Latest / Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott / Moore History: The History of Halloween

Transcript

Moore History: The History of Halloween · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Let's do this. Literally turning the page on the rundown.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Third hour of the morning show with Preston Scott. AD
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: over there running the program. Anthony David. I'm Preston. And
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: this is our resident historian, Dr.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Ed Moore.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: And that's at the top now, right? I mean, you're
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: formally the president of the Independent Colleges and Universities of Florida.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Formally, you know, all of these things.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I'm an emeritus there.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. But here, sir.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I'm still alive. Come on.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: Resident historian.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still working.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: You hit me with a funny text when we talked
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: about the topic for this week. You compared Halloween to
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: this current world of politics.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It is what it is. Everything is a show now. Yeah.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: We all wear masks. I may go get real Shakespearean
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: about it, but we all do.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: No, I don't wear a mask.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: We all wear a mask.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: No, I don't wear a mask.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: Never. Nope. Never put a mask on.
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: What you see is what you get.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Oh, boy. None of us, the rest of us, aren't
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: that good.
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: Nope, nope. Not about being good.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Authentic.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: It's authentic.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. I'll take off the mask when I'm here.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, let's take off the mask on Halloween.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, what's the deal with the history of Halloween? There
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: are groups of people that say, ah, this was once
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: a Christian holiday, and there are others that say, oh, no,
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: it wasn't.
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, no, no. I'm real happy about Halloween and
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: the origins of Halloween because I've done the DNA test
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: and whatever, and I'm about 96% Celtic in Christianity. In
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: my DNA.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: I feel like we're about to hear of a connection.
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: Well, this is a Celtic festival. No matter how you
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: cut it, Halloween is a Celtic festival. They call it Samhain,
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: or Samhain, depending on where you're from, whether you're from
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: Scotland or Ireland.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Where does this go back to? Date us back here.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: It goes back a couple thousand years. There was no
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: really written record until about the 700s, 800s. when the
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Catholic began to take over Ireland and change the nature
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: of all of these things. And you actually got a
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: written record starting then. Part of that, there wasn't any
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: written record. The pagan Irish didn't, everything got passed down
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: by word of mouth and family tradition. I was thinking
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: about this earlier this morning. I was listening and you
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: were talking about people who were visiting the pumpkin patches
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: and they're all foreign groups and whatever. And when you
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: look at a Halloween as a festival or a holiday,
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: it has been changed and morphed. When the Romans came
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: in and brought Christianity basically into Ireland, they changed old
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: festivals and made them more towards the modern and it's
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: been phased in. But when the Irish back in the
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: 1800s came over here and drove the 1840s and 50s
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: during the Irish famine and Afterwards, they brought Halloween to America.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: They were the ones that brought it here. Prior to that,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: they didn't really celebrate.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: Was it called Halloween then?
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: No, no.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. What we now know as Halloween was brought over.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a harvest festival, if you will, generally
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: thought of as a harvest festival.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: So the literal seeds of this, though, go back to
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the hundreds, not the thousands.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Yes. Oh, yeah, definitely. Definitely. There were four major festivals
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: in Celtic Ireland.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Weren't they based on the seasons?
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: They were all based on the seasons. Right. What was
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: coming up and celebrating and dealing with the spirits. There
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: was a belief in the spirits. And we tend to
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: get so caught.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Up in the spirits. The spirits or the spirits?
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Well, they were Irish after all.
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: I was just going to say, man, we're talking about
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: the Irish, buddy.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Any good reason for a party.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: They can tip back a pint.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Any reason. But they needed to bring, coalesce people together.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, people were farmers all over the place. So
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: they would use these festivals for that reason. But they
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: had four during the year. But they were all seasonal,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: all clocking the end of the summer and the beginning
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: of harvest season. And they tied it also into the spirits.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: If you go to Ireland, you're going to hear all
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: kinds of stories about superstitious, we would call superstitious spirits
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: that people actually believe. And We can talk about those
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: after the break. It's fascinating to see how all of
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: this really gets infused into the culture and then adapted
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: over here. And now it's people knocking on your door
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: asking for something for free. The rest of the year,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: you would never go to somebody's door and say, hey,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: got some candy for me?
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: But Halloween, it's okay. When we come back, Dr. Ed
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Moore continues our discussion of Halloween. Not just our resident historian,
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: but a savvy broadcaster. Did you notice that? Yeah, when
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to talk about it. Well,
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: thank you, sir. We're going to do that next here
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: on The Morning Show with Preston Scott. back with dr
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: ed moore we're talking about the history of the day
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: that is two days away halloween it's coming and you'll
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: see it displayed on college football games uh starting tomorrow
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: night tonight probably uh if there's a college football game
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: on tonight you'll see it on display everybody dressing up
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: and being weird and i should i'm sure we'll probably
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: get to that i don't know but uh where are
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: we in this story now.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Well talk about superstition basically yeah and The concept is
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: that on October the 31st was the eve of this
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: festival that was November 1st.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: All Hallowed Eve.
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: No, that's when the Christians came in. The Romans came in.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: You know the story of St. Patrick and how he
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: used the superstitions to get them over towards Christianity. The
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Gaelic cross and all these. He had a way. Nice
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: knack about them, but they all did. I mean, these
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: are people that were not Irish coming in here, the
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: visitors to the pumpkin patch, like we were talking about earlier.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: But they were coming in not to assimilate to Irish culture,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: but to change Irish culture to theirs, to the Christian
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: cultures out of Rome. And so they would use these
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: festivals and beliefs. Now, these are people that were very superstitious,
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: the people that lived in the Celtic people through Scotland, Ireland,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Isle of Man, a little bit of Wales, very superstitious people.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: And they had very similar holidays, even though they were
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: far apart.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: Did they have their own version of, you know, walking
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: under ladders, broken mirrors and stepping on cracks?
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the crazy ones, like never, if you got a
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: pair of new shoes, never place them on the table
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: because it would offend the spirits.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Not mom, the spirits.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: The spirits.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: On the night, the eve of October 31st, there were
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: things you could and couldn't do and families would do.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: They would light a small fire in the hearth and
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: then assemble chairs and then put some water and foodstuffs there,
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: kind of like we do for Santa. Okay. Same kind
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: of deal. They would put them there because the spirits
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: would visit, because the veil, you've heard of the concept
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: of the thin veil. On that night, the veil was
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: the thinnest of the year. So the spirits would come
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: and go. And they had a version in their beliefs
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: of the Christian purgatory, where not everybody would go straight
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: to heaven. None of us are really quite that pure,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: so you had to go to purgatory. You'd chill there.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Not limbo, purgatory. And your spirit would be cleansed over time,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: but they believed that the spirits would come back. and
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: have needs to come back. So they would cover their mirrors,
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: because if you could look in the mirror, you might
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: see a spirit in the mirror.
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: I'm getting this baffled look here. No, but what I'm
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: getting is, I'm getting a picture of the gradual transition
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: to where we have been in America.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And hanging horseshoes over your door, a symbol
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: of good luck that came from the Irish people. If
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: a bird pooped on you, that was good for you.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: That was a good sign. I mean, they were making
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: something good out of something bad. Fairy trees. If you
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: go to Ireland, you'll probably hear about fairy trees. You
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: see in these farm fields, there'll be a hawthorn tree
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: sitting out in the middle of the field. Don't touch it.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: Don't get near it. Kids over there, if their ball
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: went up in a tree, they'd get in trouble from mom.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: Because the fairies live in the tree.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: To this day?
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: To this day, people believe that. The strength of these
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: kinds of beliefs pervades them. We can Americanize it yet? Yeah.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: That's coming next?
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Next time.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: Ah, here we go. Stay with us.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Dr.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Ed Moore on The Morning Show with Preston Scott. All right,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: I'm going to channel my inner Mark Levin here. We've
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: just got five minutes left. Dr. Ed Moore, we're talking Halloween. Dr. Moore, Halloween, go!
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: It came across, like I said, in the 1800s, middle 1800s.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: The Irish brought it and some Scots probably brought it
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: to Canada, but the Irish came into America and still
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: were doing their festival. And over time, it morphed probably
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: mainly sort of like Christmas did where you got some
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: merchandisers involved in it and figured, hey, we can make
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: some money off of this deal.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Was Hallmark around back then?
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: We don't do Halloween cards anymore. But I tell you,
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: you go.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Well, now, wait a minute. You go to the store.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: They're everywhere. I guess I do, yeah. I just have
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: never sent them. But if you go any store right now,
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, the merchandise started coming out in September.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: Well, sure. Yeah. Now it's Christmas.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Already the Christmas.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Stuff's moving in. Thanksgiving's getting blown away.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So, you know, I kind of hearken back to
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: the way the Irish would celebrate it as more dealing
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: with ancestry and how you honored your ancestors and you
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: hoped that they would emerged from purgatory to go to heaven.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: So how did we get to Jack and the jack-o'-lantern
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: and kind of the creepiness that is woven into Halloween now?
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Because it was easier to carve a pumpkin than it
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: was to carve the gourds. The Celts used to use
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: any kind of root vegetable. And they would carve faces
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: on them. Okay. Going way back.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: Really?
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But pumpkins.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Gorge would make me laugh if you carved them.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: They're funny looking.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But they would do that because they had that.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: That was what they used.
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: They had potatoes. They would take potatoes and carve on
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: a potato. No. Yeah.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay. But once over here, the natives in North
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: America grew pumpkins.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: And they said, hey, well, that's pretty easy. We can
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: really do something with that. Yeah. And it just kind
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: of evolved. They were plentiful and easy to do. The
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: trick-or-treating part of it is kind of bizarre. I'm not
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: really quite sure how that came about. But the religious
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: aspects of the holiday, with Christianity merging with these ancient
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: Celtic festivals, All Saints Day.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: Was November the 1st. They moved that, the Catholic Church
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: moved that from the spring to then, again trying to
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: convert the heathen. You know, we can use this. We'll
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: merge this together. And then November 2nd is All Souls
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Day for the people that are buried and haven't gone
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: up yet. You've got to pray for them too. And
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: probably a lot of Irish were in that category.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: Among others.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Among others. And it has just evolved over time to
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: become really a secular holiday. The religious aspects of it
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: are gone. It's pretty much totally a secular holiday and
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: a good time for parties and trick-or-treating and all of
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: those kind of things.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: Do we have anything that points to when the costuming
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: became a part of it?
• 12:49
  Speaker 2: Well, they used to do that again back in the
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: old Irish and stuff.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: People would dress up.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Cousin is a word for it that they would.
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: wear costumes to kind of emulate the dead and be
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: like the different people.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Like dead as in family members, Aunt Bea and Uncle
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: Biff and all that?
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a big part of this was, you know, and
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: if you look in the Orient, the Japanese venerate their ancestors.
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, a lot of cultures, that's a way to
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: connect with the people that were there before you. Okay. Yeah.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: We're not doing that anymore.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: No, no. Going around asking people for candy doesn't really happen.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: It's Spider-Man and the Avengers.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: And football players. It's completely secular now. Yeah. And there
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: may be parts of the world that still do some
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: of the old stuff. And I know if you go
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: to Ireland, there's still some traditional stuff, particularly in the
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: regions that still speak Irish or speak Gaelish. Those areas
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: tend to be a little bit more connected to the past.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: It's interesting to me that some of the cults that
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: have existed, Church of Satan and so forth, they embrace
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: days like Halloween. They've kind of tried to leverage that.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: You beat me, too, because that's where I was going
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: to in the modern era. Paganism, if you want to
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: collect it into that single word, paganism still has tremendous
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: aspects of the old culture. And they use that as
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: part of their beliefs and their ceremonies. But it's invisible.
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: It's hidden. You don't see it anywhere. It's not rampant
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: around Tallahassee. You don't see, hey, come to us to
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: celebrate Samhain. It's kind of an underground.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: But it is there.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: But it's there. Definitely it's there. If you Google it,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: if you go online, anything about it, you're going to
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: get videos and stuff from people. witches, people that call
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: themselves witches, talking about this is what we do, and
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: how to do these different things, and how to do
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: the celebration. I don't encourage people to do that. I'd
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: rather say go to church and pray. Yeah, yeah.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: What was your favorite costume? Did you wear one when
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: you were a kid?
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: Always.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Did you have one go-to?
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to like Frankenstein.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Okay. Yeah, I was taller as a little kid. I
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: was taller, so I could walk around. I was the
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: mummy once. I was the mummy once, and it rained.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: It didn't end well.
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: We had a big Halloween party once, and a guy
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: dressed as a mummy completely wrapped got to the house,
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: and he realized, I don't know how I'm going to
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: go to the bathroom.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Thank you. I think Dr. Ed Moore joins me once
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: a month, and we talk history here on The Morning
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: Show with Preston Scott.