It’s only recently a thing in Britain, when I was a lad, trick or treat was something we saw on American Television. We did penny for the Guy. We didn’t have a prom at school either, both.of those cultural appropriations are recent on this side of the pond…
E.A. Blair: When my daughter was in kindergarten, she got in trouble for giving literature to a Jehovah’s Witness! (It was a Halloween coloring sheet from her school, which she gave to a girl at the Montessori where she went in the afternoon.)
Only recently? Do you not count the artistic tradition because you carved lesser vegetables? (“Swede” is what’s known in the new world as “rutabaga”, I believe, naturally somewhat overshadowed by the more picturesque pumpkin.)
Donn. I didn’t carve a pumpkin till 1994. When my eldest son was 4 and wanted to go trick or treating…since the early 90’s the halloween festival has gone from strength to strength and has now nearly eclipsed the 5th November tradition of my youth which was huge in the 60’s and 70’s…
Alas for lost traditions. Maybe it’s more a northern thing, but I believe pre-Christian up to the ’70s people carved root vegetables. Not making this up.
In my youth in the 19070’s, we went ‘guising – and were expected to do a “turn” (nursery rhyme, or song, or dance) before you got your reward… which would more likely to be peanuts in their shells than sweeties.
I’m a son of the manse, and the children from the village would visit to dook for apples, or to try to spear apples by standing on a chair and dropping a fork into a tub of water containing apples (super-frustrating and probably intended to teach something about perseverance), or – my favourite – to stand on tiptoe with hands behind your back, and crane you neck to eat from a black treacle-covered bannock suspended by string from the ceiling.
@Donn Cave… Carving out turnips was a job for the parents, because it required strength and a sharp knife. And, inevitably, mashed turnips featured heavily in that evening’s meal.
arbeyu: “Neepdockers” is a new one to me, but I’m well familiar with being called a “Teuchter”, a “Tattyhowker”, etc. When I was young, like you, but a bit earlier, we went “guising”; “trick or treat” was unheard of, but we got our reward anyway.
Mashed neeps (and mashed tatties) are essential accompaniments to haggis, at Halloween or any other dates in the year, whether or not the neeps are carved into lanterns.
As a son of the manse, your dad must have been very disappointed in you. I was not a son of the manse, but was brought up as a regular churchgoer and it was not until I became an adult that I realised that religions of any kind are phoney. Unfortunately, the rest of my surviving relatives are still staunch churchgoers.
I predict that the next comment from M27Holts will be along the lines that he thought I was dead – nae deid yet, Rob!
Son of the Manse…sounds like something from Lord of the Rings…..I am looking for suggestions for reasonably priced but excellent single malts for my Eldest at the Winter solstice. 100 note budget for two bottles?
M27Holts, Benromach 10 years (a Speyside) and Kilchoman Machir Bay (an Islay) are two of my favourites at just under £50 each on Amazon. As a side note my spell checker just corrected Islay to Islam!!
@son of glenner. Three of my siblings are still church-goers, and two are as irreligious as me.
I personally think that being a SOTM contributed to my lack of religion, because I had an insiders view of just how man-made religion is. It was a step on the way to realising that the whole concept of a god was an invention by humans.
Alastair Green — Thank you for the link to the History for Atheists blog! I was impressed by the FAQ, and I expect to be spending some time there. Atheists and rationalists are subject to the same cognitive traps as everybody else — tribalism, motivated reasoning, etc. — so informed self-critique is always worth reading.
There is absolutely no Archeological or scientific proof that a geezer was born in a cow shed on 25th Dec 0 CE. Thus until proven, the story is a Myth is it not? Any written proofs such as the bible can be safely ignored, because the authors are not kosher due to confirmation bias…
Anyway the christian celebration is very close to the Northern Hemispheres shortest day is it not? And any pagan sun worshipping types would likely aliso celebrate the mid winter passing and the coming of tge sun again, and that celebration was nicked by christians? End of…
M27, not to mention that THOSE authors were most probably unborn at the time they relate. Or else dead by the time of writing. Unlike our Gracious Host here.
As to your next observation, it seems to be spot on. It must have been VERY important in ancient times to be aware of the seasons. Of course, Babylon had sophisticated astronomers (astrologists really) so they needed a timing scheme easily divisible (360 days) and the Visigoths apparently also had developed a kind of portable Stonehenge in the form of a bronze rotary slide rule to calculate the appropriate dates to celebrate. All long before Common Era. At least, it has been so related on Teh Interwebs (pbui) during my own lifetime …
On the pagan roots of Christmas article –
* He’s so zealous that I became a little skeptical of his skepticism. If anyone cares, might look for other sources on the connections with Yule etc.
* Disappointing to see no reference to the true meaning of Santa Claus-mas: hallucinogeic mushrooms and shamanism in the Scandinavian north.
* The Halloween debunking seems to be fairly convincing that it doesn’t bear any real significant resemblance to Samhain.
I am currently under the influence of several hobgoblins* but I do not really know much about Walpurgist Nacht or whatever the witches night was based upon. I am sure that different cultural tropes can be followed and as such the celebration of Halloween is arbitrary as all celebrations are…
Sorry, SOG. Haggis in a kid’s trick-or-treat bag was the image I had in mind. After scoring their stash, they will go through the bag, going after the favorites and leaving behind any unfamiliar bits. Several days later, their haggis will have been fully ripened, a long time deid. That is how it was awful.
@postdoggerel. There’s nae guid Scots bairn wha’d raither a sweetie than a huggis, in my ken. Mair chance o’ the sweetie bein’ left at the bottom o’ the poke!
If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat? (Roger Waters)
That Water’s quote is ambiguous to a Scot, because a haggis IS a pudding. As Robert Burns put it.
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang ‘s my airm.
As an aside, it was many years before I realised that my dad had been pulling my leg by telling me that the Chief Rabbi of Scotland was… Rabbi Burns.
I have a problem with most poetry ss it’s purely subjective. Give me the purity of the standard model and it’s proven stature in describing the more useful quantum effects….
@m27holts. Not sure what to make of your comment about poetry. Can’t be doing with most of it myself. Wordsworth and his bloody Daffodils. Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot. Anything by Wilfred Sodding Owen. Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas where the fricking footnotes are longer than the gawdawful poem.
But Burns wrote a poem about haggis. I like haggis. And you can’t beat This Be The Verse by P. Larkin.
M27,
you should hope to never see
a poem as a singularity,
upon who Shwartzchild boundary
you cross, so parlously.
and having passed
beyond that limit
you, like the poet,
can’t show what’s in it,
leaving us to assume you see
zero in infinity.
Postdog, were you never tortured by Tennysson, Harrassed by Hardy, wasted by Wordsworth, Battered by Bronte, Laid low by Lawrence, ousted by Owen….The only English Teacher I liked was Miss Todd Jones. A welsh lilt to give a boner to a dead smoker. I would have crawled across broken glass to.poke twigs in her shit….
Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible. Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true. Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts. Ophelia Benson
In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think. Kenan Malik
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ... Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world. Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available... Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper. Nelson Jones, Heresy Corner
Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming. New Humanist
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Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics. Mano Singham
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Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour. Terry Sanderson, NSS President
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includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and
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October 16, 2009
Well, about that…
Jehovah’s Witnesses hate Hallowe’en because they don’t like having random strangers ringing their doorbells.
E.A. Blair: we may as well just stop now since you have clearly produced the winning comment for this week.
It’s only recently a thing in Britain, when I was a lad, trick or treat was something we saw on American Television. We did penny for the Guy. We didn’t have a prom at school either, both.of those cultural appropriations are recent on this side of the pond…
E.A. Blair: When my daughter was in kindergarten, she got in trouble for giving literature to a Jehovah’s Witness! (It was a Halloween coloring sheet from her school, which she gave to a girl at the Montessori where she went in the afternoon.)
Only recently? Do you not count the artistic tradition because you carved lesser vegetables? (“Swede” is what’s known in the new world as “rutabaga”, I believe, naturally somewhat overshadowed by the more picturesque pumpkin.)
Shouldn’t Mo be blinking?
Spoinggg…
Donn. I didn’t carve a pumpkin till 1994. When my eldest son was 4 and wanted to go trick or treating…since the early 90’s the halloween festival has gone from strength to strength and has now nearly eclipsed the 5th November tradition of my youth which was huge in the 60’s and 70’s…
Alas for lost traditions. Maybe it’s more a northern thing, but I believe pre-Christian up to the ’70s people carved root vegetables. Not making this up.
It isn’t an easy job, either. Pumpkins not only look better, they’re naturally somewhat hollow.
In my youth in the 19070’s, we went ‘guising – and were expected to do a “turn” (nursery rhyme, or song, or dance) before you got your reward… which would more likely to be peanuts in their shells than sweeties.
I’m a son of the manse, and the children from the village would visit to dook for apples, or to try to spear apples by standing on a chair and dropping a fork into a tub of water containing apples (super-frustrating and probably intended to teach something about perseverance), or – my favourite – to stand on tiptoe with hands behind your back, and crane you neck to eat from a black treacle-covered bannock suspended by string from the ceiling.
Neeps (turnips) were carved into lanterns.
OK. We were a bunch of teuchters and neepdockers.
Dammit, now I’m all nostalgic for simpler times.
Teuchters, Neepdockers, Tattyhowkers… aka Rubes or Hicks.
“Yeah. They’re hicks, Rita!” (Bill Murray, Groundhog Day).
@Donn Cave… Carving out turnips was a job for the parents, because it required strength and a sharp knife. And, inevitably, mashed turnips featured heavily in that evening’s meal.
arbeyu: “Neepdockers” is a new one to me, but I’m well familiar with being called a “Teuchter”, a “Tattyhowker”, etc. When I was young, like you, but a bit earlier, we went “guising”; “trick or treat” was unheard of, but we got our reward anyway.
Mashed neeps (and mashed tatties) are essential accompaniments to haggis, at Halloween or any other dates in the year, whether or not the neeps are carved into lanterns.
As a son of the manse, your dad must have been very disappointed in you. I was not a son of the manse, but was brought up as a regular churchgoer and it was not until I became an adult that I realised that religions of any kind are phoney. Unfortunately, the rest of my surviving relatives are still staunch churchgoers.
I predict that the next comment from M27Holts will be along the lines that he thought I was dead – nae deid yet, Rob!
Son of the Manse…sounds like something from Lord of the Rings…..I am looking for suggestions for reasonably priced but excellent single malts for my Eldest at the Winter solstice. 100 note budget for two bottles?
M27Holts, Benromach 10 years (a Speyside) and Kilchoman Machir Bay (an Islay) are two of my favourites at just under £50 each on Amazon. As a side note my spell checker just corrected Islay to Islam!!
Thanks for that! I just googled Son of the Manse…never too old to learn new stuff, never heard that phrase before though…
Interesting article on what truth there is to the pagan roots of Christmas: https://historyforatheists.com/2020/12/pagan-christmas/
@son of glenner. Three of my siblings are still church-goers, and two are as irreligious as me.
I personally think that being a SOTM contributed to my lack of religion, because I had an insiders view of just how man-made religion is. It was a step on the way to realising that the whole concept of a god was an invention by humans.
Alastair Green — Thank you for the link to the History for Atheists blog! I was impressed by the FAQ, and I expect to be spending some time there. Atheists and rationalists are subject to the same cognitive traps as everybody else — tribalism, motivated reasoning, etc. — so informed self-critique is always worth reading.
There is absolutely no Archeological or scientific proof that a geezer was born in a cow shed on 25th Dec 0 CE. Thus until proven, the story is a Myth is it not? Any written proofs such as the bible can be safely ignored, because the authors are not kosher due to confirmation bias…
Anyway the christian celebration is very close to the Northern Hemispheres shortest day is it not? And any pagan sun worshipping types would likely aliso celebrate the mid winter passing and the coming of tge sun again, and that celebration was nicked by christians? End of…
M27, not to mention that THOSE authors were most probably unborn at the time they relate. Or else dead by the time of writing. Unlike our Gracious Host here.
As to your next observation, it seems to be spot on. It must have been VERY important in ancient times to be aware of the seasons. Of course, Babylon had sophisticated astronomers (astrologists really) so they needed a timing scheme easily divisible (360 days) and the Visigoths apparently also had developed a kind of portable Stonehenge in the form of a bronze rotary slide rule to calculate the appropriate dates to celebrate. All long before Common Era. At least, it has been so related on Teh Interwebs (pbui) during my own lifetime …
On the pagan roots of Christmas article –
* He’s so zealous that I became a little skeptical of his skepticism. If anyone cares, might look for other sources on the connections with Yule etc.
* Disappointing to see no reference to the true meaning of Santa Claus-mas: hallucinogeic mushrooms and shamanism in the Scandinavian north.
* The Halloween debunking seems to be fairly convincing that it doesn’t bear any real significant resemblance to Samhain.
I am currently under the influence of several hobgoblins* but I do not really know much about Walpurgist Nacht or whatever the witches night was based upon. I am sure that different cultural tropes can be followed and as such the celebration of Halloween is arbitrary as all celebrations are…
Son of Glenner, it’s offal to think about haggis for Halloween.
Post dog, nect you will be dissing black pudding…you clot!
Sorry, SOG. Haggis in a kid’s trick-or-treat bag was the image I had in mind. After scoring their stash, they will go through the bag, going after the favorites and leaving behind any unfamiliar bits. Several days later, their haggis will have been fully ripened, a long time deid. That is how it was awful.
@postdoggerel. There’s nae guid Scots bairn wha’d raither a sweetie than a huggis, in my ken. Mair chance o’ the sweetie bein’ left at the bottom o’ the poke!
If you don’t eat your meat, you can’t have any pudding! How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat? (Roger Waters)
That Water’s quote is ambiguous to a Scot, because a haggis IS a pudding. As Robert Burns put it.
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great Chieftain o’ the Puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy of a grace
As lang ‘s my airm.
As an aside, it was many years before I realised that my dad had been pulling my leg by telling me that the Chief Rabbi of Scotland was… Rabbi Burns.
I have a problem with most poetry ss it’s purely subjective. Give me the purity of the standard model and it’s proven stature in describing the more useful quantum effects….
@m27holts. Not sure what to make of your comment about poetry. Can’t be doing with most of it myself. Wordsworth and his bloody Daffodils. Tennyson’s The Lady of Shallot. Anything by Wilfred Sodding Owen. Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas where the fricking footnotes are longer than the gawdawful poem.
But Burns wrote a poem about haggis. I like haggis. And you can’t beat This Be The Verse by P. Larkin.
M27,
you should hope to never see
a poem as a singularity,
upon who Shwartzchild boundary
you cross, so parlously.
and having passed
beyond that limit
you, like the poet,
can’t show what’s in it,
leaving us to assume you see
zero in infinity.
Postdog, were you never tortured by Tennysson, Harrassed by Hardy, wasted by Wordsworth, Battered by Bronte, Laid low by Lawrence, ousted by Owen….The only English Teacher I liked was Miss Todd Jones. A welsh lilt to give a boner to a dead smoker. I would have crawled across broken glass to.poke twigs in her shit….
At first I thought it was odd
That a Welsh girl would have the name Todd.
But I thought again, outside the box.
You made it clear Miss Todd was a fox.
Pearls before swine!
^ Physics Envy?
RE: would have crawled across broken glass to poke twigs in her shit…. https://www.facebook.com/reel/1726242358190075