Halloween Spooktacular

The History of Halloween

Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in).
Door

The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago 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 and direction 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 A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred 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.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.

Read more at The History Channel

Anoka, Minnesota: The Halloween Capital of the World
A Local Legacy

Did you know that Halloween has a capital? Anoka, Minnesota, calls itself the "Halloween Capital of the World," as it is one of the first cities in the United States to put on a Halloween celebration that discourages people from playing tricks or causing trouble.

Batman and Superman celebrating their interracial love

In 1920, a weeklong celebration was started in Anoka in an effort to take the trick out of trick-or-treat. The Grand Day Parade includes a Mass Band, made up of bands from four high schools. Another featured event is the Gray Ghost 5K Run, inspired by sightings of Bill Andberg, a marathon runner in his 70s whose gray-clad ghostly figure can often be seen running through a local cemetery.

There are many competitions during the week, including a pumpkin bake-off and one for best Halloween house decorations. Most participants wear their Halloween costumes. Do you suppose people wear the same costumes all week long?

[link credit]

Halloween Costume Suggestions
by Steve Hofstetter for Collegehumor.com

Want some creative Halloween costumes? Here's a few that will help you dress like your favorite sports star!

A hypodermic needle, a melon baller, and a “house for sale” sign: Barry Bonds

Shoe polish and a time machine: Kenny Rogers


A subscription to GQ, a copy of Jungle Fever, and a handful of excuses: Alex Rodriguez

Four gold watches: Roger Clemens

An equivalency diploma, a championship ring, and a bullet proof vest: Maurice Clarrett

20,000 empty seats: the NHL

Halloween Punktacular Music


Bats and Mice - "A Safe Bet"
Black Cat Music - "One Foot in the Grave"
Black Cat Music - "The Princess Dress"
Bouncing Souls - "Joe Lies"
Groovy Ghoulies - "Graveyard Girlfriend"
Phantom Surfers - "Everybody Up"
Queers - "Murder in the Brady House"
Strung Out - "Ghost Town"

Partying with The Bad Downs

First off, let me just say I am extremely hung over from last night. We went out last night with our friends Jeff and Amanda to see The Bad Downs and have a few too many drinks. I pulled a costume together at the last minute and went as a roadie, as you can tell by the picture above (I'm on the far left).

Unfortunately, I'm older than I used to be, and 8 beers and 2 Jaeger bombs affects this guy a lot more than it used to when I was a freshman in college. The Bad Downs were a pleasant surprise and I'll look forward to catching them the next time they are in town. I particularly enjoyed their cover of QOTSA's "If Only."

The Bad Downs @ Wiggly Field

Secondly, we've switched over to the new Beta version of Blogger. I don't really know what that means, but it sounded like a good idea at the time fifteen minutes ago.

Since I was couch-bound for most of the morning, I wasn't able to get to talk about any football or games this weekend, so consider yourself lucky to have a week off from that. What I do want to bring you today is some great music by an artist named James Eric Laczkowski.

Featured Artist: James Eric

I received an email from Veritas Lux Mea reader Annie about James Eric and his cover of Justin Timberlake's "Sexyback." After checking out his site, I was not only treated to an interesting cover of JT's song, but I also ran across a slew of great covers and originals from Mr. Laczkowski, who goes by James Eric on stage.


According to his website, James

"recent accomplishments include self-producing three full-length recordings (under the guise of Automatic Pilot and James Eric) as well as producing, editing, and composing the score for Meet The Monkeys a documentary directed by Collin Souter which focuses on the importance of arts education in elementary schools, and the positive effect that a non-for-profit theater company has on the Chicago community. James has also been a freelance film and music critic, and made several appearances on WGN radio as a contributor to Nick Digilio's pop culture talk show. Currently he spends the daylight hours as a digital broadcast evaluator for a media marketing corporation downtown. In the fall, he will be relaunching his Podcast, which will delve into dream analysis, existentialism, and theology. His true passion remains focused on songwriting and playing solo acoustic/electric performances in and around the Midwest."

I don't know about you, but anyone that can cover Sigur Ros gets big ups from me. Check out some of James' latest covers:

James Laczkowski - "Sexyback" (Justin Timberlake cover)
James Laczkowski - "Two Headed Boy" (Neutral Milk Hotel cover)
James Laczkowski - "Untitled No. 1" (Sigur Ros cover)
James Laczkowski - "Less Than You Think" (Wilco cover)
James Laczkowski - "Where Is My Mind?" (Pixies cover)
James Laczkowski - "Don't Cry" (Guns N' Roses cover)
James Laczkowski - "False Encyptions" (original)
James Laczkowski - "Alone is Better" (original)

More James Eric at Myspace

and very quickly, a little reading for your Sunday afternoon...

Love Me, I'm a Journalist: A profession's romance with itself
By Jack Shafer
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty

On Monday, I singled out Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz as I admonished journalists for overreacting to staff cuts at newsrooms around the country.

In his columns, Rutten warns that the threatened cuts at the Los Angeles Times will injure democracy and the "stakeholders" (as opposed to stockholders) who rely on the Times' broad coverage. Kurtz declares that news organizations' "corporate slashing" will "mean fewer bodies to pore over records at City Hall, the statehouse or federal agencies"—even though he gives no examples of a newspaper slashing its hard-news staff.


In an e-mail to me, Kurtz expands his point, writing that "some papers are overstaffed, not all belt-tightening is bad and newspapers need to adapt to the digital age. So I don't think I was playing 'hands off the newsroom or we'll shoot this investigative reporter'—just noting that some of these incredibly shrinking papers are likely to find investigative work an unaffordable luxury."

Rutten writes, too. He concurs that a high head count doesn't necessarily guarantee journalistic excellence, "but I'm just as sure that there is a number below which excellence becomes impossible. Is that number in the Times' case 939 or 800? I don't know, and neither does anybody else. I do know, though, that at some point, you have too few good and experienced people to do the job and I, for one, don't want to flirt with that edge."

However appalling newsroom downsizing may be for journalists, it will ultimately reveal what the people who run and own newspapers really think their publications are for. Scratch a serious reporter, and he'll offer volumes about the "public service" his newspaper performs in the form of investigations: It watchdogs government. It keeps corporations honest. It uncovers the dastardly deeds of foreign dictators and prevents genocide. It exposes quacks and charlatans. (It turns the common man into a Socrates if he reads the editorials!)

Newspaper people have enormous egos, if you get my drift, and don't mind massaging the big hairy things in public. Yet the press is hardly the sentry and bulwark of society that reporters imagine it to be. I don't mean to disparage reporters who put their lives on the line to file from Iraq, nor the sleuths who sift through databases to uncover wrongdoing by pharmaceutical companies, or any other enterprising reporter. But too many journalists who wave the investigative banner merely act as the conduit for other people's probing, as George Washington University professor and former investigative journalist Mark Feldstein suggests in a paper-in-progress titled "Ventriloquist or Dummy?"

Feldstein cites a 1992 piece by the late Christopher Georges in the Washington Monthly to illustrate his thesis. Georges reviewed about 800 articles by investigative reporters from the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times published over three years and found that "nearly 85 percent of them have been follow-ups or advances of leaked or published government reports." Georges' study is anecdotal since his piece did not name the stories analyzed or describe his methodology, but my hunch is that his conclusions aren't far from the truth...

Read the full story at Slate.