The Speech of Miss Clark on the Meaning of Halloween, from the Dixboro Ghost IV, iii

Act IV, Scene iii

Miss Clark’s school, Ann Arbor

Miss Clark: One purpose then of Halloween is of course to test and overcome our fears, often irrational, as ladies and even men have of the darkness, some long after the fancies of childhood are to be left behind. This occurs from lack of practice and reflection- Do not fear to enter late, but quietly-

[Enter Jane and sister]

Our ox has eaten flowers from my hair, and from this become ill, we fear, so we, have with lots of fresh water at the well have treated her.

lf she has not eaten too much, her survival is likely. She may feel the worse for a while. As we were saying, ladies one purpose of Halloween is that we learn to face our fears. As doctors and soldiers must, of things such as blood and bodies of the dead, witches and ghosts and the like. As we have with each holiday in our calendar, so in this we will devote a lesson, so that we may know something of where these things originate- that is, where these things we do come from. Does anyone know the meaning of this day of dress up that we call Halloween? Why do we do such things as carving Jack o’ lanterns, apple bobbing, and trick nor treats? Hot cross buns and candies, and dressing up in figures we are not, some frightening and some enchanting? Anyone? [2 students raise their hands].

Sister Sarah W.: It has to do with the harvest, a celebration of plenty after the labors of a hard summer.

Lily: And that is when the pumpkins are ripe, and cornstalks gathered.

Miss Clark: Indeed. Every people seems to have a harvest festival, and some of these practices surrounding ours may be thousands of years old or even older. One may even think the tobacco sheeted against the frost looks like the sheeted dead, as those who waken from a coma in a mortuary. As we were saying, ladies, one purpose of Halloween is to learn to face our fears. [Turning to the blackboard] The word Halloween is a contraction of ‘Hallow evening,’ or all hallows eve, the day before All Saints Day, or all Hallows Day. This is a day for honoring all saints. ‘Even’ is a Scottish word for evening. The day is for the lighting of candles for those who have recently passed away, a part of most traditions kept from the ancient Roman Church. Among the Scottish and the Irish, from time immemorial, their pagan harvest festivals included such a night, called Samhain, or summer’s end. On this night, lanterns were made of candles placed in large turnips, and apple bobbing somehow used in prognostication of the future. It is thought that the costumes and trick-or treating, called by the Irish “souling,”was an attempt to stay the malice of the recently departed, if these did hold against others any vengeance for some trespass they had suffered while alive. One prince, a Christian minister has said: “It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until all Saint’s Day, and All Hallow’s Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving on to the next world. In order to avoid being recognized by any such that might be seeking vengeance, people would don masks or costumes to disguise their identities the souls of the dead were also said to revisit their homes, seeking hospitality Candles, or soul lights, would be lit, and prayers offered. In Europe and France it was believed that the dead of churchyards a rose for one wild, hideous carnival of macabre dancing. People then dressed as corpses. In Ireland, men would sometimes dress as women, and women men. These spirits all troop home to churchyards at sunrise, as Horatio tells Hamlet, eh coming of the sunrise explaining why their ghost had left as the crowing of the rooster announced, and Puck is told by Oberon. For ghosts are said to be spirits stuck somehow yet in the mortal world, left still with cares unresolved, as though they cannot yet leave.

All Hallow’s Eve became the last day of October when all Saints Day was moved, by Pope Gregory, the Fourth Pope of that name, in the year 835, to coincide with the Scottish Samhain and harvest celebrations. So we now have candle lighting for the souls and hot buns marked with the cross., once called soul cakes, and baked also for the dead. Reading then from our text of Emma Willard, when, – as this had spread throughout Rome despite persecution and indifference- from truth or policy, Constantine embraced Christianity, whether from truth or policy do you have this, on page 164- women then were taught they were co-heirs with men in the blessings of the Gospel, and then felt their equal value as immortal beings, and thus learned to respect themselves and to ensure the respect of men-” and so not to fear such things- [then Christianity was joined to many things of the Pagan world and Roman Empire, with prefectures, diocese and provinces. Then might the Emperor, and no Bishop, have been head of the Church.] And again from page 164: “and surely it was not in the Spirit of Christ, who said ‘My Kingdom is not of this world” that Constantine made it the religion of the Empire And from henceforth, we find its heavenly influence sullied by mingling with earthly things…For then as Isaac Newton writes, there came to be established the honoring of the bones of saints and dead men’s souls- worshiping, he calls it,, and this idolatry of relics continued throughout the medieval days of knights and ladies.

And on page 248, The Church “made merchandise of natural affection, requiring that masses be paid for by the people. To take their dead relatives from Purgatory and send them to heaven.” Confession was mused to gather political secrets (p. 427), and canonization authorized men to worship what God has forbidden (p. 993). By the time of Pope John XV, 20,000 of the Inquisition worked in Spain alone, to re enact the Roman persecutions of the Martyrs. This went on until, oddly indeed on the first of November, Martin Luther nailed his theses to the door of the Church at Wittenberg 1517, and Protestantism and the Reformation then began, Even on All Saint’s Day. Then Purgatory itself came much into question, as a mere way to collect indulgences, and it was recalled, as by Newton, that the honoring of Saints and collections of relics was not original to the Christian Church, but rather are practices that entered well after Constantine. And so it is that Shakespeare’s Hamlet returns from school in Wittenberg to see to his surprise the ghost of his deceased father- come from Purgatory! But of much import, and for our present purposes, the Christian images and orders were mixed the older and more local traditions and festivals of the people, and many of our doings on this day- alms and praying for the souls of our recently departed on their way to heaven, is derived from that mixing. So it is with apple-bobbing and the roasting of nuts, kinds of divination, since it was thought the entry to these realms was somehow more open on this day, or that it is a liminal time when the boundary between this world and the next was thinned. So it was thought that then young ladies might see in a glass see the husbands of their future days.

[Jane, gazing out the window, faints.]

Sarah W.: Jane has fainted.

Miss Clark: Here are salts. She will revive and be well.- there- Jane? Rest a while, and we will break for lunch. Our ladies may yet be educated if they should ever cease to faint!