As everybody in the US, at least, knows, today is Halloween. But that’s not the whole story. If you live in Cornwall, England, it’s Allantide. Allantide continues into the next day, and locally they quite reasonably identify the difference as Allan Night and Allan Day. Cornish mothers don’t raise any dopes, evidently. The Allan in question is Saint Allan, who was the bishop of a place called Quimper about 1500 years ago.
I know what you’re thinking — the holiday’s in Cornwall, so Quimper must be in there somewhere, right? Nope. Quimper is in France. It’s right across the channel, though, in Brittany. It was originally settled by people who migrated over the channel from Cornwall, and founded a region called Cornouaille. Right; it sounds a lot like “Cornwall.” Cornouaille isn’t technically a distinct region any more, but Quimper is still there; it’s a commune (um, not in the US sense of “commune” — in France a “commune” is a town, more or less). There’s an ancient cathedral in the center; that’s where Allan (or “Alain”) was the bishop. Probably. It turns out nobody can find much, if any, proof that there really was such a person.
Allan apples, though, definitely exist. They’re large and very red, and grown in Cornwall. People exchange them as good-luck gifts on Allantide. Children put them under their pillows when they go to bed. They might have carved a jack-o-lantern after dinner — but in Cornwall, an Allantide jack-o-lantern is made out of a turnip.
They do the same thing with turnips on the Isle of Man for Hop-tu-Naa, which is the holiday they celebrate there today. Hop-tu-Naa is just a nonsense rhyme that’s part of the traditional song sung (while carrying turnip jack-o-lanterns) while dancing in a group around to neighborhood houses. You’d especially want to visit the houses of the wealthy, because another part of the tradition is handing out gifts to the singing visitors. After that you have a traditional dinner of mrastyr, which is potatoes, parsnips, and fish mashed together with butter. I know it’s hard to imagine there being any leftovers from that combination, but anything not gobbled up is left out for the fairies.
The fairies probably flitted over from Wales, Ireland, and even Scotland, where this day is called Samhain. It’s one of the four Gaelic festivals in the year, and might even have come from a Celtic holiday — the Celtic culture was there first, and already pretty ancient by the time the Gaels showed up (according to them, they arrived on a ship; they were something like the equivalent of European Gypsies a few thousand years back). Samhain also features a parade from house to house to collect gifts. In various places the turnip jack-o-lanterns were part of the festivities, but Samhain celebrants also added costumes to the mix.
The word Samhain might have come from from combining the Proto-Indo-European words for summer (“semo”) and end (“fuin”). Halloween is also a portmanteau word, from “hallow” and “eve(ning)”. For that matter, so is Allantide (“tide” refers to a liturgical season in many religious calendars). But in Mexico, they’re much too sensible to go pasting words together at random, so the holiday there is just called the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). Just like Allantide and Samhain, the Day of the Dead continues beyond just tonight — it’s not over until November second.
Day of the Dead celebrations are probably more elaborate than any of the other holidays celebrated today; there are various kinds of special food and drink, from candy skulls (calaveras) to sweet rolls (pan de muerto) to Jamaican iced tea (hibiscus tea) and pulque. Pulque is an alcoholic beverage that looks like milk, made from agave sap; it goes back to the Aztecs or even earlier. A popular Day of the Dead pastime is writing calaveras literarias (skulls literature), which are funny versions of epitaphs very much like the ones you can see at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyland (Here rests / Wathel R. Bender / He rode to Glory/ On a Fender).
By the way, the epitaphs at the Haunted Mansion have to do with real people. Wathel Bender was an animator who worked on Pinocchio and Sleeping Beauty, and built toys in his spare time. Walt Disney saw some of the toys and moved Bender from the illustration department to the Imagineering team (it probably wasn’t called that yet), where he originated the “audio-animatronic” figures like Abraham Lincoln in the hall of presidents exhibit.
Recently, the Day of the Dead includes something similar to trick-or-treating, but only in some places. It’s probably an idea borrowed from Halloween — just like Halloween probably borrowed it from Samhain. On Samhain, a ritual bonfire would result in plenty of ashes. In parts of Scotland, boys would blacken their faces with ashes and go from house to house threatening to play pranks if they weren’t welcomed, probably with something good to eat.
Not every place has welcomed American Halloween traditions, though. In Brazil, October 31 is Saci Day, which was created specifically in opposition to “American-influenced” Halloween. The Saci is a character from Brazilian myths; it’s either a playful sprite with a red cap who plays tricks on people, or, sometimes, an evil spirit whose tricks you really want to avoid. There don’t seem to be any particular rituals around Saci Day, but that might only be because they haven’t had time to arise yet. Saci Day has only been an official holiday since 2004.
You could, though, celebrate something completely different on October 31. For one thing, it’s Juliette Low’s birthday. She was born Juliette Gordon in Savannah, Georgia in 1860, and in her early twenties traveled to England. After she was married in 1886 to the wealthy William Low, the couple moved to the England, where they spent the “social season” in London and the “hunting season” in Scotland. Her husband died in 1905, and Juliette, as a wealthy widow, did wealthy widow things like traveling, taking art classes, and doing charity work. In 1911, she met Robert Baden-Powell, who had organized the Boy Scouts a few years earlier. His sister Agnes had started a similar group, the Girl Guides. Juliette Low got very interested in the idea, and started her own Girls Guide group called a “patrol”. The next year, she visited her home town and brought the program with her. So besides being Halloween, Samhain, Hop-tu-Naa, Allantide, Saci Day, and Day of the Dead, October 31 is also Girl Scout Founders Day in the US, in honor of Juliette Gordon Low.
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