OCR Text |
Show THE SIGNPOST 9 ntertainmemt Halloween older than you might think All Hallows' Eve cloaked in Celtic tradition By C. Mark Howard Arts Editor of The Signpost Monday, October 22, 1990 "And if it 's around October twentieth and everything smokey-smelling and the sky orange and ash gray at twilight, it seems Halloween will never come in a fall of broomsticks and a soft flap of bedsheets around corners. -Ray Bradbury Something Wicked This Way Comes Humans are essentially creatures of habit. Many of America's celebrated holidays are observed without knowing why or how they came about. It is interesting to note how traditions, which are ususally thought of as being rigid and inflexible, are, in truth, subject to mutation and volatility. Halloween is an excellent example of this premise. Halloween is just around the comer. Before you know it, the day will start to grow dark and your door will rattle with small but insis-tant knocking followed by tiny, slightly muffled voices yelling 'Trick or treat!" Throughout the night you will open your door to a hyperactive host of weird monsters, wild animals, famous personalities, and other less recognizable creatures. They will shake their loot bags de- mandingly and watch your hands with eager, hungry eyes. Trick-or-treating is but one of many activities that center around Halloween. Retail storesdon't hesitate to jump on the commerical hype bandwagon. Halloween theme parties abound. A plethora of haunted houses dedicated to all sorts of charity organizations crawl out of the earth. Radio stations flood the airwaves with the sounds of sqeaking doors and creaking floors. Hollywood never fails to come out with a few chillers for the Halloween season. This is what Halloween has been like ever since I could remember. But I have often wondered if this is how Halloween was always celebrated? So being the ever questioning and ever diligent reporter I am, I marched up to the Steward Library and snooped through the piles of slighty dusty volumes of referrence material. I was surprised at what I found. Allow me to share what I found with you. I think you'll be as surprised as I was. Our modern custom of Halloween was brought over from Europe by immigrants in the late 1800s. The British Isles and Eire in particular were where the traditions of Halloween come from. But Halloween goes back much further than the 1800s. During the Christianization of the British Isles, the Roman Catholic church declared that the feast of All Saints' Day (or Allhallows), a celebration in remembrance of saints and martyrs, should take place on Nov. 1. Hence, the day before Allhallows became known as All Hallows' Evening which was shortened to All Hallows' Eve, which in turn was contracted to Hallowe'en. Halloween, as it is commonly called today, falls on the pagan Irish festival of Samhain Feis (pronounced 'sowan 'fesh). Samhain Fesh, Oct. 31, has neither connections with equinoxes or solstices nor sowing or reaping. For the Celtic people, (See HALLOWS' page 10) The Signpost's Signature Halloween Writing Contest Stories are to be on a Halloween topic, ' with a 1 500 word limit Entries will be judged by editors of The Signpost. The winner's story will be printed in the Signature section of The Signpost on Halloween, Oct. 31, 1990 and receive a free lunch from Marriot Corp. Please turn entries to The Signpost by Wednesday Oct. 24 1990. Harriott Co-sponsored by Marriott I 7 S Is PACKARD BELL E T America grew up listening to us. It still does. NOW AT CONNECTING POINT! FORCE I 80286 microprocessor operating at 612 MHz 40MB28ms hard disk drive 1 MB of RAM standard on the motherboard One 5 14" 1.2MB floppy disk drive One 3 12" 1.44MB floppy disk drive MS-DOS4.01 andGW-BASIC One year limited warranty Integrated software package includes: Lotus Works Lotus Works spreadsheet templates and Prodigy Service start-up kit offer Priced with VGA color monitor. At a store you can trust! Only $1449.00 FINANCING AVAILABLE! COMPUTER CENTERS 2236 Washington Blvd. Ogden Utah 801-621-5244 Store Hours Mon-Fri 10-6 Saturday 10-5 All trademarks are property of there respective manufacturers. Packard Bell e a registered trademark of Packard Bell Electronics. Not aft dialed with any former Bell System entity. |