Halloween - an Irish invention and an American export

JOHN FAY,

IrishCentral Staff Writer

Published Tuesday, October 25, 2011, 10:00 AM

Updated Tuesday, October 25, 2011, 10:38 AM

Larger Text

E-mail

6 Comments

Trick or Treat - kids in Orlando Florida celebrating Halloween

Photo by Ariel Skelley/CORBIS

Halloween was invented by the Irish, but when I first moved here it wasn't that big a deal. Not when compared with the Halloween I remembered as a kid in Queens & upstate New York. Back in 1995 I took my daughter out trick-or-treating for the first time and it was something of an eye-opener for me. We went to five or six houses and two handed her the traditional Irish Halloween treats: an apple and some nuts. The other houses had nothing.

Apples or nuts, that was the tradition here. Kids who rang the bell didn't say, "Trick or treat" they asked, "Any apples or nuts?" (The nuts are called 'monkey nuts' and are peanuts in their shells and are strangely unpleasant compared with the peanuts you get in America.) There wasn't much of a tradition for dressing up either. Some kids might have thrown on something that their mother or father owned, but that was about it. Mostly what you had was youngsters with fireworks. And bonfires.

Everywhere you went in the weeks before Halloween you'd see piles of garbage - empty boxes, mattresses, couches, loads of empty pallets, even car tires (Uggh) – waiting for the big night when the bonfire was lit. There are still bonfires, but nowhere near as many as there used to be and they seem to be better controlled as to what can be added to it (no tires). Too disgusting, too many injuries and too much clean-up afterwards for much of modern Ireland, which has mostly turned its back this tradition and I don't miss it at all.

---------------------

Young police officer swept to his death by flood waters

Top ten locations for that perfect Irish wedding

---------------------
The bonfires are gone (or going, anyway), but not the fireworks. The fireworks seem to be more extensive nowadays with a lot of fathers involved in putting on their amateur displays (bottle rockets & roman candles mostly). I could live without it.

The biggest change in Halloween is not the demise of the bonfire or the growth of the macho father fireworks shows, but the Americanization of the day. As Frank McNally put it in a column for the Irish Times last week, Ireland may have invented Halloween, but then "we exported the cheap raw materials for the festival, lacking the inclination or wherewithal to process them ourselves. Then the Yanks developed the ingredients into a more sophisticated product, with slick packaging, and exported it back to us at a large mark-up."

Which is true. Ireland now has a version of the Halloween I remember as a kid. Decorations on the windows, pumpkins carved out as jack-o-lanterns and kids in costumes – generally store-bought – going door-to-door collecting chocolate bars and other candy. Apples and other fruits are frowned upon as are the dreaded monkey nuts.

1 2 Next page >

Nster.com

E-mail

6 Comments

See all comments

kinvara7 | Oct 31, 2011, 09:28 AM EDT

George: empty abuse is your area of expertise; it certainly isn’t Ireland. You give lip service to things such as Irish lore, yet it was I who actually gave an example of such. There is a great deal more substance in my posts than there is in yours. Because I grew up in Ireland I don’t have to rely on IC articles for my information: the phrase Trick or Treating has been used in Ireland for decades, so your statement regarding its use is wrong (indeed if you are relying on IC to provide you with accurate information on Irish culture, then your ignorance is excusable). It is a bit odd that you fill your post with imagined scenes of me ‘screaming and cursing‘, etc., and then accuse ME of offering nothing but ‘nonsense and inane abuse’. George, it is you who should cease pretending to be an interpreter of modern Irish life; you didn’t grow up here and you don’t live here, as a result you must rely on IC articles to back up your ‘arguments’. You say that you don’t care how I and my family practice Halloween…yeah, well why are you commenting on the ‘Irish Halloween’ when you have no interest in it? Why don’t you surprise me George and reply to my post with manners and perhaps include some of the Irish lore that you so love to talk about…that would be really terrifying!

Report abuse

GeorgeDillon | Oct 30, 2011, 05:16 PM EDT

I paid you no "complement", kinvara, and certainly no compliment. Learn the difference. And learn to argue on the basis of reason and evidence, not on your stupid empty abuse. Did you make one substantive point in any of your postings here? No. But first go read Fay's article above. Note that he too shows up your ignorance when he points out that when he moved to Ireland just some 15/16 years ago, no one said "Trick or Treat". This correctly refutes the nonsense you wrote in an earlier post. The fact is that you, kinvara, like many of the Irish, no longer even have a keen eye for what is going on in Ireland. You spend too much time in the pub getting drunk and screaming and cursing at English soccer games on TV. It takes sharp visitors like myself to chronicle the demise of Irish culture. I don`t care what things you enjoy and practice in your own home, kinvra, but quit the stupid effort to put yourself forward as an interpreter of modern Irish life. You have nothing to offer except nonsense and inane abuse.

Report abuse

kinvara7 | Oct 27, 2011, 05:24 AM EDT

No George it comes from Ireland where I live and my experiences of Halloween. What a surprise that you are once again droning on about the ‘modern Irish’. You say that we are ‘cut off from [our] Halloween traditions’, and that is just wrong. I admire your ability to return and post messages even though you have been caught out as completely ignorant on numerous occasions. I thank you for the unintended complement though, where you describe my experiences as a ‘fantasy’, and I admit that I was lucky enough to enjoy Halloween in the Irish countryside. The things that I have outlined in my post are still enjoyed and practiced.

Report abuse

GeorgeDillon | Oct 26, 2011, 02:58 PM EDT

Kinvara's post comes to us straight from fantasyland. The fact is that the modern Irish are totally cut off from their Halloween traditions. They have bought in 100% to the American version. Kinvara is so naive that he doesn't understand this, instead giving us his Leprechaunland fantasy of Irish Halloween.

Report abuse

kinvara7 | Oct 26, 2011, 05:42 AM EDT

@John: I don’t think you understand Halloween. What you refer to as traditions (expensive decorations and costumes; the pressure to have plenty of expensive sweets) are just the unfortunate commercialization of an ancient celebration. I’m sure many Americans would trade those things to be able to enjoy a bonfire near the ruins of a castle. I think you’re so caught up in the superficial Halloween that you can’t see the value of ‘apples and nuts’. Apples have been long associated with the Irish Halloween and many games revolve around them, like bobbing for them in a big bowl of water. Fruits were associated with Halloween, in part due to the myth of the pouca, a spirit that roamed the country spoiling all the fruit and making them no longer edible after Oíche Shamhna. I remember our Teacher going through those myths in the run up to Halloween. What about traditions such as the barnbrack cake etc? A lot of these traditions could be described as invisible, because they were carried in the hearts and minds of the people or celebrated at home, but Halloween was still very important.

Report abuse

AlunPalmer | Oct 25, 2011, 03:04 PM EDT

It's perhaps very American to think of Halloween as just for kids.

Report abuse