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Home » Coverstory
The Legends, Symbols, and Customs of Halloween
By Jonathan Weichsel
Every day is shorter than the last. The sun, tired, can not rise as high into the sky or burn as bright. As the nights lengthen and the moon rises to ascendancy, we slowly shed our day-glow, and start to embrace the dark. We notice that we are somehow drawn to the moon, when before we were drawn to the sun. We become nocturnal creatures, lunar worshipers reveling throughout the night.
As we adapt to seasonal changes such as the shortening days and the brisk chill that is now in the air, we are also adapting to darker, more mysterious changes than those described by cold science, seasonal changes that, though we can't see or feel them, we still sense, and perceive. You see, every day lived in October brings us one day closer to Halloween.
For one day every year, October 31st, the boundary between the land of the living and the land of the dead is lifted. On this day ghosts and demons from the furthest reaches of the stratosphere are able to walk the earth, and wreak whatever mischief and mayhem they please. This is why so many legends, symbols, and customs are associated with October 31st, the day we call Halloween.
One of the wildest Halloween customs is the costume party. I am sure that every grown-up reading this has been to at least one. A busy street is blocked off, or a giant warehouse or ballroom is commandeered, and revelers in all sorts of insane costumes go about acting like lunatics. The anonymity provided by the costumes gives people license to behave in ways they otherwise wouldn't, and the permissive atmosphere leads to all sorts of wild and indecent behavior. This custom is older than recorded time.
The ancient Celts knew of the significance of October 31st. They were extremely afraid of the harm evil spirits could cause them on this day, and they reasoned, quite correctly, that since evil spirits only harm humans, if they disguised themselves as ghouls, and acted like ghouls, they could trick the evil spirits into thinking they really were ghouls, and they would be left alone. So on October 31st the Celts would don hideous masks of wood, straw, and clay depicting twisted demonic faces. They built huge bonfires representing the fires of hell, and they danced around these bonfires all night long, throwing animal bones into the fires, in imitation of the devils in hell that throw humans into the furnaces there. Back then as today, as the evening wore on the revelers would throw themselves into a chaos of debauchery and decadence, and the evil spirits would leave them be.
Another strange custom associated with Halloween is that of trick-or-treating. The phrase trick-or-treat is rather insidious, literally meaning "Give me candy (a treat) or I will play a mean trick on you." Only on Halloween, when the gates of the netherworld open wide and all sorts of evil spirits fly through the passageway in order to rove the earth, could children get away with such naughty behavior.
Trick-or-treating also comes from the Celts. On the evening of the dreaded October 31st, when all of the ghouls, ghosts, and spirits are out causing chaos, a gluttonous deity who goes by the name of Muck Olla flies up from Hades and captures as many evil beings as he can. Muck Olla, who looks like a giant wild boar, loves nothing more than food, and his favorite type of food is sweets. Since they don't have sweets Hades, the only day of the year he can get his hold on any is Halloween, and he has to be sure
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