The memory of a multicultural coastal harvest festival is regarded as a fine excuse to eat bird flesh and watch the Detroit Lions throw pig skin. The execution of a recalcitrant Roman priest has given rise to an occasion to exchange confectionary with hopes of different oral favors reciprocated in kind. However Christmas started, it now stands as a day to offer store-bought sacrifices to indoor pine trees. Holidays are weird. Thankfully, though, the Halloweens of today don't stray all that far from the original mark.
I happen to know exactly how the first Halloween went down. It's a cherished family story we tell every All Hallow's Eve. Not only is my family responsible for bringing the world Culligan water, the KFC biscuit and Pearson's Nut Goodie (the name, at least), we gifted the world with the joyous festival of Halloween. Here is how it happened:
My great-great-great-great-great-uncle Gary lived just outside a sleepy little Irish town named Carving with his frightful old wife and seven starving children. Gary had been too much of a coward to go off to fight Cromwell, so every day his wife would remind him what a waste of space he was.
Aw, for Chrissakes, my Gary, y'should be more like ya brother Larry,"" she'd start. ""Least he joined the Corps, so he could die in war. But you just sit here getting hairy."" (The Irish still spoke in loose limerick back then.)
It happened that one night the youngest child up and died, and his wife took to such wailing and moaning that Gary couldn't stand it. He left the house and said to himself, ""Oh now you've gone and done it Gary, another headed to the cemetery. Yer children have notin' to eat, and yer wife'll do notin' but weep; if you do notin' now it'll get scary."" So he set out for Carving, and when he got to town he went house to house, but the answer was always ""no, nothing to spare,"" 'til Gary found himself at the end of the block empty handed. But Uncle Gary was a coward, and his cowardice gave him the courage to continue, for he knew that if he returned with nothing, his wife would cut his balls off. So Gary crossed over to the other side of the street and rapped on the door of the house on the corner. An old man with a candlestick in hand answered and said, ""Tell me quick - what the hell is it? I'm in the middle of a massive shit!""
Gary said in reply, ""It's time for you to die! Prepare yourself for Satan's pit!"" Gary hacked off the old man's head with his cobbler's knife, then went inside to look for food. A few moments later, Gary emerged with a potato sack full of grub. ""Boy, that was easy,"" he said to himself, and finishing the witty limerick in his head, he set off to try the trick again on the next house. Before he did, however, he stuck the old man's candlestick inside the mouth of his severed head and set the noggin upright on the blood-stained stairs outside the front door, to remind him he'd been there already.
A less desperate man now, he decided to give the neighbors next door a choice. ""Your food or your life! Your food or your life! I'm scared to death of my wife!"" he explained to them when they appeared at the door. They thought it was joke, but boy, did Gary show them. Within a few minutes he was off to the next house, his sack a bit fuller and two more candle-filled heads left illuminating the pool of blood that oozed down toward the street.
Uncle Gary hit up the whole block that night. When he finally headed for home, his bag was so full he could hardly lift it, and the street behind him was much more well-lit. When he burst through the door of his tiny shack, all his starved children gathered round, surprised that their dad had come home carrying something for once. With a huge grin, Gary brought the sack to the center of the room, knelt down, and gleefully dumped its contents out onto the floor. The whole family cried with amazement at the wondrous sight; his wife wept with joy. And then together they all proceeded to organize the loot into separate little piles. ""Don't touch the Dots,"" Gary lovingly scolded one of his little daughters. ""If you touch the Dots, I'll fucking rip your head off.""
David's family says ""you're welcome."" E-mail thank you cards to dhottinger@wisc.edu.
