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mysticallymanic · 4 years

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Ancient Origins of Halloween

Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, mostly in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1.

This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth.

In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes.

When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the 400 years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple, and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of bobbing for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

All Saints' Day

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1.

By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.

All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

Halloween Comes to America

The celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.

As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.

Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.In the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato Famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.

History of Trick-or-Treating

Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.

In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes.

Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century.

Halloween Parties

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague some celebrations in many communities during this time.

By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated.

Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats.

Thus, a new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country’s second largest commercial holiday after Christmas.

READ MORE: Who Invented Candy Corn?

Halloween Movies

Speaking of commercial success, scary Halloween movies have a long history of being box office hits. Classic Halloween movies include the “Halloween” franchise, based on the 1978 original film directed by John Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasance, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Tony Moran. In “Halloween,” a young boy named Michael Myers murders his 17-year-old sister and is committed to jail, only to escape as a teen on Halloween night and seek out his old home, and a new target.

Considered a classic horror film down to its spooky soundtrack, it inspired 11 other films in the franchise and other “slasher films” like “Scream,” “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13.” More family-friendly Halloween movies include “Hocus Pocus,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Beetlejuice” and “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”

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All Souls Day and Soul Cakes

The American Halloween tradition of trick-or-treating probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives.

The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as “going a-souling,” was eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be given ale, food and money.

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant worry.

On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits.

On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

Black Cats and Ghosts

Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.

Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into black cats.

We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred (it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe). And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

Halloween Matchmaking and Lesser-Known Rituals

But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today’s trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead.

In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday—with luck, by next Halloween—be married. In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it.

In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl’s future husband. (In some versions of this legend, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.)

Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night she would dream about her future husband.

Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands’ initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water and stood in front of mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their husbands’ faces.

Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry. At others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first down the aisle.

Of course, whether we’re asking for romantic advice or trying to avoid seven years of bad luck, each one of these Halloween superstitions relies on the goodwill of the very same “spirits” whose presence the early Celts felt so keenly.

#31 days of halloween

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theantisocialcritic · 4 years

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Archive Project - January 5, 2014 - Best Films of 2013 Part 2

Welcome! Ladies and gentlemen to The First Annual Hummy Awards! As this is in writing you can't tell but i'm currently standing behind a golden podium, wearing a fine tuxedo while riding a white horse as I entertain you tonight! 2013 has been an awesome year for movies! Long awaited premieres, sequels and even a few new franchises came into being this year! Now it is my pleasure to announce which of them I considered to be the best. In the past year, through various means, I have been able to catch 53 of the years biggest movies. My top ten movies will come ONLY out of the ones I saw on this list. Movies like Wolf of Wall-street, Only God Forgives, Pain and Gain, Fast and Furious 6 and Movie 43 are all exempt from my criticism as to date I have not seen them. I should also like to note that this list is in MY PERSONAL OPINION. While I greatly enjoyed films like Man of Steel, Catching Fire and The Hobbit, I didn't feel that they matched the quality of the other movies on this list. Without further ado, here are the runners up for the Top 10 Movies of 2013: Dallas Buyers Club, Rush, Iron Man 3, The World's End, Don Jon. Now…..Drumroll please.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzAfTmC3It0 Here they are!! My Top 10 Films of 2013 are…. ————————————————————————————————————————— 10. The Great Gatsby ————————————————————————————————————————— I didn't get to see this one till just this December but i'm very sorry that I missed it! Great Gatsby is an awesome adaption of one of the greatest works of American Literature of the last century! Leonardo Di Caprio and Toby whats his name both give great performances and the story carries all the symbolism and meaning from the book over very well. A great example of how to create a unique twist while adapting a source material! ————————————————————————————————————————— 9. Elysium ————————————————————————————————————————— What do Matt Daemon and the director of District 9 come up with when you put them in a room together (other than a love letter to socialism)? The answer is one of the coolest, most original Sci-Fi, Action movies this year! Sure it does pull off subtlety in the same way a Baseball Bat does, but under all that is one of the best Action movies all year! ————————————————————————————————————————— 8. Captain Phillips ————————————————————————————————————————— Based on an incredible true story, Captain Phillips works as an incredibly tense Action-Drama that will keep you on the edge of your seat. This movie is blessed with amazing performances by Tom Hanks and the previously unheard of actors playing the Somali Pirates. Speaking of Tom Hanks... ————————————————————————————————————————— 7. Saving Mr. Banks ————————————————————————————————————————— …Here is Tom's second major role this year playing Walt Disney as he attempts to secure the rights to P.L. Traviers famous novel Mary Poppins into the famed musical. A great movie with humor and real heart, Saving Mr. Banks brings a surprisingly honest image of Disney to the big screen and succeeds in making every character on screen deep and sympathetic. ————————————————————————————————————————— 6. Inside Llewyn Davis ————————————————————————————————————————— Gotta love the Coen Brothers! No Country for Old Men is one of the best films i've ever seen, but prior to seeing this with the Chicago Critics Club I had next to no interesting in seeing it. I'm glad I did because its one of the years most interesting movies! Filled with lots of symbolism, cool folk songs and a plot that does really well for one with nothing happening in it, Inside Llewyn Davis does really good. ————————————————————————————————————————— 5. Twelve Years a Slave ————————————————————————————————————————— Who wants to get depressed? Twelve Years a Slave isn't a movie I particularly like as much as I do admire how good a piece of storytelling it is. Its a harsh, brutal reminder of this countries darkest hours during the age of slavery and a glimpse into the hearts of the men that kept the institution alive. Dark, disturbing, unpleasant, but powerful. ————————————————————————————————————————— 4. Gravity ————————————————————————————————————————— I don't usually praise a film on it's visuals, if I did i'd have to give Transformers movies a pass as artwork. Gravity however proves that a film can hold itself on being a visual spectacle while still being a tense thriller. ————————————————————————————————————————— 3. Frozen ————————————————————————————————————————— I'm a harsh critic of Disney, but when one of their movies can do as much for me as Frozen has then I simply have to praise it. Mixing the aesthetics of Pixar and the Princess Genre with a surprisingly intelligent plot critiquing the concepts of true love and meaningful relationships together and you get one of the best films by Disney since Beauty and the Beast! ————————————————————————————————————————— 2. Prisoners ————————————————————————————————————————— Finally! A movie that proves people want to see Hugh Jackmann in a movie that isn't about the Wolverine! Prisoners is an incredibly tense crime thriller than explores the darkness in the hearts of man. How far would YOU go to protect your children? Could you hurt someone? Could you torture someone? Could you kill? Prisoners explores how far even a deeply religious man can fall attempting to save the people he cares about. ————————————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————————————— And now…. The Hummy Award for Best Movie of 2013. Of all the movies i've seen this year, none had quite the impact on me than this one. None were quite as fresh and original as this one. None made me squeal with childish glee at the things I was seeing as much as this one. And that movie was…. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzAfTmC3It0 ————————————————————————————————————————— 1. Pacific Rim ————————————————————————————————————————— I've argued with people as to why this movie is great. People have tried to convince me that it's shallow, or dumb or unoriginal, but its none of those things! Pacific Rim is an awesome movie that succeeds in everything it's trying to do. It's insanely fun to watch giant robots fight giant monsters and while the plot is simplistic, its entirely functional and gives the movie the context is needs to be really tense. Its cool to see how the film really does give a lot of respect to other countries as the world comes together to face the threats in this movie and gives them all a chance to show off for a bit. Not to mention, Rinko Kikuchi as one of the coolest women over to be put to film starring as the female lead. Feel free to disagree. But to me, no movie deserves more attention this year than Pacific Rim. Which is sad because this movie unfortunately flopped in the US… Thankfully it did well overseas so… PACIFIC RIM 2!! ————————————————————————————————————————— ————————————————————————————————————————— Thank you for reading! Heres for another great year of filmmaking! Yay for 2014!! Live long and prosper!

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recentanimenews · 5 years

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The Future is Now: 30 Years of Patlabor the Movie

If you're not familiar with Headgear's Mobile Police Patlabor, here's the elevator pitch: in the near-future, advances in robotics technology give birth to “Labors” - mass-produced, human-piloted robots that revolutionize the construction industry. This spurs a huge economic boom in Japan as the public and private sectors employ thousands of Labors for massive civic engineering projects, such as transforming entire sections of Tokyo Bay into reclaimed land for real estate.

As with any revolutionary paradigm shift, the arrival of Labors has unintended consequences. Soon malcontents from all walks of life (disgruntled employees, career criminals, eco-terrorists, etc.) begin using Labors to commit all manner of major and minor crimes.

In response, the Tokyo city government unveils a new police unit dedicated to investigating and discouraging Labor crime: the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Special Vehicles Section (also known as the “Mobile Police”). The citizens of Tokyo can rest easy knowing that the highly-trained members of Special Vehicles Section 1 are ready to keep the peace with the help of their specialized “Patrol Labors” (hence “Patlabor”).

This sounds like a typical set-up for a mecha anime crossed with a police procedural, but here's the twist: Mobile Police Patlabor doesn't focus on Special Vehicles Section 1. Instead, it tells the story of Special Vehicles Section 2 (also known as SV2 for short), the back-up squad comprised of all of the losers, misfits, and rejects who couldn't make the cut for Section 1.

Overworked, under-staffed, and unpopular with the tax-payers, SV2 is banished to a strip of reclaimed land in the middle of nowhere. There they spend more time filing paperwork, fishing, tending tomatoes, cutting grass, and ordering Chinese take-out than they do fighting Labor crimes. Even in the future, gainful employment is hard to find.

Spanning two OVA series, a 47 episode TV series, three theatrical anime films, a live-action TV series, a manga and more, Mobile Police Patlabor is a sprawling franchise. It excels at both serious character drama and situational comedy, and some of its finest qualities are distilled into Patlabor: The Movie, a 1989 theatrical anime film directed by Mamoru Oshii, written by Kazunori Ito, and featuring animation production by Production I.G and Studio Deen.

As a director, Oshii has carved out a reputation for being a big thinker with visually stunning and philosophically dense films such as Angel's Egg, Avalon, the Kerberos Saga, and Ghost in the Shell. Less well known is Oshii's irreverent sense of humor, which he displays in works such as Urusei Yatsura, The Fast Food Grifters, and of course, Mobile Police Patlabor.

At first glance, Patlabor: The Movie seems like a less serious, more comedic entry in Oshii's filmography, but a close viewing reveals a film full of Oshii's trademark religious symbolism, skepticism towards authority, and ambivalence in the face of relentless technological progress.

Patlabor: The Movie begins with a simple premise: when the release of a ground-breaking Labor operating system coincides with a bizarre string of robots going berserk, the members of SV2 suspect that the software's brilliant but elusive programmer has deliberately sabotaged thousands of Labors in an act of religiously-motivated terrorism.

The truth proves difficult to uncover. The mysterious programmer, Eiichi Hoba (nicknamed “Jehovah” by his peers at M.I.T.), has already committed suicide and Shinohara Heavy Industries – the software's developer – is quick to deny any malpractice in order to protect their economic interests. Even the police and local governments seem more concerned with maintaining consumer confidence than preventing disaster, forcing SV2 to step outside the law in an effort to minimize the damage.

Oshii's films have a singular obsession with the machinations of state force. His movies are filled with heavy ordinance, military helicopters, tanks, and firearms of all shapes and sizes. But despite leaning heavily on the aesthetics of these war-machines, Oshii maintains very humanist sensibilities, and Patlabor: The Movie views authority through an extremely skeptical lens.

The heroes are low-level civil servants who get by with guts and brains, while the antagonists are faceless corporations ready to screw over the public in the pursuit of profit and stuffed-suit politicians who compound the problems through a combination of complicity and a nigh pathological inability to act. As a result, Patlabor: The Movie feels powerfully relevant, even thirty years after its initial publication.

Like other Oshii films, Patlabor: The Movie explores matters both mundane and metaphysical through its allusions and religious imagery, evoking Old Testament stories about the fragility and foolishness of humanity. Note to future architects: perhaps it's a bad idea to christen your incalculably expensive projects with titles that call to mind the destruction of the Tower of Babel, the Great Flood, or an ancient city with a reputation as sullied as that of modern day Las Vegas.

Patlabor: The Movie is equally ambivalent about the breakneck speed of technological progress. While modern companies and governments rush to adopt the latest, hottest Labor software, a pair of detectives investigating the programmer's suicide traipse through landfills stacked with abandoned relics of modern life. Meanwhile, cutting edge robots labor among ramshackle slums stacked full of wooden buildings constructed during the Showa Era.

It's a stark contrast, and a not-so-subtle reminder that while technology surges heedlessly into the future, human culture struggles to keep up.

Even if you're not in the mood for a deep dive into the film's imagery and themes, Patlabor: The Movie is still a meticulously animated and action-packed film, with a strong blend of political intrigue, pot-boiler detective antics, and giant robot mayhem leading up to a nail-biting conclusion as SV2 storms the humongous off-shore construction facility known as the Ark during a raging typhoon in a desperate attempt to avert disaster.

Patlabor: The Movie is currently available on home video from Sentai Filmworks as part of the Patlabor The Mobile Police Ultimate Collection Blu-Ray set, which is released in the United States by their Maiden Japan imprint. The film is also available via online streaming through HIDIVE. If mecha action mixed with humor, humanism, and heart is your forte, then you owe it to yourself to check it out, especially since the series feels more topical with each passing day.

And always remember Patlabor's prophetic tagline: “This is a work of fiction...but in ten years, who knows?”

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Paul Chapman is the host of The Greatest Movie EVER! Podcast and GME! Anime Fun Time.

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