At no other time of the year were the living more connected with the dead in their imaginations than at Hallowtide.

Transcription

1 Holidays in GB and the USA What is Halloween? Transkription des Filmtextes It s Halloween in Germany. A time to carve scary faces. Each year there are more pumpkins to choose from. Halloween is becoming more and more popular in Europe. What will the Jack-O-Lantern look like this year? Children Then comes the hard question What is Halloween? The word Halloween is a very old English word. It s a short form of All Hallows Evening. Halloween, on October 31st, is the night before All Hallows or All Saints Day the first of the two Roman Catholic commemorations of the dead. The next day is All Souls Day. These first 2 days in November were called Hallowtide in the Middle Ages. At no other time of the year were the living more connected with the dead in their imaginations than at Hallowtide. It was a time of frightening images the gruesome deaths of martyred saints the horrifying agonies suffered by dead friends and relatives, imprisoned and helpless in the torture chambers of purgatory. But this is only one of Halloween s faces. County Mayo, Ireland, on the westernmost shores of Europe. The Museum of Country Life, part of the National Museum of Ireland, is one of few museums in the world with a special exhibit about the history of Halloween. Old masks worn by men and boys who once wandered house to house in merriment and mischief and straw crosses that the country folk made to keep evil and misfortune from their doorsteps. Hallowtide was a strange and eerie time throughout all of Europe. People prayed for the souls of the dead and sometimes even punished themselves in order to shorten their time in purgatory. The ghosts of the dead were thought to return briefly to their former homes. But in Ireland the cycle of Catholic holy days overlapped with cycles of the old Irish calendar. Halloween, the beginning of Hallowtide on October 31st, was the end of the year a time of passage from light into darkness. In Irish it was called Oiche Shamhna - the night when winter, or Samhain began. Clodagh Doyle, M.A.,National Museum of Ireland:

2 October 31st was the night that we celebrate Samhain and on that night you re still in the season of autumn and you re nearly in the season of winter. And it s a very special time because you re between two seasons. And people believed that the supernatural world out there was much more apparent at this time. They had a great belief that the fairies or otherworld beings were about on that night and they also believed that the souls of the people who had died would return on that night. Catholic beliefs and deeply rooted Irish folk beliefs came together at Hallowtide. Ghosts returned home. Mythical beings from Ireland s ancient past were out and about: pookahs spoiling the harvest, dullachans carrying their own heads under their arms, and fairies slipping out of gateways to the underworld. Even today Irish farmers leave these places on their fields untouched in fear of what might crawl out of them. They re called sithe in Irish and go far back to Ireland s stone age. Oiche Shamhna or Halloween was also called Snap Apple Night or Nutcrack Night, in Ireland as well as in the British Isles, after favorite holiday games played in the homes and at the firesides that night. Sean O Riain has fond memories of his childhood in Ireland. Dr. Sean O Riain, Irish Embassy, Berlin: As a child, Oiche Shamhna or Halloween was a very positive time of the year. It was simply great fun. I remember all of the games we used to play as children. We had to bite an apple with our hands tied behind our back or we had to fish a coin out of a basin full of water with (our) teeth alone Or we had all of these nuts which were opened and eaten at Halloween. It wasn t at all frightening and it wasn t at all something associated with violence or horror [ ] And we used to say in Irish: Is trua nach dtagann Oiche Shamhna ach uair amhain sa bhliain It s a pity that Oiche Shamhna only comes once a year. Today, the global Halloween horror business has found a home in Ireland as well. Boy: You know what? I think you have it on upside down! Oh yeah, I do! But a bairin breac, a traditional cake used to foretell the future, can still be found in the stores. A piece of cloth baked inside means poverty, a coin prophesies great wealth. You have to look or chew very carefully. No one wants to choke on the future! Sean O Riain: Oh, look! This one has a ring in it. It mustn t be for me because I m already married! Between 1840 and 1900 millions of Irish fled the island s poverty and starvation in the first great Catholic emigration wave to the United States. In their baggage was a rich mixture of religious and popular folk beliefs. In America, one Halloween custom took on a new form. Instead of turnips, people took up the larger, hollow and much prettier pumpkin for carving their ghost or All Souls lamps. The native North American pumpkin gave Halloween the face we all recognize today.

3 By the turn of the 20th century, Halloween was well on its way to becoming an American festival. In a Halloween story about vampires, American writer Julian Hawthorne called it the carnival time of disembodied spirits. That s what Halloween became. A kind of carnival - in autumn... one big night of European freedom when people can test limits in the land of unlimited opportunity. People in the street A hippie...is a person...who wants peace... and has long hair. Who are you? What? I m a farmer. You are a farmer? You are a farmer? Oh. Through it all lurks a familiar figure reminding us of Halloween s beginnings. How strange that a festival with roots in commemorating the dead took on the adjective happy in America! Imagine wishing someone Fröhliche Allerheiligen! or Frohes Totenfest! Grim reaper: Happy Halloween you little kids hahahahaha! Halloween is a 7-billion-dollar holiday in the United States and it s not just for kids. Young men dressed as cows: Throw you utters, boys. HaHaHaHaHa Halloween fan: There you are.... I like to decorate and I like to scare the kids! Snapping for apples and fishing for coins are long gone almost everywhere. The Halloween horror business has replaced such innocent images. But trick-or-treating will never go away. Little red witch: Trick or Treat! The children who say trick or treat at doorsteps in America today are not the same ones who show up later at night. Two separate groups are out and about on Halloween. The younger ones are out for sweets. The older ones are out for tricks. They usually play their tricks on friends. Part of the fun is talking about it the next day in school. Less fun is being caught by the police when things get out of hand! Boys: Soap... shaving cream...

4 Oh yaah... won t be put on windows, really? Oh NoNoNoNoNo! Many American cities restrict Trick or Treat to daylight hours, or to special trick-or-treat streets. People fear traffic accidents - or that something else bad might happen to children out alone. At no other time of the year were the living more connected with the dead in their imaginations than at Halloween. Halloween has long been the perfect time to scare the devil out of someone - or to prove one s own bravery. Ghost stories were one way. Haunted Houses became a more exciting way. They re set up in vacant buildings throughout the United States. Admission fees usually serve some good cause in the community. There are hundreds of such Haunted Houses in the US. But every night the lines of visitors nearly encircle this house. It s run by the Boys and Girls Club of Sparta, Wisconsin, a small town just east of the Mississippi River. While visitors are lining up outside, the actors and actresses are slipping into the roles they ll play in one of the twelve rooms and many secret passageways. Setting up and running a Haunted House takes months of planning. Each of the rooms the visitors will pass through has its own special themes and thrills. Scaring people who want to be scared is not an easy task. But this house is scary on its own. While they rehearse in their minds what they will say and what they will do and how they will move in order to scare people, these two girls playing the parts of orphans know all too well why this is a scary place. The Sparta Haunted House is set up in a former state home for handicapped and orphaned children. Many of them died right here in these very rooms. This was once the clinic. The children are buried in the cemetery just up the road - beneath nameless gravestones. People say their spirits haunt this house. Some actors and actresses have that in mind before the show even begins. They ve seen things heard things footsteps. This little extra kick that reality provides makes the house a major attraction for the entire region. This is the place to visit for the annual Halloween rite of passage for a brief trip through purgatory and a safe glimpse at the otherworld. Inside Haunted House: Have fun! No not! Slow please! See my latest experiment, ja? Get him alive in three days!

5 Rise from the dead, my lovely! Rise! Help me! Where is my Mummy? Where is my Daddy? Play with me. Take me home with you. Where is my Mummy? Play with me. Take me home with you! Clodagh Doyle, M.A., National Museum of Ireland: Halloween is nothing like that in Ireland. Something must have happened to it in the United States. It is a festival that is much milder here. It s celebrated mainly in the home. There is also the element that the dead might return on that night. But people welcomed the dead members of their family should they be unsettled and like to return that night to the family home. Sometimes food was left out for them so that they could be made to feel welcome.