All Hallows Eve – A History

The origins of Halloween or All Hallows Eve are old.  So old that I think most of us have no idea why we do what we do on the day.  Of course one could Wikipedia the origins and quickly come up with a great deal of answers.

But I thought I would stick to some scholarly writers to gather the information on the day that kids anticipate and parents prepare knowing that the best thing to come out of the experience is a parent tax and an extended kids snacks for schools we no longer have to put out for a month.

The Pagan Roots

Halloween most people know is a pagan holiday in origin which much like the Solstice was co-opted by the early Christians to change the focus away from the pagan rituals and to make it more Christian centred.   The origins are Celtic.  We mostly know this from Gaulic Celtic sources¹.

In Celtic worship November 1st was the New Year for them, it was called Samhain.   The Celts viewed the day as starting at sun down, so thus the New Year started on what would be October 31st for our understanding.  Geo Athena Trevarthen explains that there was good religious reason for this:

Why should the year begin in darkness?  In The Conquest of Gaul Caesar said Celtic Gauls claimed descent from Father Dis, a god of death, darkness and the underworld. Consequently, each day began at night. The year begins with darkness because all things do; just as the baby forms in the mother’s womb, the new day begins in midnight’s darkness.

So an interesting understanding comes from this, the Celtic idea for the new year is not spring, when things are new in nature, or at the winter solstice where day begins to return again rather it came from another origin.  They saw darkness as the origin of life, so thus it was something to celebrate.   For us who live in an age where darkness is conceived as something to be frightened of this is likely a strange concept.  Anyone who has lived, especially in Wales, during a winter of cold, wet, and dark, would understand why this was seen as such a significant event.

A major reason for this day in Celtic myth was a celebration of death and life, death from the loss of those who will not survive the cold winter months and for the conception of new life which, lets be honest here, was one thing that would be common in months after the harvest and most of the hard work was done.   Sitting by the fire only gets you so far at the end of the day.

Another Celtic portion to the modern version of the day was the release of chaos during the darkness of that period.  In later folklore this idea was personified in a letting loose of youth.  Perceived by some as a way to keep reign on them the rest of the year.  In Scotland and Ireland this meant teens and children would play practical jokes and some not so harmless tricks on others in the community.

As Jack Santino says, “All Hallows Eve, alias Hallow Even, alias Hallowe’en is an ancient Celtic pre-Christian New Year’s day in modern dress.”²

Teaching history at home

Rather than go into a long discussion on a point which is nebulous to what I really want to talk about let me just say:

I have two kids who are being home schooled and three that are at school and one that thinks she should be…

My twins have had speech/communications issues and learning disabilities which are not severe enough to hold them back or get special help yet they are basically the type of kids that the system shuffles along while shrugging.

So my wife put her foot down and we are now home schoolers.  In the process of looking for suitable materials one thing is clear to me.  Homeschooling seems to be something religious people predominately do.

How do I know this?  Well loads of the history books avoid evolution (they talk of “nomads”) and give way to much credence to bible as truth.  Look, I am all for that, to some extent, but I consider it to be foolhardy to ignore science.

So we have been combing around for some world history books that might interest grade 4 students that would not talk down to them or be boring.  So with this in mind I also put my foot down on the pseudo-history that some of the books had.

Now let me introduce my choice.  This book on the right had a good mix of web page style  fitted with actual information.  It seems to be a good introduction to world history without going overboard.  It also includes a wide variety of things, including the story of the Israelites but in a much more classroom style.

Case in point, the opening discussion is about evolution of man but it is a brief discussion, it has the various bipedal ancient hominids on a suspects wall with a brief introduction.  Then it moves on into Egypt discussing some of the roles of Egyptian religion and lifestyle.  It is done in a cartoon type format.

As some who takes history seriously I found the book both cheap ($17 bucks on Amazon) and a good way to get them interested in history.   My wife is using the book to reinforce language arts so that they learn more than just history.

If you are considering homeschooling I would certainly recommend it.  At least for younger kids.

Of course the advantage to home schooling is we can go on a “field trip” to the museum whenever we feel like to also reignite the learning process in a different way.

Day one done lets see what tomorrow brings.

What the bloggernacle means to me

With the Banner of Heaven retrospective going on over at Bloggernacle Times it has made me reflect somewhat on what the whole bloggernacle might mean to me.

Historically I came to the bloggernacle later than most.  After being heavily involved in political blogging I had only read a few LDS blogs once in a while and mostly read the FAIR website for its semi-once-in-a-while articles.  I ended up reading blogs in earnest in the spring of 2006 because I got thinking that if there are so many blogs about so many subjects then there must be a large LDS blog populace.  I was not wrong.

At the time I had no desire to start my own blog I just wanted to get a feel for what other Latter-day Saints thought in the world.  It was then that I found the Mormon Archipelago.  Using its links I was able to find a number of blogs.  Some I found were ones that were easy to gravitate to and others were sometimes thought provoking and others were, well, not my cup of tea.  I am not alone in this discovery nor particularly new at it.

Most of us I think find the Bloggernacle in similar fashion.

For me commenting on issues was fun, I thought after a while if I got invited to a bigger blog I would probably be willing to do so.  But mostly I did not know the crowd so I supported the ones I liked and commented as often as I could.

After leaving my political jobs and returning the university I felt like starting my own LDS blog would be a good way to share some of my history research with everyone, LDS history I found was a popular topic on the blogs I read.  It was about that time that the Juvenile Instructor started up.  So we were kind of kin to one another as same era blogs.

I have over the past couple of years floated around blogging very inconsistently due to just being too busy or less interested in LDS blogging.   This burn out phase has hit more often than I would admit but at the same time I am writing for a number of things so after a while I just found myself getting burned out and not having a lot to say on some issues.  Again this can and does happen.  Lots of rich writers and commentators on the bloggernacle have fallen off and in some cases gotten back on.

After four years I can say that I know what I appreciate about the bloggernacle.   It is a two fold thing that I want to express.

1.  I think the LDS Blogs offer perspectives and thinking that at once can be revelationary and on another side can be mundane or hostile.  Each of these have their place, I know some blogs I have read have challenged me from all three and some that bored me from all three.   Yet each category has reached me at different times when I was looking for different things.  Blogs I do not normally frequent, Feminist Mormon Housewives and Mormon Mommy Wars have both offered me something I can think about.

2.   The intellectual contributions and out of the box thinking, this is something the blogs can do to help develop ideas of faith.  They are out growths of Dialogue and Sunstone magazines, where some of this began.  In some ways it reminds me of the ancient and medieval philosophers who helped to set ideas about religious institutions.  Often I see Thomas Aquinas, Moses Maimonides and Al-Ghazali in some of the discussions about the role of God, the foreknowledge of the Father, and in the role and place we have in the afterlife.  In some ways these discussions are mind blowing but in others they advance religious understanding and conformity which is more developed than your garden variety Sunday School meeting.

In ways the bloggernacle has added to my understanding of gospel topics, and has blown some of my own preconceptions away.  I love it when it does that and this more than anything else is the reason I return to understand and grow both in intelligence and in faith.    That for me is what the bloggernacle has meant to me.

1600 years ago the apocalypse struck Britain

You live in a city, in your life you have always had plumbing, under floor heating and your days are spent at the shops buying the newest shiniest toy.   The world is your oyster, you travel the boundaries looking for interesting sites and you enjoy food and clothing from around the world.  Weapons are banned and you rely on the local police to enforce the peace.   On top of all that you follow your local sports with passion and follow all the local gossip about some starlet and her sports hero boyfriend.

No you do not live in New York, maybe London, or more accurately Londinium.  You are a Roman Britain living in a place in the future to be known as England.   And in 410, according to tradition, you are about to meet your end of days, welcome to your apocalypse.

Correcting the Nanking Narrative: The Role of Historians

Not a Mormon topic but I found parallels in our own discussions around Mountain Meadows and Missouri period.   Not straight on comparisons but rather the comparison from memory to history.  First essay I have done in a couple of years so be gentle

In December of 1937 the army of Imperial Japan surrounded the capital of Republic of the China.  After a bloody battle the Japanese forces took over the city of Nanking.[1] All of the various academics studying the issue agree on these basic details.   That is where the agreement ends for those studying this issue.   Japanese people who want their soldiers and leaders remembered better than they might be, there was a desire to play down the actions of their forces during that period.  On the Chinese mainland there is a desire for the Japanese to admit to a war crime.

Historians, both past and present are responsible for the history they presume to present.  They have a moral responsibility to present history, not only factually, but to also take into account how their own biases will affect their conclusions.  As well one must consider the bias of the sources when creating an argument and one must also reflect on the role they will have in defining history.  Also historians should be ethical in the weight they give to their sources.  Through an examination of the Nanking massacre and how it has been interpreted by historians this paper will argue the need for a moral examination of controversial subjects is critical to correcting the narrative of the event and in offering a valuable role in the discussion.

As historians have become aware of their position as observers of the past there has been some discussion of role they play in shaping history.  Bethan McCullagh described how the preconceptions of historians can be helpful in understanding a subject without being direct bias.  She views the role of academic historians to overcome personal interest and cultural bias to see facts as they are even if the interpretation of them is changeable.[2]

Connecting with the past or stealing the future

If you have any interest in History you have seen for sale at places like ebay Roman coins and other ancient treasures in many other varieties.  If you haven’t just type Roman Coins in the search and you will see hundreds on sale in various conditions.

In some cases these are fakes seeking to dupe the unsuspecting.  A few years ago I bought a signed Bobby Thompson baseball which I am still not convinced is real, though the novelty of having a possible signed ball by the player who hit the “Shot heard round the world” makes it fun to have.

So if you bought a fake, sorry, it is ebay after all so you take your chances.  Much like our purchase of Sailor Moon Dvds for our daughter which obvious came from Chinese knockoffs.  The first big clue was on the packaging it was called Sail Or Moon… yeah that is sooo official.

While you might be miffed I am somewhat gladdened if you got a fake.  It means you are not supporting those who are selling history online for a few dollars.   While Roman coins are plentiful in many areas of Europe they can still be significant and important if they are in the ground.  In archaeology this is called stratification.  This means that the layers of soil can tell a story  of the area.  Much like tree rings soil can be found layered and each layer can represent a specific period in time.

When items like coins, broaches, clips, arrow heads or anything like it is moved it destroys the story associated with that object.

If ye break faith with us who die

It has been eight years since the United States and other Nato nations entered Afghanistan. Seven years for the Canadian military. In fact Canada has now been at war with the Taliban longer than they were at war in World War 2.

For many Canadians in the years after World War 2 until 9/11 many did not understand or appreciate the work their troops did to fight for their freedom. Canadian soldiers lived, died and were largely mistreated by the people they were defending.

In Bosnia as UN peacekeepers the Canadians were forced into the middle of one no win situation one after another. As they put their lives on the line trying to prove War crimes the government and population were slowly strangling their financial lifeline.

In Somalia, an incident with the Airborne forces led to conclusions that our soldiers were not defenders of freedom but some kind of Rambo crazies. The Liberal government left the soldiers to pay the price for their own mistakes, thus the morale was placed at an all time low.

Yet time after time troops were shuffled like pawns into hellhole after hellhole. For the most part they did outstanding work with tiny resources, apathy or loathing at home. The truth was that most Canadians did not understand the need for the Armed Forces. They saw themselves defended by the United States and military spending as somehow redundant.

But yet we sent our men and women in the fire line over and over to act as peacemakers and peacekeepers.

I perceived that this has slowly changed since the terrorists attacked the United States. It showed no one was safe. And then terrorism came to our country once again. We arrested plotters bent on causing death and destruction in our back yard. Suddenly, it all changed. Now many of us sympathize with the soldiers, their deaths which have mounted in Afghanistan has brought back the realities of war.

Politicians are now referring to our troops outside of November 11th. The concerns have led to bitter debates over the role of troops in Afghanistan. As well there is a slowly growing discussion of the misuse and abuse our soldiers face. The government for the first time in twenty years are beginning to invest in the military. Sometimes badly and with no thought to what they are doing but they are slowly changing the lives of many.

Too often in Canada we have left to fall the torch passed to us by Canadian poet John McCrae in World War 1 when he wrote In Flanders Fields. He would die during the war of pneumonia but his message has lived on for nearly a century.

In remembering the sacrifice of our soldiers we often quote the phrase Lest We Forget, however, often we do forget.

My point here today is that giving our Armed Forces nothing to work with creates nothing good. We are the second largest country in the world. It is important that we defend ourselves and act more like a part of the free world rather than freeloaders. To do that we must continue to renew the faith with our soldiers.

Given that let us remember they are not just a tool for us to use. We should treasure our soldiers and not misuse them in places where they will be sacrificed for cheap reasons. Afghanistan needs to mean something, otherwise we will have wasted much for little.

To do that we should push our allies for meaningful contributions and continue to insist those who went into Afghanistan must not allow others to do the heavy lifting for them. Part of the reason others want Canada to stay past 2011 is because they are unwilling to do the hard things needed.

Part of the faith we have with our service men and women is for politicians to not just pay lip service to their defence of these troops. Thinking about how often our veterans continue to struggle to get the basic necessities because our government forgot about them. Let us not do that any more, let us not break faith anymore.

In Flanders, Vimy, Dieppe, Juno Beach, Kapyong, Medak and Panjwaii Canadian troops have entered the line of fire. We should recognize each of these places for their importance to our troops and not avoid mention because it is seen as jingoism. Our military history is significant to the country and should be honoured more than just on Remembrance Day, lest we really do finally forget.

Lest We Forget – Stepping Up

Lest We Forget – Forging a Nation