes
reminding us of death, remindingus of religious figures.
You still have today a lot of people dressing up as angels,
devils, Saints, but also Batman and different things like that.
They would go throughout the town on All Hallows Eve, what's
called Souling or asking for soul cakes.
It's kind of a, it's kind of a, a nascent form of, of trick or
(14:21):
treating. So you go to your neighbor's
door and you're like, hey, give me a soul cake and I will pray
for your dead relatives so that they can get out of purgatory a
little bit quicker. Again, this episode brought to
you by Blood Blood. Not just a gang, by the way,
There's a hilarious joke. There's a comedian I like.
(14:41):
His name's Anthony Jeselnik. He's a big fan of the show, by
the way, and he he has really dark humor and I'm a big dark
humor guy and he's got this great joke where he goes, I have
O negative blood. It's the best blood in the
entire world because I'm a universal donor.
I can give my blood to anyone else in the entire world who
also has AIDS. It's a great joke.
(15:01):
So blood, OK, so they're sewing,they're trick or treating.
They're asking for what are called soul cakes, which are
this, this type of like bread treat thing.
And what what they're saying is,hey, if you will give me
something to eat, I will pray for your dead relative.
And so trick or treating kind ofstarts as a way to pay off.
(15:23):
It's almost a bribe to get people out of purgatory.
Really, really fascinating. To ward off evil spirits, they
sometimes rang bells all night. Again, evil spirits apparently
don't like light or bells. In some places they even opened
caskets and would put flowers among the dead remains of their
loved ones. OK, kids would use bladders of
(15:43):
animals that were killed for thecelebration as like a sports
ball, like a play ball. Again, there's a there's a scene
from what is it, Parks and Rec where Ron Swanson wants to kill
a pig in a public park and he's like children, you can take the
bladder and blow it up and use it as a children's play ball.
That's kind of what they did. So you got these fun things and
activities going on. Now listen to this.
(16:04):
Where do Jack O lanterns and such come from?
We've already saw a scene that in we already saw that in Sawin
Samhain this this holiday. It's not pronounced Samhain.
It's just how it's spelled that people would hollow out turnips
and put candles in there to scare off evil spirits.
Well, at this time, as kids weregoing door to door, they would
hollow out turnips and put a candle in there.
(16:26):
But here's what it represented. It represented souls that were
stuck or imprisoned in purgatory.
So they go throughout the town with these little lanterns.
Again, turnips originally with candles in there to represent
souls in purgatory that needed to be let out.
Give me a soul cake. Here's even a representation of
your loved one's soul in purgatory being imprisoned when
you got to get it out of there. So this is where the idea of
(16:49):
Jack O lanterns come from. OK, Why did it move to pumpkins?
Well, in the New World, pumpkinswere more plentiful and it was
easier to carve a pumpkin than it was a turnip, which is a lot
smaller. And so pumpkins ended up
replacing turnips as these things you would put candles in
on Halloween. Now, what about the idea of a
(17:10):
Jack O Lantern? So all of that, you've got
salwin, you've got turnips, you've got purgatory, you've got
candles inside of things. We start using pumpkins.
They're bigger. You know, it's very pilgrimy to
use a pumpkin, although the pilgrims have totally been
against Halloween. Protestants were against
Halloween for the longest time. It was primarily a Catholic
holiday. What happens to bring about the
(17:30):
idea of a Jack O Lantern? Well there was this Irish legend
of a guy, a night watchman if you will, and his name was
Stingy Jack. Now every time I read that I
could not help but think of simple Jack from Tropic Thunder.
OK, but Stingy Jack is a different guy supposedly.
The legend goes, and this is I guess just a scary story you
would tell kids. Stingy Jack had tricked the
(17:51):
devil and so as a curse he couldn't go to heaven because he
was bad, but he couldn't go to hell because the devil didn't
want him either. So he was cursed to roam about
the world forever and he would carry and he was given actually
a a coal all right, the to put inside of a hollowed out turnip.
And he was like this scary watchman that would go with this
(18:12):
coal inside of a turnip throughout the land 'cause he
couldn't go to heaven or hell scaring kids as this night
watchman. And it was old stingy slash
simple Jack. And that's where you get the
idea of a Jack O Lantern. So all of that get gets mixed
together and that is a Jack O Lantern.
There you go. Candles were thought to ward off
witches in some places and were carried about the hills the hour
(18:33):
before midnight called the witching hour.
So if you lit a candle and it stayed lit, then you'd be
protected from witches for the following year, which is
convenient. Like, there's so many things
going on in life. There's, you know, the economy
and there's political division and there's like, you know what?
We got a pair of bills and now we got to worry about witches.
It's just what to quote Forrest Gump, it's just one less thing
(18:54):
to worry about now that you you know that you're not going to be
attacked by the witches. This also got combined with a
celebration on November the 5th called Guy.
Well, it was it was actually called well, Guy Fawkes Night
is, is really what the the common parlance was Guy Fawkes
Night. So brief history.
Have you ever seen like V for Vendetta or anytime somebody
(19:17):
hacked something online, they wear that mask of that guy who
looks kind of French. That guy's name is Guy Fawkes.
FAWKS, sometimes spelled ES, depending on British and
English. And what what time it is Fawkes
or FAWKS. Guy Fawkes did not like
Protestantism. And so there was a Gunpowder
(19:37):
Plot where he tried to blow up Parliament, but it failed.
So Guy Fawkes Night was a time to celebrate the fact that this
Catholic guy failed to blow up aProtestant Parliament.
Everyone doesn't realize that like people will wear that mask
and they think they're being allrebellious.
That just means you like, love Catholicism, but it failed.
And so people would celebrate that it failed because they hate
(19:57):
Guy Fawkes because he was tryingto blow up their leaders.
And, and so they would like bonfires, they would shoot off
fireworks and they would make effigies like these
representations of Guy Fawkes and burn them in the streets.
So that got added into the Halloween shenanigans as well.
And there was also something that happened a lot in the
Middle age Middle Ages, especially in places like
(20:18):
Ireland, Scotland, some in England.
People would try to figure out who they were going to marry by
trying to tell the future, by divining the future, OK, They
would do certain things, look atcertain things in the fire.
You know it. It was a kind of a form of
casting lots to see who your beloved would be.
OK. So that was a a popular thing to
do as well. So you do have some kind of
(20:39):
witchy divination stuff going oneven in Catholic Europe.
OK, That's two of the three periods.
This is like a hockey game. We are coming into the last one
here. So Celtic period, Salon
Christian period, mixed with these other things.
Now we get into the modern period.
Let's talk about the modern period of Halloween.
(20:59):
But first let me quench my vampire thirst.
Of course, drinking V8 doesn't ever quench your thirst.
It's salty. It just makes you thirstier.
OK, the modern period in early America, instead of Snickers and
such, they didn't have that yet.What would they pass out on this
day? They would pass out cakes,
(21:21):
apples, nuts and money. That's great.
Gothic fiction led to the rise of cats, magic and witchcraft
being associated with Halloween today.
Cats were not originally associated with that, but today
we think of bats and Black Cats and, you know, a little eye of
Newt and kind of these witchy things.
Listen to this. Let's talk a little bit about
the genre of horror, which is popular in movies and novels,
(21:44):
etcetera, that there's an interesting thing I want to
point out as a, as a history of ideas, philosophy guy that I
think is fascinating. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was
transformational regarding the horror genre because things
listened to this are scarier thecloser they are to us.
What do I mean by that? Here's what I mean.
Before Frankenstein, a lot of the stories, and there are some
(22:06):
other ones. It's not just Frankenstein
there. There's some other stories
where, you know, kind of humans are the bad guy, but a lot of
stories when it came to the genre of horror were about
things outside of humanity, right?
So we think of goblins, ghosts, ghouls, witches.
They're things that are other. The reason Frankenstein was so
interesting. And by the way, Frankenstein's
(22:27):
the the scientist, the monster is you.
It's always been you. It's Frankenstein's monster,
Frankenstein's the scientist. The reason Frankenstein was so
shocking because if you read it today, it's not scary from a
modern perspective. We've got way scarier movies.
But it was shocking because you have this thing made-up of human
parts, so it's a little bit morelike a human, which is scary.
(22:49):
OK, So the closer something is, the more it is like us, the
scarier it is. What do you get after things
like Frankenstein? Well, you have the things you
have today, Psycho or Halloween,right?
Where you have a human who's crazy, well, that's even
scarier. I'm not expecting to run into a
goblin, but humans actually do kill people.
That is scarier because it's even more like us.
And then you get things like Saw, where you have innocent
(23:11):
people who are having to kill others as a game, and it just
gets more and more twisted the closer it gets to you.
I find that to be fascinating. So you have those things like
Psycho and Halloween with Michael Myers, right?
The guy who's Austin Powers. We all know that in the 1920s
and 1930s, trick or treat was actually a threat.
So it's a night where kids are doing mischief.
(23:31):
They're up to some no goodery and some tomfoolery and some
shenanigans and all the fun words that mean you're getting
into trouble. And trick or treat originally
was, hey, give me a treat so I don't do some shenanigans
against you. Maybe I try to scare you.
Or, you know, today people like egg houses and throw toilet
paper, whatever. They used to just do random crap
(23:53):
like they would unhook train cars and they would like flip
stuff over and just tear down your fence.
They were just kind of destructive.
So trick or treat originally wasa threat.
Give me a treat or I'm going to harm you or harm something that
you have or own. In 1938, this is very famous.
There was a radio broadcast based on HG Wells War of the
(24:13):
Worlds that was adapted to saying that aliens that we were
undergoing an alien invasion in New Jersey on the way to New
York. Many people, this is
fascinating, mistook the story for an actual broadcast and it
led to widespread panic across the US.
So they're just doing this fun thing close to Halloween and
they're they're, you know, adapting War of the Worlds,
(24:36):
which is this famous novel. But people tune in late and
don't realize that it is actually just a for fun kind of
scary story. They think they're actually
being invaded by aliens and there is mass panic across the
country. And then Orson Welles, the guy
that was producing it, got like death threats and stuff the next
day. So it was wild.
Let's talk about safety when it comes to candy.
(24:59):
I think we've all heard that people will put, you know, razor
blades in apples or people will put poison in kids candies.
What are the facts behind that? Well, I'll summarize it for you
and then I'll tell you some interesting stories.
There have been sometimes where somebody has poisoned a kids
candy or put crushed up glass orrazor blades or something like
(25:19):
that in candy. That has happened.
That is extremely rare. So yes, check your kids candy,
especially if they're little kids and can't check it
themselves. But the fear of this is super
overblown. Let me tell you the some famous
stories and and specifically onefamous story related to this in
the 60s and the 70s. Again, kind of the fault line of
American history was the 60s. There were several reports of
(25:41):
people putting bad things in kids candy and it almost led to
the end of trick or treat. It's horrible.
You can't lose trick or treat. The first case was a dentist in
California, California who gave laxatives to 16 trick or
treaters, which is hilarious. OK, less hilarious.
(26:04):
Listen to this one. This guy's a bastard.
In 1974, a dad named Ronald Clark O'Brien laced his son's
Pixie sticks with cyanide to collect life insurance money.
OK, which is really sad. What a terrible, terrible guy.
This led to the idea of, you know, candy you get trick or
(26:24):
treating, possibly being poisoned, although that is
overblown. Halloween originally was more
about chaos. We talked about these different
elements and there's All Souls and like, it's kind of a raucous
night, Guy Fawkes Night, all that stuff.
But in the 1900s it became scarier due to cinema, due to
new novels, due to haunted houses and the like.
(26:45):
Especially after the 1970s, you saw a rise in violent slasher
style Halloween movies. So Halloween going to Hollywood
is something that that that kindof made it more about fear and
scary. So you get originally it's a
night of chaos to be raucous, and now it's more like scary and
demony and fear and witches and,you know, vampires and monsters
(27:08):
and that kind of stuff. One fascinating thing.
So again, if you haven't heard my history of sex lecture, you
should do it. Don't listen to it in front of
your kids. It's very X-rated.
But there is something interesting with Halloween.
And this is again, kind of the the intellectual history thing
behind it. Violence in sex.
Violence and sex often go together, so sex in nature, like
(27:31):
if a a lion is trying to mate with a female lion, it is very
violent. Sex is inherently an aggressive
act. For whatever reason, there's
something in humanity where sex and violence are often linked.
This is why so many people are into things like BDSM.
You even have this in Greek mythology.
(27:51):
So if you think of Aphrodite, the goddess of love and like
sexy stuff, she cheats on her husband.
With whom Aries, the God of War,again, the violence and the
sexuality go together. I just mentioned that because
it's interesting because you seethat in Halloween you'll have
like a woman who's beautiful, who's showing a lot of skin, but
she also is a witch and has her face covered in blood there.
(28:13):
You'll see this in horror movies, right?
Right before the killer stabs the woman, you know, she's
always like naked, taking a shower.
And so there is something interesting there with, with how
violence and sex go together. Maybe some brave doctoral
candidate can make that their thesis if they're in the UK or
dissertation if they're in America.
OK, That is the history of Halloween.
(28:35):
Fascinating. We're not done yet, though.
We have to get into Halloween South of the border.
All right, El dia de Los Muertos, the Day of the Dead.
Maybe you've heard of this, maybe you haven't.
Pay attention because it is alsofascinating.
Dia de Los Huertos, the Day of the Dead is sometimes called,
and this is not exactly correct,but it's a helpful analogy for
(28:58):
Americans or Europeans. Mexican Halloween.
By the way, there is a hilariousclip from the show Community,
which is a great show, where they're in Spanish class, and
the professor of that Spanish class is a guy named Senior
Chang. So he's this Asian guy, and he
conned his way into being a Spanish professor, all from
phrases that he learned on Sesame Street.
(29:19):
So he doesn't actually know Spanish well.
But they're all taking a Spanishclass, and it's Dia de Los
Muertos. And Annie gets up and she's
like, this is also called Mexican Halloween.
And he interrupts her. And he goes, I'm sorry.
That's very offensive to everyone who knows Mexican
Halloween as the sexual position.
It's it's a great line. And then the kids in the class
are looking around and Troy's like, yeah, like, I know what
(29:40):
that is. Yeah.
We we've all done Mexican Halloween, Dia de Los Muertos.
It's not actually Mexican Halloween.
It's got different roots. It's celebrated primarily in
Mexico, so it's not just a Spanish speaking thing.
It is more isolated, specifically to Mexico, but it's
also practiced and celebrated inthe Southwestern United States
and in a few Latin American countries.
It's typically between November 1st and November 2nd again.
(30:03):
So like right after Halloween. Where does it come from again?
In the same way that Salwin was blended with Catholic and
Christian elements, the same thing is true of Dia de Los
Muertos. The natives in Central and South
America were very into death, right?
Like a lot of them would do human sacrifice daily, RIP out
people's hearts, cut off their heads.
(30:25):
They would create these lines ofskulls.
They were very comfortable with death.
They created a lot of human rights violations.
The colonization that happened was bad, but what they were
doing was bad. So, you know, pick your poison.
So there was already some indigenous beliefs when it comes
to death. They very much believed that the
land of the dead and the land ofthe living, if you will, had a
(30:47):
very thin border. And so when the conquistadors
came in and brought Roman Catholicism, that got blended
again with All Saints, All Soulsand some Catholic practices.
What is Dia de Los Muertos? It's primarily a community and
family event. So what they do is yes, they
party, yes, they have good food,yes, they have good drink, yes,
they dance, yes, there's a lot of music, all that's fun.
(31:10):
Yes, they paint their faces likeskeletons and this kind of
stuff. It's it's it's actually really
cool holiday. But the, the it's not just about
scaring people and and getting candy and that kind of stuff.
Kind of like in America, what they do is they set up altars
ofrendas. Forgive me if my, my, my Spanish
is bad. I, I know other languages, but
my Spanish is a little, little Mal.
(31:32):
They set up altars to dead family members called ofrendas.
And what they'll do is they'll, they'll take Marigold flowers,
which are bright so that they can find their way.
You know, the spirits of their ancestors can find their way.
They'll have what's called breadof the dead.
They'll have sugar skulls, whichare these little treats, these
little candies, candles, pictures, and you might have
things that that relative that you lost really enjoyed.
(31:56):
So if they were a a Carpenter, maybe you have a hammer up on
this altar or you know, if they really loved music, maybe you
have a guitar or something like this.
A, a great if you're unfamiliar with Dia de Los Huertos, this is
not a historical source, but it is a fun, a fun movie that that
actually heightened people's awareness of this holiday is the
movie Coco from Disney where they you, you kind of get to see
(32:18):
this altar, this ofrenda, what they put there, what they, you
know, it's mainly about remembering and celebrating.
It's not a sad or scary holiday.It's primarily about remembering
the lives of those that you've lost.
But but many people do believe that their dead ancestors visit
them on that night. They come and check out the
(32:38):
altar and they're, they're kind of among us, you know, the, our,
our dead grandma and uncle and these kind of things.
They are among us on that day orthose two days.
And that is Dia de Los Muertos, the skeleton pictures that are
very common and the way they do their makeup and that kind of
stuff was originally taken from an etching in 1913 by a guy.
He's famous in Mexican culture. His name is Jose Posada, and
(33:01):
Posada had created these pictures and these etchings with
skeletons dancing and making it joyful and that caught on with
Dia de Los Muertos. That is, that is the
fascinating, I think fascinatinghaunted history of Halloween,
where it comes from, why we do the things that we do.
I love Halloween. I hope that you have a fantastic
(33:22):
Halloween drop comments like subscribe, read, post, smash
that like button. I hate when podcast people or
social media people are like, oh, go ahead and smash that like
button. You'll get 10 years of good
luck. And you know, but seriously, you
need to subscribe and share withyour friends to make me famous.
I have big things to do. So I'm wearing this black shirt
for Halloween in honor of that this year.
(33:43):
So thanks for joining us Halloween slash dia de Los
Muertos slash sawin, whatever you celebrate.
Thanks for joining us on Ideological and we will see you
next time.
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