Title: Halloween & The Colonization of Christian Holidays — episode transcript
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### Halloween & The Colonization of Christian Holidays — episode transcript

**Simone Collins**:
Hello,

**Malcolm Collins**:
Simone. I’m excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be busting the myth that the modern practice of Halloween has any meaningful pagan roots at all.

**Simone Collins**:
But I don’t know the the the pumpkins and the gourds and the lights and the the... You gotta scare away that?

**Malcolm Collins**:
Nothing traces back to anything pagan, and we will go through each thing with receipts. And it is going to shock, I think, a lot of people who have bought into this myth because it is a persistent myth, and it feels cool. Like, oh, I bet the pagans did something around that time,

**Speaker 4**:
My life has been a lie. God is dead. The government’s lame. Thanksgiving is about killing Indians. Jesus wasn’t born on Christmas. They moved the date. It was a pagan holiday.

**Simone Collins**:
and they’re in like, don’t Christian families say, well, we don’t celebrate Halloween because that’s a demonic holiday, etcetera.

**Malcolm Collins**:
They also say that about Christmas, and they say that about a a lot of things. So, it’s actually really fascinating as you get into it, where the various Halloween traditions come from. so for example, can you guess, the practice of trick or treating Is actually an evolution of another practice that was just something you did before any holiday, and there is another

**Simone Collins**:
evolution of

**Malcolm Collins**:
What? Okay. And what what was it? Describe it.

**Simone Collins**:
You, you get kinda drunk and you go from house to house and you ask for more, like, food and drink.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Okay. So you’re familiar with it. Yeah. So what would... Did there... The, the the practice that today we know is trick or treating is actually the exact same practice that we today know as caroling just evolved in two different directions, both practiced before two important Christian holidays.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh. Just, like, raid people’s house. It it just seems it seems like a very disturbing thing to have happened. Like, oh gosh.

**Malcolm Collins**:
They’re gonna So so what Simone’s... Oh, well, specifically, the iteration that you’re familiar with, the more aggressive one, is not a general British tradition. It came from the the... You can guess who, the backwards people, the lower Scottish reavers. In in in the in the normal version of this tradition, what you would do is before All Hallows’ Eve or All Saints Day, you would go door to door, and you would say, if you give me a treat, I will pray for your dead people. Oh. Right. I’ll I’ll pray for dead people in your family. A very Christian tradition, by the way. This is like a a thoroughly Christian tradition. But then the the backwards people who ended up becoming one of the dominant cultural groups in The United States that now form the the core of what we call Americana, they had a separate tradition where they would go and basically come to your house and be like, give us something or we’ll f up your property. And you see this captured in the, even even some traditional carols. Like, give us some figgy pudding. We won’t go until we get some.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah.

**Malcolm Collins**:
so bring it right here. It’s it’s quite a forceful song if you if you listen to the lyrics.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s basically, yeah, give us, food and drink or you’re gonna regret it.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. Give us food and drink or you’re gonna regret it, which is exactly what the initial version of what we today think of as trick or treating was. and the other the other fun part of it is its association with ghosts and goblins and everything like that. That was created from the nineteen hundreds to, like, nineteen twenties primarily by, holiday card companies. And so you’d say, well, how did... Wait. Why were holiday card companies... Why did they associate those things with the holiday in the first place? Yeah. and there were two reasons. reason number one is... So if we look at the early Christian iteration of this holiday, you can see because it doesn’t begin to look more and more like a ghost and ghouls and go out and dress up day until very, very, very modern iterations of it. and and those iterations bear some resemblance to stuff that was practiced around this period, hundreds of years before the first Halloween was. The problem is is that the first Halloween didn’t include all of those elements that looked vaguely pagan. And because of that, you you can’t draw a connection between the pagan tradition and the first Halloween. But you could say, okay. Well, so how did it how did it get associated with the dead to begin with? Right. So it was originally a holiday for all saints. This is where it got the name All Saints Day.

**Simone Collins**:
Wait. Hold on, though. No. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t be the Catholic church and say, okay. Let’s just celebrate all the saints on one... Like, present’s day, and then be like, but then we also need a holiday for all the best saints.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well... So it changed over time. But what is also have a president’s day. Come on. It was like the president’s day of saints because many saints didn’t have individual holidays.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, so it was for all the other... It’s all other saints.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, including those saints. But then it evolved, and it became for all martyrs.

**Simone Collins**:
And then Oh, is that where some of the spookiness comes in?

**Malcolm Collins**:
For... No. It was for everyone who had martyred themselves on behalf of the church. Then much, much, much later, it became the holiday for all Christian dead people. Okay. Because they they basically... It was just sort of a cultural phenomenon that you can see. You sort of loosen it. Well, can we pray for this person to this day? Sure. Yeah. Why not?

**Simone Collins**:
Have a blast.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Looser and looser and looser and became a holiday for all dead people. and that’s where it got the death connection. But that death connection comes directly downstream of saints and then martyrs, which are very, very, very Christian ideas. Then you have the, well, then what about... What... Where did it get this occult connection? Where did it get this magic mysticism connection? This is actually one of its oldest traditions, still only dating to around the eighteen hundreds.

**Simone Collins**:
What?

**Malcolm Collins**:
But as a tradition, so long after anyone remembered anything pagan, it was actually, again, from the reavers or the Scottish people that this tradition was entered. And it was based around a number of ceremonies, I guess you could say, that people did as part of courtship rituals.

**Simone Collins**:
Wait. Wait. It’s not a courtship holiday. This is not a courtship holiday.

**Malcolm Collins**:
It actually had nothing to do with the holiday at all. The only reason the two became associated is because Halloween, given its time of year, it already was a holiday where people were doing, like, pranks and stuff like this, and you’d you’d have a a party. so it was a perfect time for young, rural, backwood Scottish people to do their courtship rituals. And that’s how the two became connected. They they weren’t, like, intrinsically linked at all. It was just a very convenient day to do this type of thing. Think of it like this. Like, a a hoe dance or something like this, which is like a traditional, American style... Well, originally from an an adaption of, like, a Kaylee, so, again, dance. You didn’t do those at any time during the year. There So you would have a a hoe dance. Right? Yeah. You would likely have a Hoe down. Of a with hoe specific holidays where hoe downs happened. Oh. Things... Like, like, around a harvest festival would be a very

**Simone Collins**:
important time to

**Malcolm Collins**:
have lockdown.

**Simone Collins**:
Harvest festival.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Halloween is already... It is essentially a variation of a harvest festival.

**Simone Collins**:
I guess you’re right.

**Malcolm Collins**:
You would go out and do your harvest festival dances, and the teams get up to it. Oh, golly. They were basically... And you’re like, well, they’re occult. Right? Like, they’re occult rituals. And it’s like, kind of. They’re sort of occult or they would have been that part of time if you’re wondering what a courtship ritual like this would look like, have you ever played that game where you have a a thing attached to your fingers and you open it in different ways? There’s a whole

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, cootie catcher.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. Cootie catcher. And it’s like, what’s your future husband gonna look like? You know?

**Speaker 6**:
The girls at our school have been hiding something from us. What if I were to tell you that the girls have a device which allows them to see into the future?

**Speaker 5**:
Okay, baby. What do you want to know? I wanna know if I’m gonna live in a big mansion in the future. Okay. Let’s find out. Ready? Pick a number. 4. 1234. Okay. Pick a color. Blue, b l u e. I pick another color. Red. K. Okay. Will baby live in a big mansion in the future? Definitely, yes.

**Simone Collins**:
And you

**Malcolm Collins**:
and you do the thing. These ceremonies were essentially, an ancient Scottish version of that. and so if we go over a few of these, you have the kale slash cabbage stocks. Blindfolded, you pulled the first stock you touched in the dark. Its side shape and straightness, taste of the core, and amount of dirt on the roots revealed that the future spouse’s looks, temperament, and wealth. The stock was sometimes hung over the door. The first person to walk under it supposedly shared the name of your partner. Couples sometimes went out together. Burns describes the flirtation and joking around it. So this is talking about one of the guys who who researched this. Apples. This is where apple bobbing on Halloween came from, from one of these traditions. So apples were labeled with names. The one you successfully bit bobbing in the water or snapping from a string indicated your match, or you peeled one in a continuous strip and threw the peel over your shoulder to form the initial, the initial of a future spouse. a candlelit mirror plus eating apple slices was said to show the future partner’s face over your shoulder. These put people in close physical proximity. Then it was nuts. You had two nuts named for a couple or two people. They were thrown into a fire. If they burned quietly side by side, the match was good. If they jumped apart or one exploded, it was bad. Easy to stage or to interrupt at a party. And then there are variants of of of mirrors related stuff. So this is... The earliest written description we have from this is eighteenth century Scotland, a 1769 travel accountant by Thomas Pennant, mentioned that young people drawing cabbages blindfolded on All Hallows Eve to determine the figure and size of their future husbands. Robert Fern’s 1785 poem, Halloween, which, by the way, was just a Scottish word for All’s Hallows Eve. It’s a it’s a shortening of that. No connection to anything occulted. The Irish word does have a connection to something occultic, which we’ll go into, but it Okay. It’s not a direct connection. With his own... The most famous, detailed early source, it describes kale pulling, nut burning, apple games, and other rights as ordinary rural Scottish party activities. From there, the games were frequently brought into. So, basically, they weren’t occultic in the way you think of, like, Wiccan occultism. They were occultic in the way you think of tootie catchers as occultic. Okay?

**Simone Collins**:
That’s so funny.

**Malcolm Collins**:
A holiday associated with... And and these practices, we don’t have anything before this. By by the 1769, there was no good recording or cultural memory of what the rural pagan practices of this region would have been. for people who are unaware, those practices die out very, very, very quickly.

**Simone Collins**:
Well, they must be so localized and ephemeral too. Like, the stuff that you might see at one school and then another school, for example, like, the the variation in cootie catcher behavior.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yes. So a good example of this is I could say, do you know what your, grandfather... Or let’s not... Let’s just say great grandfather. Do you know the types of party games that your great grandfather played

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, goodness.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Potential spouses? You would say to yourself, I... Maybe... Like, if you’re pulling on anything, you’re going to be pulling on popular culture. You’re gonna be pulling on some movie you saw or some book you read. Now consider that if you’re talking about a pagan ritual here, you’re talking about something that would have not been their great grandfather, but would have been their great great great great great great great great great grandfather in this region. And any reference that they would have had to it had been largely wiped out by the church.

**Speaker 7**:
Specifically, the time difference between the last summer high and the first All Saints Day was between a thousand and two hundred years to a thousand and four hundred years. This is, like, what we have documented on record. The idea that you remembered a holiday that your ancestors practiced over a thousand years before, and note this was a minor holiday, not the major Druid holiday, and somehow recreated it is completely absurd.

**Malcolm Collins**:
So when they were trying to, think of it in pop culture, often... And this is why when you look at modern paganism, it pulls so much from church depictions of the evil witch because that’s the only cultural reference they had. They just were unaware of anything other than that, which is which is where that came from. So what’s was actually very interesting to me is how much of modern Halloween is a backwoods American tradition. not really drawing, like, most of the unique traditions we associate, including the jack o lantern, which we’ll get to in a second. Actually, I’ll just go into the gist of the jack o lantern now. So the Jack o’-lantern was a turnip that you would carve a face into. We know of it from the nineteen hundreds or the... Fairly modern. Right? Certainly, nothing to go back to anything ancient than that. And it was done as part of the guising process that we were talking about here, the process where you would go house to house and ask for things or

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, okay. Okay. Okay.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And the goal was you you would carve a face on it to attempt to startle them because, again, they were very playful people. Said, yeah. That was great. but the real reason that they were used and placed around was simply because this was a night when a lot of people were going around house to house, and you needed lights out. And, this was cheaper than any other way you could carry a light. So they used a carved out turnip because that was easier than a real lamp Because you all of a sudden needed a bunch of lamps for just one night a year.

**Simone Collins**:
That’s Fair enough.

**Malcolm Collins**:
That’s where it came from. Again, no ancient connection. It was just a practicality thing. So the strongest... I I will give you one or, we’ll go with two potential pagan leaks to Halloween. Okay?

**Simone Collins**:
Okay.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And then we’re gonna talk about some forgotten Halloween practices. We’ll talk about why pagans have to keep colonizing Christian holidays. In fact, I would

**Simone Collins**:
say I I... People... I I I am not sure. People might be very angry about this episode just like they were about the Christmas one.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. Right. Pointed out that

**Simone Collins**:
really don’t like... I don’t... What is it what is it with Christians being super not okay with their holidays actually being Christian? Christian. I don’t understand.

**Malcolm Collins**:
We point out that Christmas actually has no discernible pagan roots. See our episode on that if you wanna disagree with us on that. You you... There’s this big myth that it came from Saturnalia, and it didn’t. But, again, see our episode on that. I’m not gonna litigate that here. The the the real reason that pagans have had to colonize Christian holidays is because modern paganism is invented. It it it just real European paganism, died out so long ago, in the regions that want to reimagine it that, and and see our episode on Wiccanism is mostly a modern fabrication, which, like, everybody admits now. Like, everybody involved in it admits, like, yeah, this was a fabrication. That mostly pulls from, like, Kabbalism and then stuff that was made up on drug trips. That that... Because there just isn’t anything to go on. Like, we we just... We have very little understanding of what, like, for example, the ancient Irish even believed in terms of their religious, for example, which is where we say this came from even even from a historic scholarly standpoint. But to continue here, the two strong ones you can have are Sammain. So, Sammain was a holiday that was a pagan holiday. Medieval Irish records recorded as a time of assemblies, markets, courts, and tribute, and a night when the other world or the the... This... The world of the or the was easier for them to come over to our world and and and potentially interact with us. Now there are some very important notes about this. And and so this was happening in November. It it it was it was so associated with that it became the Irish word for November, which is where the confusion ends up becoming... Coming in. In the same way that, like, Wednesday comes from the the word woden Right? Like, woden, but nobody associates Wednesday with woden anymore. Right? You know? Sam... Samane took over for November in in Irish. Now I I need to note here what’s very important about this loosening of the barrier that happened during this holiday. it was tied specifically to Irish folk mythology barriers.

**Simone Collins**:
Okay.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Not human dead people. The the world of the Seelie is in mythology, like a a... Think of it as, like, a trickster evil fairy world. And the barrier between that and our world, not the world of the dead, was becoming looser during this holiday. Where the connection comes in is that the Irish call their version of Halloween the night of. Ochi Samanae. And so a lot of people point to this, and they say, this proves that it has a connection to the pagan festival. The problem was is that when it was first practiced, one, it looked nothing like that pagan festival. It was an all saints eve night. And two, they were just naming it because of the month. In the same way that, like, it would be like saying that, Wednesday in the Adams family is named Wednesday, to hearken to pagan celebrations. Because Wednesday originally meant woe... Woden’s day. And Who is Woden? Looks kinda spooky. And, therefore, Wednesday Adam must be named after Woden. The real reason, if you don’t know, because of a poem. Wednesday is the child of woe.

**Simone Collins**:
That I didn’t know that Woden was the chief and foremost god of the pagan Anglo Saxons in Germanic mythology.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Right.

**Simone Collins**:
Wow. But

**Malcolm Collins**:
but you see, if somebody told you that Wednesday was named Wednesday because of Wojdin, you would look at them like they were an idiot.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. You’re like, no. It... I’m like, it’s... We have a clear chain of events. Yes. Wednesday looks spooky and pagony. Yes. Wednesday is named Wednesday, and that is where that word came from.

**Simone Collins**:
Wednesday is styled much more like a, like, Catholic schoolgirl inspired look than

**Malcolm Collins**:
Right. But all of all of Halloween is styled more like a traditional Christian celebration. Hair. That... That’s the point I’m making. And in the same way the Addams Family is is an inversion of a of a Christian whatever. But, anyway, we have we have an episode on that that never went live. We could do a redo of that one. Because I think it’s it’s a good one. But... Yeah. So the the point being is when we have the best documented medieval English and Catholic Halloween practices, what did Halloween actually look like when it was still an all saints day? Okay? So this... If it came from the pagan tradition, it would look most like the pagan tradition when it started, not in its modern form, which is instead what’s often litigated here. so the best documented medieval Halloween practices are English and Catholic. They had church bells rung all night on October 31 for souls in purgatory. Oh. Soul cakes, prayers for the dead, those largely faded after the reformation. The earliest detailed folk descriptions of games and customs were associated with a knight from Lowland Scott speaking, again, Scotland. Lowland Scotland is from where the reavers were that ended up making up backwards American culture. In the seventeen eighties, poems from John Mayer and Robert Burns. American Halloween is basically the nineteenth century Irish and Scottish folk version brought over by immigrants. And not very Irish, actually, as far as I can find. I I I couldn’t find anything that specifically came from Ireland except... And this is the one maybe thing that you could argue as pig about Halloween.

**Simone Collins**:
Okay.

**Malcolm Collins**:
I’ll give you guys an out. The date. And the only way you can argue the date is pagan is because we don’t know where the date came

**Simone Collins**:
from. Oh.

**Malcolm Collins**:
What we do know is that there was already an All Saints Festival on the April 20, and they started doing a separate different all saints festival, in the places where Halloween started on the November 1.

**Simone Collins**:
But

**Malcolm Collins**:
that’s that’s just basically being like, maybe because we don’t know where the date came from, it could plausibly be pagan because there was some sort of a festival practiced around this time in pagan traditions in these areas. The problem is is, one, it hadn’t been practiced for many generations at that point. And the second is that the the the the the early Christian celebration just like... If I’m comparing these two things. Right? Like, I have a festival around, like, when the fairies come to our world, and it’s a day for, like, community gathering and a a party of some sort and taxes. So I have that. And then I have the all saints day where we ring the church bells and we pray for dead saints. The two just don’t seem connected enough for one to have come from the other to me. Like, plausibly, but everything else that there would be a 100%, at least in origin, from Christian communities. That doesn’t mean biblical. It just means an evolution of a Christian tradition. One thing I’d note here on the the turnips that they would carry around, the jack o lanterns. These word that they use for jack o lantern translated to willow wisp. now some people could say, that’s pagan, isn’t it? Except that comes from if you don’t know what a willow wisp is.

**Simone Collins**:
Isn’t that just the burning fire that you would... Like, blue fire you’d see in the Moors? Like, maybe gases

**Malcolm Collins**:
igniting created by swamps in Moors.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, I thought it was gases on the Moors igniting or something.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. So... Yes. It might be gases igniting. It’s a it’s a it’s a phenomenon. Like, it’s a real thing that they would have seen. Yeah. And what did communities believe that willow wisps were? They thought that they were souls in purgatory

**Simone Collins**:
Okay.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Which I mean was a Christian concept, not a pagan concept.

**Simone Collins**:
Anyone’s good guess at the time.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Anyone’s good guess. Right. Yes. So let’s what are some other ones here? Oh, yeah. Another funny thing that people go with... If you’re... If you look at the pagan traditions, and you’re looking for the date of the pagan traditions, a lot of people try to connect it to a druid holiday. when the the major druid holiday that we’re aware of was Bellatine, this was the one where they did all the bonfires and everything, and this was the May 1, nowhere close to the date of Halloween. Yeah. You have to deposit a separate ceremony that we know very little about and assume that it rung through that. In the... At least... By the way, in regards to saint stage, just a bit of history here. In the East, this appears from the fourth century and is often linked to the Eastern season, for example, the Sunday after Pentecost in Antioch, or the Friday after Easter among some Syrians. The Eastern churches still keep all saints on the Sunday after Pentecost in Rome. In 09/06/2009 or 06/10, Pope Boniface the fourth received the pantheon from the emperor, redacted it to May, and all martyrs on the May 13. That became the Roman date for a while. Over time, the feast expanded beyond what those two those who had been killed for the feast. We talked about this already. November 1 became a date standard in the West in the ninth century. this

**Speaker 3**:
Love you too.

**Simone Collins**:
This cute little boy.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Okay. So November 1 became the standard in the West in the ninth century where under the Frankish Empire in 835 under Pope Gregory the fourth. The point of it was simply a Virgil, and it was all Hell’s Eve. It later evolved into something called All Souls Day, and this is when it became more for all dead people. And this was instituted around nine hundred ninety eight to one thousand thirty by Abbot Ordillo of Kunlei Monasteries, and then it began to spread. It sits after all saints on purpose, the triumph of the states on the first and then being purified on the second. So it’s like a a follow-up thing. the practice where you... Remember I said there were two practices. One was more aggressive and done by the backwoods people, and the other was a general. We’ll pray for your your dead ones if you give us food. The the nice one, it was from England in the fifteenth century, and that was called sullen. The the the more aggressive one from the backwoods people, was called guising, and it’s from the sixteenth century.

**Simone Collins**:
Guising? Never heard of that.

**Malcolm Collins**:
People, especially kids, put on disguises or masks and went door to door because they were doing bad things, sort of like ding dong dashing. They usually performed something, a song, a poem, a joke, a little trick, and got food, nuts, apples, or coins. It happened with various winter festivals, not just Halloween. Again, it also happened with Christmas. But the reason that you would wear masks when you were doing this is you were sort of blackmailing people. It had nothing to do... Like, the mask and the tradition of costumes had nothing to do with the occult.

**Simone Collins**:
So, like, for the same reason people are wearing surgical masks to protests, basically?

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. So where people wear masks when they’re robbing a convenience store.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, sure. Goodness. The...

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, let’s see. here, I can go directly into jack o’-lanterns. So in the nineteenth century, Ireland and Scotland, people hollowed out turnips or other root vegetables and carved faces in them, sometimes putting a candle inside. These were, used as lanterns to startle people. A folktale about a stingy Jack... No. This folktale comes later than the tradition itself, so we can’t say that the tradition came from the folktale. A man who tricked the devil and was doomed to wander with coal in a turnip, again, very Christian, is a later explanation of the name. The term jack o lantern originally meant Willow Wisp, or night watchman. Pumpkins native to the Americans and much easier to carve replaced turnips once the custom reached North America. Clear records of carved pumpkins specifically for Halloween appear in the mid to late eighteen hundreds in The US and Canada. Again, deriving from the turnip tradition, not from any sort of occultic practice. in regards to postcards, roughly from nineteen o five to 1915, the golden age of the picture postcards, they were, like, really big collectors back then. Think of them like, baseball cards of the time. they

**Simone Collins**:
were really cute too. Very adorable. Yeah.

**Malcolm Collins**:
3,000 unique Halloween postcard designs. Historian Martin and the postcard collectors have documented this extensively. Before that, Halloween imagery was local and inconsistent. what the postcards featured were witches, often young and glamorous rather than purely hags, black cats, jack o’-lanterns, ghosts and skeletons, bats, owls, and crescent moons. this was popularized not by the occult, but by major publishers, Worschief, Rachael Tuck and Sons, and others. and then it was the party good companies, specifically Dennis Manufacturing Company’s boogie book first issued in nineteen o nine that began to push, like, crepe paper decorations and costumes as well as table settings. And the... And in a lot of these featured images of witches, black cats, jack o’-lanterns, etcetera. If you’re wondering how bad this got during periods, there was something called the black Halloween where vandalism was so bad that they almost thought about banning it in some parts of America. Okay. Newspaper accounts from the eighteen eighties onwards describe escalating pranks, soaping windows, tipping out houses, removing the gates and signs on trolley tracks Oh.

**Simone Collins**:
And pulling fire alarms. That’s really dangerous. That’s not

**Malcolm Collins**:
windows. By the nineteen tens and nineteen thirties, these often turned into large scale damage, smashed storefronts, overturned cars, fires, streetcars, derailed or blocked an occasional serious injury or even death, including cases where homeowners shot at pranksters.

**Simone Collins**:
These are pretty serious offenses. Yeah. This is disturbing. What on earth is wrong with these people?

**Malcolm Collins**:
I ask what were some of the traditions that used to be associated with this in backwoods America, which is where a lot of these traditions came from but have been forgotten. So we can go over a few of those. Cabbage night or gate night style pranks. Boys and teens raided gardens, pulled cabbages or kale, and threw the stocks or heads at doors and windows. They often stole gates, tipped outhouses, and moved wagons or livestock and soaked windows in rural areas on October 31, the night before, was known as cabbage night or gate night. There’s a common, in late eighteen hundreds to early nineteen hundreds and is well documented in newspapers from coal country and farming regions. Nutcracking night and hearse divinations. Families cracked and roasted nuts, chased nuts, hazelnuts, and used them for div... For divination. We talked a little about that, naming that’s after partners. Graveyard and abandoned house, quote, unquote, fortune games. Young people went to old graveyards or empty houses at night. Variants included walking backwards around a grave a set number of times or leaving blank paper in an abandoned house and returning the next day to see if a spirit had written their future spouse’s name on it. They’re very concerned with who they’re gonna marry. These are recorded in Appalachian folklore accounts. But, again, no accounts that this was pagan. This was an uneducated people that didn’t have a lot of connections to some sort of, like, older history. They were the types of games that you make up with your friends on your own and then become a local tradition. I remember games like this about local haunted houses. Right? Like, this is a a part of Americana culture and a spontaneous forming part of Americana culture that doesn’t require any real pagan connection. Local omens and protective practices. Some Appalachian accounts mentioned specific Halloween, sometimes called hink night beliefs, avoiding certain paths or crossroads after dark, laying a broom across a doorway said to stop witches Oh. Or interpreting knocks at the window or a dog hallowed What

**Simone Collins**:
is supposed to happen to... Are are they supposed to trip? What? Sorry. So, wow. What that there? I’m just so confused. Sorry. These people are... And the cabbages. Why are people taking... It takes a long time to grow a cabbage. Go on.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. But James, mean. But, again Yes. We talk about the the morality of this culture, which became the backbone of American culture and the Jack Tale, see our episode on that if you wanna go deeper into this culture’s tradition. But it is very much what this culture is about, which is about aggressive pranking and and and and ribbing and and having fun. And that... That’s that’s what they care about in a way that comes off as, like, nonpretentious. And that’s what we see a lot of these being. So in truth, when your pagan goes out and celebrates on Halloween, it is not the Christians who have been tricked into a pagan celebration. It is the pagans who have been tricked into a Christian celebration.

**Simone Collins**:
Okay.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And if you wish to not practice all hallows eve for any reason, I would argue the best reason that you would have if if if you’re looking at the evidence here is that it was originally a saint celebration, and saints are too close to icons, which is too close to idolatry, which means that you shouldn’t touch it.

**Simone Collins**:
No. No. Malcolm, that means in the... It was it was always witchcraft. It was always idolatry. It was always evil. It’s always been a a a demonic holiday

**Malcolm Collins**:
because it’s It has always been about saints. Yes.

**Simone Collins**:
Yes.

**Malcolm Collins**:
But my take is that holiday has evolved from the Catholic taint that it originally had. And I think evolving to a night where you pray for the dead and kids have fun and learn to be creative and dress up and think about what they wanna be.

**Simone Collins**:
They learn to hustle. Learn to hustle.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Teaches hustling. It teaches... I think of all the still practice traditions that are derivative of Christian traditions, I think it teaches the best values. Specifically, you give the kids all the candy, and you say, here. Eat as much as you want, and it teaches you. I remember for me, it taught me more than anything else in my life that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. I remember that very vividly from Halloween. My parents were being like, yeah. Sure. You can eat it all tonight. And I was like, great. I love candy. And then I ate it all, and this is why I think it’s very bad to ration candy on Halloween. The problem is is that our kids weren’t able to learn that because they intuitively rationed it.

**Simone Collins**:
Or if you’re Torsten, you just give all of your siblings the candy because you hate sugar.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Gave it all away.

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. Once again, we will indulge in that wonderful tradition of attempting to get Torsten to eat candy on Halloween. The scariest point of all for him.

**Malcolm Collins**:
No. No. Get a video tonight of you trying to give him candy. No. No.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh my goodness. I I mean, I was kind of like him because I didn’t like most of the homey. Only... I only ate the chocolates. So it was only basically Milky Ways and Three Musketeers that I could eat, maybe if they had M and M’s packs. And so I would go around the neighborhood, go trick or treating, and then return to my home base, swap out in my home family bucket. I would give all my candy to that and then take out, like like, equal for equal, the chocolates that my family had bought so that I could actually eat my Halloween candy. And then I slowly save it.

**Malcolm Collins**:
I I personally think that of the traditional Christian holidays, Halloween is, I think, the best in terms of values it teaches. I think it’s the best in

**Simone Collins**:
Yeah. I guess it either teaches budgeting or overindulgence. It teaches door to door hustle, and there’s creativity.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And it’s it’s it’s it’s one of... I think for kids, one of the best.

**Simone Collins**:
Oh, it’s so exciting. It’s... So when you’re out there hitting the streets I think it’s more for Halloween festive. If vaca tubes.

**Speaker 3**:
Every time when when I kind of press my iPad for a while, then it... Then my iPad... Then my dad told me to say something, and it pauses itself.

**Simone Collins**:
Because... Yeah. Because you’re supposed to answer the question.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah. You need to answer the question.

**Simone Collins**:
It’s asking you to be paying attention. And he wants to make sure you’ve learned something, so you have to answer correctly. Okay? But, Toasty, hey. What are

**Speaker 3**:
gonna be for? Ghost busters.

**Simone Collins**:
And so you have to answer questions about ghosts.

**Speaker 8**:
Specifically, he’s using something on his tablet, which you can flash any Android device with any old... When you have around your house. Mudpuppy.aibackslashos. And it not only makes kids watch documentaries, educational videos, and play educational games to gain access to traditional cartoons like real Ghostbusters, which is what he’s watching here. But during both of them, it will regularly interrupt the show and attempt to, using an AI agent, engage the kids in an intellectual or educational discussion, uh, which is what’s being described here.

**Simone Collins**:
Now, Toasty, what are you gonna be for Halloween?

**Speaker 3**:
I’ll be the dragon that we have in the attic.

**Simone Collins**:
He’s even... We’re using a costume. So are you gonna eat the candy? Candy. I’m back, Toasty. I’m not gonna force candy to... Anyway, he’s he’s just he’s just he’s just scared of the candy. He got scared. Close the door, toasty. Anyway,

**Malcolm Collins**:
yeah, the the... I think it’s a very stupid to retreat from traditions when you get psyops into the idea that they’re pagan, whether that Christmas or Easter will do something on that or Halloween. I don’t I don’t know. We’ve done our... I think we did our Christmas isn’t really pagan video. But I’ll

**Simone Collins**:
say did, and it bombed because people got super mad.

**Malcolm Collins**:
No. No. No. I mean, Easter isn’t really Halloween. Oh, isn’t pagan. Sorry. Isn’t pagan.

**Simone Collins**:
I don’t know if we did that. I don’t think we did.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Okay. but, yeah, retreating from good holidays that are an important part of a child’s life and help them build a cultural tradition and identity, I do not think is a smart thing to do, on the account of religious observance.

**Simone Collins**:
I Well, actually, someone just sent me a really helpful explanation on x about taking the lord’s name in vain, you know, that that that commandment. Yeah. His explanation was basically putting words in god’s mouth is taking the Lord’s name in vain. You know, an example of some kind of, you know, televangelist saying, you know, well, God wants you to do this prosperity gospel. He’s putting words in God’s mouth, but also someone being like, God doesn’t want you to celebrate Halloween. Who are you to say? Hello? Like, follow the 10 commandments. Don’t don’t you editorialize.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Actually, Simone, being less familiar with the bible than me, you’re actually explicitly allowed celebrations like Halloween in the bible. It’s it’s called New Testament.

**Simone Collins**:
Sure you are. I’m I’m sure. Well, like, I remember something about, like, stomp your feet and dance to to glorify God or

**Malcolm Collins**:
Galatians two sixteen, which is the most direct. It says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in question of food and drink or in regards to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. It’s basically saying People

**Simone Collins**:
are really doing wrong by saying you can’t you can’t celebrate Halloween. It’s a devilish holiday.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, I think it’s similar to the Sabbath.

**Simone Collins**:
To each other. As a Christian,

**Malcolm Collins**:
you’re not supposed to pass judgment on other people in regards to how they choose to celebrate it. But it’s up to your own conscious whether you celebrate it or not.

**Simone Collins**:
Like, if you feel like it’s pulling you away from God, then by all means, don’t do it. If you feel like it’s it’s helping you lean into your values, then do it.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Yeah? That’s the idea. Yeah.

**Speaker 3**:
I like it. I like it.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And that’s my takeaway about Halloween.

**Simone Collins**:
Super ball.

**Malcolm Collins**:
So I I I think that that... Or any techno puritan tradition. I think what we’re basically given free reign here to build our own traditions, and, work on them insofar as they are focused on god or or or for us what god wants, which is for humanity to do well because god loves humanity, and that means for our kids to do well because that’s the humanity that we most directly interact with. And so you show your love for god by building traditions and doing things that lead to more long term human flourishing. That is what I believe god wants from us the most.

**Speaker 9**:
And I think to the people who show their love of god only through devotion directed at god rather than directed at the things god loves, um it it... It’s... It really misses the point of what god wants from you.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And so I think that with something like Halloween, I don’t feel embarrassed about how we took these... The the... This tradition and and and built into this. If you wanna have prohibitions against glorifying witchcraft on Halloween, that’s one thing. Right? If you wanna have prohibitions against your your daughter dressing up like a princess on Halloween, I think that’s moving in a direction that just is explicitly robbing a child’s life of joy and imagination. And and and for that, it’s a bad thing to do. Something that you would not do as a good, at least within our tech. So that’s the point. Yeah. And and what we use... Again, because this will be a track. What we use any holiday to teach about Halloween specifically is to teach value sets. And the value sets of Halloween are hustle, imagination, and the... What was the other one?

**Simone Collins**:
Hustle, imagination. And self restraint slash budgeting.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Oh, yeah. Self restraint. Yeah. Eating type of stuff. But it’s also a

**Simone Collins**:
big also budgeting because I think a lot of kids also, really find the love of delayed gratification and careful rationing in Halloween. I know you didn’t, but I did.

**Malcolm Collins**:
It’s also a great holiday for... What was I gonna say about Halloween as a holiday? For telling stories. And I think that if you are a parent, you should get scary stories, the book, the... With the scary illustrations, not the new one, and try to read your kid a scary story every Halloween at the very least just as a I’m not gonna let this night go past. because, one, those stories are collected from traditional American folklore . So you’re reading them a part of original American folklore, a part of their culture, assuming that they’re from a good culture like America. And two, they are great evocative stories that I think, again, help the night feel spooky. I think one of the the biggest disappointments I have in the way that Halloween is practiced today is not that it has lost a religious message, but that it’s lost its spook factor. And you as a parent have a job to really spook your kids on Halloween. The spookiest night of the year.

**Simone Collins**:
You better get on that, Malcolm, because they ain’t spooked very much right now.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, then maybe they need to get visited by Krampus this Halloween.

**Simone Collins**:
I think Halloween should be the opening of Krampus season, don’t you?

**Malcolm Collins**:
The opening of Krampus season after

**Simone Collins**:
all the believe in Krampus season.

**Malcolm Collins**:
I love you. Any thoughts do you have, Simone?

**Simone Collins**:
I love it. I love it. I I... The the big takeaway that I have that really blew my mind here was I had no idea that, like, the Wassail tradition was a sort of preholiday raid activity. So For winter holiday. Yeah.

**Malcolm Collins**:
That fascinating. That that what we today think of as caroling and trick or treating are actually the same tradition. I... That was really fun for me to learn. I was like, oh, it’s coming together now.

**Simone Collins**:
It is coming together. It’s really cool.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And so just to tie this up for anyone who hasn’t been following along here, Trick or treating came from the same tradition that caroling came from. The original holiday was a a a saint’s memorial day, nothing to do with spooks or anything like that. The spook tradition came downstream of mating rituals and wearing a mask because you were harassing people of one evolution of the caroling tradition, and then that evolved into what we today think of as this spooky holiday, nothing pagan to it. Doesn’t mean it’s biblical, but it’s certainly not pagan. And then your question of, well, does that mean it’s Christian? I view this as sort of the same question of, well, was Abraham a Jew? I mean, was Moses a Jew? He didn’t have the later rabbinic tradition. When when did somebody become the first Jew? It’s it’s an evolving tradition as is Christianity, and techno puritanism is just one direction of that evolution. And I I think that being overly guarded about these sorts of things can just rob you away from a child’s life. But, anyways, great talking to you. One thing I’d recommend you guys do because I’ve been doing it for my kids is making some Halloween art for them on our fab to share with them So they get to... They use the API, use a collection of family photos, and you can tell it to make some fun. That’s our fab dot a I backslash API. And the tablet, the toasty came in, and he goes, it’s asking me questions . Yes. Even during the recreational time, an AI now stops to ask them things, to engage them in intellectual topics, and they can earn points doing that.

**Simone Collins**:
Because we believe that screens aren’t so bad when they’re an active pursuit that’s intellectually engaging.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Exactly.

**Simone Collins**:
And studies show that too.

**Malcolm Collins**:
.Aibackslashos. You can find this.

**Simone Collins**:
Also has literally, like, a built in homeschooling system and a whole bunch of learning games and other things. You don’t have to even include any recreational content. It could just all be learning stuff. but we wanted something where we could give our kids a better tablet experience or phone experience, and this is awesome. You can even drop in on the device. Like, if they’re, like, in a separate room watching it or playing with it, you can check-in on their camera, their forward facing camera, and just see what they’re up to, or have a video call with them just to check-in. It’s really cool. It’s so cool. Anyway, thanks for

**Malcolm Collins**:
making the best

**Simone Collins**:
of them. I love you too. Bye. Bye. Or planting in the spring and letting it lie follow in the winter.

**Malcolm Collins**:
Okay. Okay. Well, we’re gonna get everything fixed. We’re gonna get those redone. We’re gonna get this house feeling nice. That’s the point of cleaning Malcolm’s room.

**Simone Collins**:
I can’t believe this this day came. You can see the floor. You you no longer live in the Star Wars trash compactor. It is remarkable.

**Malcolm Collins**:
And I told you I’d get myself together. I was like, you know what? I should do it. I should get myself together.

**Simone Collins**:
I I didn’t.

**Malcolm Collins**:
I should’ve You didn’t have faith in me.

**Simone Collins**:
I I do have faith in you. I just... You’re like, is it gonna make me sick? Then it’s not worth it, and it wasn’t making you sick. So

**Malcolm Collins**:
Well, we’re getting it we’re getting it done.

**Simone Collins**:
We’re getting it done, and I’m so glad. I’m really glad.

**Speaker 10**:
You’re going on the hard ones. It’s just using the cracks.

**Speaker 11**:
Wow.

**Speaker 12**:
I’ll show you how my eye... I’m here.

**Speaker 10**:
Well done.