Carve that Rutabaga! The History of Halloween Symbols

Halloween is a mixture of imagery and imagination. The living dress as the dead, squash takes on a menacing role, and witches go door to door begging for candy. This seemingly hodgepodge of images and symbols actually have a great deal of meaning and history behind them. Here are just a few to get you thinking about the meanings of the decorations on your front lawn.

The two main colors of Halloween are orange and black. Orange is a symbol of strength and endurance. It also is linked to the harvest and autumn. Black is a symbol of death and darkness, traditional themes of Halloween.These two colours play into the origins of halloween. The holiday was derived from the Celtic festival of Samhain, where the boundaries between life and death were blurred, with autumn being the natural blurring of summer ending and the winter beginning.

The Rutabagas of the dammed!

Pumpkins were not the first veg to be used as decorations for Halloween. In the British Isles, a rutabaga or turnip were usually carved as they were common and easy to get out of anyone's garden. When the holiday was brought over to North America, pumpkin were available, much larger and easier to carve. In 1837 the Jack-o'-lantern in North America appeared for the first time, and was any carved vegetable lantern. For some weird reason a Jack-o'-lantern was what a night watchman was called, hence the name. Despite what vegetable is chosen to carve, the original purpose was to scare off evil spirits, because everyone is terrified of root vegetables.

Black cats have a long history of being associated with the occult and death outside of Halloween. In ancient Egypt, cats were sacred and black cats possessed magic powers. During the festival of Samhain, worshipers believed that by using evil powers, humans could turn themselves into cats. According to legend, many cats were thrown into the fires to get of rid the evil. Black cats in medieval Europe were also believed to be witches' companions or familiars. Now we know better: cats are just cats and being black has no significance. It's unfortunate that some people still believe such nonsense so black cats are seen as un-adoptable by many. Here's a video to prove them wrong:

There are two other animals that are associated with Halloween in Europe: owls and bats.Owls were common symbols of wisdom and hidden knowledge, and that included the occult. Traditionally, large Halloween bonfires were built and would encourage a large amount of bugs to gather, causing owls and bats to swoop above the bonfires. Superstitions also suggest that owls ate the souls of the dying, their screeches and their glassy stare are an omen of death and disaster. The nocturnal nature of these animals played well into the festival of the night. Bats have become a more popular image in North America, partially due to their association with vampires and witches, which are said to turn into bats at will.

I'm coming for your soul!

Finally, why are witches associated so strongly with Halloween? In the Celtic pre-christian world, it was believed Witches gathering twice a year when the seasons changed, on April 30 and the eve of October 31. Their magic was supposed to be very powerful on these two days. The fear of witches continued to be part of Christianity, as wise women were seen to be in league with the devil. Multiple witch hunts in the western world resulted in hundreds of men and women being murdered. The hunting down of witches then was misogynistic and anti-pagan, and by accusing people of being witches the historic Christians earn a special spot on my shit list. I'm not sure what the people of the past would think of our new interpretations: sexist yes, scary no.

I don't think she has a license for those...brooms.

The Golden Naked Man and the Blackface Singer: The History of Blackface

This week I've been so busy with working at my library job and taking care of a sick aunt that history has been very far from my mind, until I saw this:

No. I don't care if you're wearing a suit, it's still not cool

This is from the 1927 film The Jazz Singer. Other than spitting out my tea as a man in blackface showed up, the film was quite good. The story of a Jewish man who becomes a great singer and finally wins respect is touching, if only not for the "Mammy" blackface song. Wow.

At this time, sound had just been introduced into film. The Warner Bros. movie The Jazz Singer-one of the first "talkies"-was not allowed to compete for Best Picture because the first Academy Awards committee decided it was unfair to let movies with sound compete with silent films. It did win a special production award, and two Academy Awards for Adapted Screenplay and Special Effects.

They had no problem then with what I consider personally the most bizarre thing I've seen since last week's movie viewing:

Yes I did watch it - sorry good taste, I know you'll never forgive me.

The whole black face thing began way back in theatre makeup. Remember the play Othello? There were no black actors in Elizabethan England so a white guy had to make himself up as a Moor. It was very common in European theatre after the 1700s that actors would put on ethnic makeup for shows. But the real increase in racist characters inflated in the United States, because beating down people you had as slaves is always a good idea. They created the Minstrel shows, where whites would sing African-Irish fused folk songs as black characters. Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice developed the first popularly known blackface minstrel character (“Jim Crow”) in 1830. The shows travelled over to England where their popularity grew.

Yum, chocolate?

The University of Southern Florida has a great special collection online that puts it all in context: why when the movement to abolish slavery was blackface so popular? It states:

"It may seem strange and ironic that abolitionists helped popularize blackface performance and black stereotypes, but minstrelsy tapped into a much wider audience than anti-slavery pamphlets, books, or speeches. Starting in 1832, Thomas Dartmouth “Daddy” Rice took his Jim Crow act from New York to London, kicking off a craze for minstrel song and dance. Abolitionists on both sides of the Atlantic seized upon this new format, including burnt-cork blackface, to promote the end of slavery. In one of Rice’s songs, the master of a slave named “Gombo Chaff” went to Hell after he died, where he was forced to perform the menial tasks he assigned to his slaves."

One other crazy thing happened before the age of minstrel shows died out: African-Americans performing all the minstrel songs. Unlike the majority of white blackface performers in the 1800s who were born in Northern cities prior to the Civil War, most African American blackface minstrel performers were born after the Civil War and in Southern cities. The differences between white and African American minstrel performers do not stop there. Although the age of urban industrialization brought great opportunity for whites in America, according to Karen Sotiropoulos, “for black Americans, the 1890s ushered in a decade of shrinking possibilities, and artists and activists alike desperately sought any avenue for advancement.

Yup - even Judy Garland int he 1930s did it because this is really how African Americans look.

By the early 1900s, people were still fascinated and watched blackface being performed by men and women, and accounts for the popularity of The Jazz Singer. The singer and actor Al Jolson rocketed to stardom with this movie with his music and face paint, becoming a house hold name. So painting your face like a black person and singing songs was popular up until the 1930s when awareness of human rights and the 1960s civil rights movement began.

If you think that blackface completely died out with the end of segregation in the US, you'd be wrong. Thanks to those "I think minstrel shows are cool" British people, The Black and White Minstrel show (1958-1978) was a singing and dancing show. It was extremely popular, until people noticed that it was really racist and finally made the BBC cancel it.

Because the sequence was the most offensive thing here.

 Unless a performer is doing some sort of historical retrospective, being in blackface is very rarely seen...except in Hollywood and the music industry. The controversy came back in 2008 with Tropic Thunder, where Robert Downey Jr. portrays a Australian method actor named Kirk Lazarus who immerses himself so thoroughly in his role as a gung-ho black sergeant that he undergoes what the script calls a "controversial procedure" involving pigmentation alteration. While I get that the film makers were trying to satire blackface, it still is a creepy thing to watch. Just like people in whiteface, yellowface, redface...sigh.

A dude playing another dude...