monday, October 31, 1977
daily nebraskan
Ancient ritual now spoof on spooks
Bv John Ortmann
Setting aside a day to frighten the dead and pacify evil
spirits is not as outlandish as it sounds, according to
Richard Thill, University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO)
associate professor of foreign languages.
Halloween has its roots in festivals and rituals in honor
of the dead that go back at least to Greco-Roman times
and perhaps as much .as 5,000 years, Thill said.
The festivals traditionally took place near the end of
the year, he said, a time when spirits were thought to be
especially active.
Such beliefs were widespread in Europe and the British
Isles, he said, giving the ancient Celtic ritual of pacifi
cation of Sam, God of tne dead, as an example.
Death and the autumn harvest also were connected in
the minds of the ancients, according to Tom Fulton, a
U.S. Department of Agriculture historian.
When the first harvest was brought to the barn
Bavarian peasants would ritualistically chant that they '
were bearing food for the dead, he said. The peasants also
believed in the Corn Man, who was thought to die every
year when the last of the crop was harvested, Fulton said.
One of today's common Halloween sights is the jack
o lantern, a term which Funk and W agnails1 'Standard
Dictionary of Folklore said once referred to burning
swamp gas seen in wet places.
Thill said the evil connotations of jack o' lanterns
came from the practice of following the lights into
swamps at night. People who did often drowned in bogs
and were never heard from again, leading to the belief that
the jack o' lantern had gotten them.
The present date of Halloween, or All Hallows Eve,
goes back to the seventh century, when Pope Boniface IV
introduced All Saint's Day on Nov. l.Funk and Wagnall's
states that the day, which honors the souls of all known
and unknown saints was probably meant to replace the
pagan festivals of the dead.
Thill said we owe our current light-hearted view of
Halloween to early British missionaries working among
the Germanic tribes. As Christianity replaced the pagan
religions, he said, the old Gods still were feared, but iden
tified by the missionaries as demons and cohorts of the
devil. Eventually, as Europe became more rational, the
old Gods, today's spooks, ghosts and witches, became
objects of humor.
And so; a time of stark terror became today's holiday
of fun- and pranks for children and more than a few
college students. Happy haunting.
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