A Halloween History Lesson
As many are aware, Halloween finds its roots in the Gaelic harvest festival Samhain. Separating fact from fiction, however, and disassociating the contemporary manifestation of the celebration from its historicity is difficult. In other words, we like to paint the past with present-day ideas, images, and biases. Blame it on literature, blame it on our schooling, blame it on culture-actually, don’t. Let’s avoid an epistemological debate and just blame it on the a-a-a-a-a alcohol.
Traditionally, the Gaels (not to be confused with the Celts; the Gaels were a small’ish portion of the larger Celtic world) celebrated October 31st-November 1st as a harvest festival. It marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter; it’s been called the Celtic/Gaelic New Year, but that isn’t quite accurate. Years are, relatively speaking, a modern invention - previously, time was marked predominantly by the passing of seasons.
Samhain had little to do with the dead. Livestock was sacrificed, their bones thrown into bonfires, yet that was about the extent of death’s presence. Yes, the festival marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of the cooler, deader times, but binaristic thinking wasn’t a part of it. Samhain was, for all intents and purposes, a celebration of life, a tribute to another successful harvest, another season passed.
Part two coming later today.
Russian Beard Taxing
Found this blurb from a little while ago on Euronews:
September 5, 1698. Russian Tsar Peter the Great imposes a taxes on beards as part of a effort to westernise his nobility. The Tsar had just returned from a tour of Europe (where most men were clean shaven) and was determined to revolutionise Russian society, culture and even fashion. As a result of the new beard tax, all men – except peasants and clergymen – had to pay 100 roubles for a copper or silver ‘beard token’, which had a moustache and a beard engraved onto it. The token also bore the message ‘the beard is a useless burden’. The Tsar was not the first leader to fiscally punish the facially hirsute: England’s Henry VIII and his daughter Queen Elizabeth I had launched a similar war on whiskers in the 16th century. The Russian beard tax was finally abolished in 1772.
Van Gogh Didn’t Kill Himself?
In their new book Van Gogh: The Life, American authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith claim that the Dutch post-Impressionist did not take his own life, but rather was the victim of an accidental shooting. There has always been a certain amount of controversy surrounding the painter’s death - for example, historians have questioned why Van Gogh, who because of his religious beliefs (see “1876 Uncommon Devotion”) regarded suicide as immoral, would commit an act he viewed as unforgivable; further, his wound was to the abdomen, often considered an exceedingly painful (and slow) death. Generally, suicide victims aim for options that are either a) painless or b) quick (or both).
The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, however, remains unconvinced.
(Wheatfield with Crows, a painting from July 1890, often called - mistakenly - Van Gogh’s last.)
1984 - George Orwell.
I know we all read this book in high school. I reread it a few weeks ago and I was struck by how contemporary it was. On the past and our inability to understand it -
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control,” they called it: in Newspeak, “doublethink.” (1.3.18)
(Italics my emphasis). The past is what people have told us about it. It’s what the books, the movies and “culture” has told us. Our understanding of history is a construct. That’s why I imagine pre-settled America as Little House on the Prairie. And furthermore, that’s why the pigeons surprised me - they weren’t included in the movies.
Space, cont’d
@Casey
It isn’t just about imaging and re-imagining. Stepping outside of oneself - your experiences, your understansdings, your lenses-enhanced eyesight - is impossible. When I find myself in such situations, I realize exactly the extent of my indoctrination. Perhaps that isn’t the best word; indoctrinate carries overtly negative connotations.
We understand the world as portions of a narrative. Pre-man, pre-white man, Little House on the Prairie. Our knowledge of the past, indeed our ability to reconstruct the past, is bestowed upon us.
Someone once described our understanding of the world as a closet. In that closet, on the hangers, were our experiences, education, cultural heritage etc. Those articles, however, weren’t entirely our own. You can only buy a Topshop knit sweater if you have access and the means to do so. I suppose the metaphor illustrates that only so much of you is controllable; perhaps this truth has been exacerbated by modernity, but it isn’t helpful to idealize the past. We (the human race) have always been the sum total of our parts, and there’s no way of stepping outside of that. As every stoner once said, “I wonder if the blue I see is the same blue you see?!”
