Halloween

Halloween or Hallowe'en (/ˌhæləˈwiːn, -oʊˈiːn, ˌhɑːl-/; a contraction of "All Hallows' Evening"), also known as Allhalloween. All Hallows' Eve or All Saints' Eve is a yearly celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It initiates the triduum of Allhallowtide the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed believers. Within Allhallowtide, the traditional focus of All Hallows' Eve revolves around the theme of using "humor and ridicule to confront the power of death

For the film series, see Halloween (franchise)

CONTENT : A - F , G - L , M - R , S - Z , See also , External links

Quotes

Quotes are arranged alphabetically by author

A - F

I think if human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? … -Douglas Coupland.

I think if human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don't they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you'd meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to - like talking to dogs.
- Douglas Coupland in: The Gum Thief: A Novel, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, Jan 15, 2011, p. 23

Halloween was close, our favorite holiday because it carried none of the pain-in-the-ass holiness of Christmas and still there was free candy.
- Jeffrey Ford, Botch Town (2006), reprinted in The Empire of Ice Cream ISBN 1-930846-39-8, p. 160

G - L

Halloween superstitions and rites:
Sprinkle salt on your doorsteps to bar evil spirits from your home.
Hang socks that have a hole worn in them in your windows to prevent evil spirits from flying in.
Go to a cabbage patch, put on a blindfold, and grab a random cabbage. If the cabbage is fresh and clean your coming year will be fortunate. If the cabbage is spoiled or dirty your coming year will be similarly blighted.
Drop two needles in a basin of water. If they come together at the bottom, you will see your future wife or husband. This can also be done by taking a lit candle and a mirror into a dark cellar. The future spouse will appear in the mirror.
Sprinkle a pinch of cornmeal by your bed. In the morning you will see that ghosts – most likely mice or bugs – have drawn your future in it.
As a party treat and game, bake a coin with a cake, a thimble, a ring, and a China doll in it. When the cake is served, whoever finds the coin will have wealth in the future. Whoever finds a thimble will never marry (Single women once supported themselves sewing or spinning –hence the term spinster). Whoever finds the ring will marry in the coming year. Whoever finds the doll will have many children – hopefully after finding ring on an earlier occasion.
- The Halloween Handbook in: The Halloween Handbook, Citadel Press, 2001, p. 28-29

Toward the end of the nineteenth century, theme Halloween parties became popular. Fairy tales, King Arthur’s Court and Mother-Goose were typical themes.
- The Halloween Handbook in:"The Halloween Handbook"

M - R

In receiving something in their hands, they establish, on a symbolic level that they do not understand, a brotherly exchange between the visible and the invisible worlds. That is why the Halloween masquerades . . . are in fact sacred ceremonies.
- Jean Markale comments in his book Halloween, histoire et traditions (Halloween—History and Traditions).

In many ways, Halloween is the most American of holidays: secular, irreverent, and unashamedly consumerist. And as with many American cultural products, it has become a wildly successful export.
- Lisa Morton in: Eugenia Williamson Böö! Halloween’s quest for world domination, The Boston Globe, 28 October 2012

It’s [Halloween] not celebrated in any of the countries where Islam is the main religion, but there was an interesting WikiLeaks document that came to light within the last year that said that [a group of wealthy citizens] had broken the taboos with a secret Halloween party in Saudi Arabia, complete with alcohol and costumes.
- Lisa Morton in: "Böö! Halloween’s quest for world domination"

In Britain, the major public holiday used to be Guy Fawkes Day...that was celebrated on November 5th with things like bonfires and fireworks....I think that made Halloween seem preferable. The idea of having pumpkins and costumes and parties seemed much more appealing than burning down your neighborhood.
- Lisa Morton in: "Böö! Halloween’s quest for world domination"

Today, countries from Japan to Ukraine have embraced American Halloween and its customs.
- Lisa Morton in: "Böö! Halloween’s quest for world domination"

Halloween (All Hallows Eve) is the Eve of All Saints Day. Therefore All Saints' Day Prayers are the most appropriate prayers. However, while Halloween has many fun customs, it is also a time to challenge and mock evil.
- Halloween Prayers in: David Bennett in: Halloween Prayers:Prayers and Collects for All Hallows Eve, churchyear.net

Boasting a rich, complex history rooted in Celtic and Christian ritual, Halloween has evolved from ethnic celebration to a blend of street festival, fright night, and vast commercial enterprise...Drawing on a fascinating array of sources, from classical history to Hollywood films,... it emerged from the Celtic festival of Samhain (summer's end), picked up elements of the Christian Hallowtide (All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day), arrived in North America as an Irish and Scottish festival, and evolved into an unofficial but large-scale holiday by the early 20th century...Halloween is the definitive history of the most bewitching day of the year, illuminating the intricate history and shifting cultural forces behind this enduring trick-or-treat holiday.
- Nicholas Rogers in: Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, Oxford University Press, 2003, Overview

Halloween was confusing. All my life my parents said, "Never take candy from strangers." And then they dressed me up and said, "Go beg for it." I didn't know what to do. I'd knock on people's doors and go, "Trick or treat.”
- Rita Rudner in: Judy Brown Jokes over easy: 1,386 delicious jokes from the best comedians, Barnes & Noble, 2006, p. 112

S - Z

The witches fly
Across the sky,
The owls go,"Who? Who? Who?"
And the black cats yowl
And the green ghosts howl,
Scary Halloween boo! - Nina Willis Walter

...help transform Halloween into a holiday with some ethical values, have children collect food for the hungry rather than candy for the well-fed.
- Jeffrey K. Salkin in: Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Child's Bar Or Bat Mitzvah, Jewish Lights Publishing, 2005, p. 67

Eye of newt, and toe of frog,
Wool of bat, and tongue of dog,
Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting,
Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing,—
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and caldron bubble.
- William Shakespeare in: Medical Arena, Volumes 7-8, 1898, p. 122

It is as if French society were looking for a kind of civil religion capable of replacing Christian symbolism … At Halloween the dead are imitated and their ‘ghosts’ come back to frighten us and threaten us with death. On All Saints’ Day, in contrast, we affirm that the departed are alive and that we are promised to rejoin them in the City of God.
- Hippolyte Simon, bishop of Clermont-Ferrand, Vers une France païenne? (Toward a Pagan France?)

The witches fly
Across the sky,
The owls go,"Who? Who? Who?"
And the black cats yowl
And the green ghosts howl,
Scary Halloween boo!
- Nina Willis Walter in: Jill Bialosky History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life, Simon and Schuster, Feb 7, 2012, p. 104

Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night

the rituals surrounding souling, in which supplicants moved from door to door asking for food in return for a prayer for the dead, bear a resemblance to modern Halloween customs, especially since soulers went from house to house with hallowed-out turnip lanterns, whose candle connoted a soul in purgatory... - Nicholas Rogers.

Nicholas Rogers in Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, Oxford University Press, 2003

Halloween at the end of the millennium has become a major party night for adults, arguably the most important after New Year’s Eve. An estimated 65 percent of American adults take part in Halloween, beyond, that is, simply handing out candy.
- p.6

...the rituals surrounding souling, in which supplicants moved from door to door asking for food in return for a prayer for the dead, bear a resemblance to modern Halloween customs, especially since soulers went from house to house with hallowed-out turnip lanterns, whose candle connoted a soul in purgatory...souling customs offer a clue to the survival of Hallowmass in England after the Protestant Reformation.
- p.29

Over time Halloween became an important night for customers, as well; for whereas children of the interwar years constructed their costumes from old clothes in the attic; for or closet and simply blackened their faces with burnt cork or soot, children in the more affluent 1950s and 1960s were more likely to buy Halloween masks and perhaps other articles of their costume from retail stores. By making Halloween consumer-oriented and infantile, civic and industrial promoters hoped to eliminate its anarchic features.
- p. 88

Halloween in the manner it is today. In the days of homemade costumes, revelers did not draw upon the stock characters from the early horror genre, whether Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Mummy, or King Kong. They were more likely to emulate Charlie Chaplin or Mae West than Universal pictures monsters.
- p. 106

...the Day of the Dead was not so very different from Halloween. Both shared a common European legacy as well as a dynamic fusion of pre-Christian and Christian belief. If this is the case, then their differences may be grounded not only in the peculiarities of that syncretism, but also in the ways the two holidays subsequently developed in the New World...By the time Halloween was transported to North America, its links to the Catholic festival of All Souls’ were attenuated, seriously fractured by the Protestant Reformation.
- p. 146