Transcript:
[00:00:00.930] - Oliver (Host)
Welcome back to English and Beyond, a podcast for intermediate to advanced learners of English as a foreign language. If you find anything difficult to understand in this podcast, please have a look online at www.morethanalanguage.com, where we publish a free transcript to help you understand any difficult words.
[00:00:24.540] - Oliver (Host)
So it's Halloween week. This isn't a week that has ever been a big deal at all in my household or in my life in general. I never took part in Halloween as a child, and I've barely been to Halloween parties as an adult. But curiously, this week, I've been thinking about the holiday of Halloween in more detail than I'd ever bothered to before, than I'd ever made the effort to before. Halloween, All Hallows' Eve, takes place, it falls, on the evening of the 31st of October, and I was very surprised to learn that the following day, 1st of November, All Hallows' Day, All Saints' Day, is a national holiday in Spain. I had had some vague ideas of the origins of Halloween, and it seemed curious to me that it was a bigger deal in Spain and the USA than in the UK.
[00:01:18.910] - Oliver (Host)
So I thought I would dedicate this episode to finding out a bit more about it. As I said at the beginning, I never celebrated Halloween myself as a child. This was quite typical, I would say, of my childhood. For some people, they may say that my parents never really did fun of this sort when I was a child. I had loads of fun in general, but they never did that childlike type of fun that requires a lot of imagination. Maybe this has contributed to me being such an uncreative person now, but it wasn't just Halloween. I was never raised to believe in Father Christmas, who Americans call Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, etc. My parents just weren't that interested in that thing.
[00:02:08.410] - Oliver (Host)
Just to go on a quick digression, I think in reality, the theme of all this is that my parents were apparently willing to allow fictional creatures to take credit for the gifts, chocolate, and money that they gave me. I was always very clear that it was my parents buying my presents, and I was appropriately grateful to them instead of to these little immortal beings. As a matter of fact, I actually asked my mum just now whether I had believed in the tooth fairy when I was little because I wasn't totally sure, since I know that I did use to put my teeth in a little metal box in the evening and wake up excitedly in the morning to find a little bit of money under my pillow.
[00:02:52.120] - Oliver (Host)
So I texted my mum and she replied, "I didn't encourage any of that nonsense. We may have gone through the charade, but on the understanding that you knew that it wasn't real." Incidentally, when I told her that I would include her text verbatim in this podcast, which means quoting her word for word, she sent a follow-up text: "Oh, no. Everyone will think I'm a hard-hearted bitch!" So there you go, straight from the woman herself. The other funny thing about all these imaginary creatures for me is that it shows there's a very fine line between something cute, intended for children, and something quite disturbing. Why are children so thrilled and excited to believe that a man not only obsessively watches and judges their behaviour all year, but can also break into the house while they sleep, no matter what security measures their parents have bought for their home? Why is it exciting that there's a magical fairy with a monopoly, a 100% control, on the international trade in children's teeth, who gets close enough to you while you sleep to take it from underneath your actual pillow? Why are we pleased by the idea that there is a giant rabbit that likes to dress up as a human and lead children on a hunt for chocolate eggs belonging to another species?
[00:04:12.450] - Oliver (Host)
It's not a surprise that there's been a spate of horror films, a collection of horror films, which reevaluate these stories and recast these imaginary figures as something somewhat scarier, because on paper, their stories are quite horrifying. Well, these magical creatures, when viewed in this way, are actually quite appropriate for today's episode about that other children's tradition that I personally never took part in: Halloween.
[00:04:40.520] - Oliver (Host)
Halloween is a bit of an odd holiday, really. I think many people in the UK view it as symbolic of the American tendency to commercialise everything that they can on a par with the modern depiction of the American version of Santa Claus and things like Black Friday sales, which is linked technically to the US tradition of Thanksgiving, but now has been exported around the world as a commercial holiday of sorts. I think most of the English, like me, aren't really aware of the origins of Halloween. I'm surprised, frankly, that I didn't know more about it growing up because it was yet another opportunity for my parents to bring up, to discuss the Celts again. The relevance of the Celts to Halloween is something I will explain shortly, in a short while.
[00:05:26.600] - Oliver (Host)
But first, I need to discuss extremely briefly who the Celts are. The reality is that they remain a bit of a mystery to me, despite the fact that I heard about them with regular monotony while growing up. My name, not my middle name, Oliver, but my actual first name, which I don't use, is the modern Scottish version of an original Celtic name. All of my mum's children, in fact, have names derived from Celtic origins. Also, my dad is from Bristol and my mum is from Glasgow, but my dad is quite obsessed with ancestry, and both sides of my family, if you go back just a few generations, trace their origins to Cornwall, the most southwestern section of the United Kingdom. Both Scotland and Cornwall are two of the modern Celtic nations. The other four are Brittany in France, Ireland, Wales, and the Isle of Man. The UK is dominated politically, economically, and in terms of population distribution by England, and this means that England hugely shapes the UK's reputation abroad and also perceptions within the country. 84% of the UK population lives in England. The other countries of the UK are Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
[00:06:43.140] - Oliver (Host)
For an international example of this confusion, most Spanish people will use the words "los ingleses", literally "the English", to talk about British people in general. And most Americans also don't know the difference between the English and the rest of the inhabitants of the British Isles either. Europe. But it's quite striking that England is the only country in these islands of the UK and Ireland which is not considered a Celtic nation. We can sometimes see the impact of this politically when the other nations around England raise their shared Celtic identity for political reasons.
[00:07:18.690] - Oliver (Host)
For example, former First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, said during her period in power that the idea of some Celtic union with Ireland was appealing to her and 2010, her political party, the Scottish National Party, and its Welsh equivalent, Plaid Cymru, formed a Celtic alliance designed to influence the UK government in a way that would have benefited these nations. It's quite interesting that for certain sections of these Celtic nations, there is a specialness to their connection, an importance of this connection that they can call upon for political and cultural reasons. So what's the connection between these Celtic Nations and Halloween, and why am I talking about it today?
[00:08:05.440] - Oliver (Host)
Well, Halloween, All Hallows' Eve, has its origins in these Celtic Nations. Hallow literally means holy or sacred. And refers to sainted people. It's a very rarely used word nowadays, almost exclusively used in religious or ceremonial contexts. But the origins of this festival may have come from its Celtic predecessor, the Celtic festival that predated Halloween. This pagan holiday named Samhain, celebrated the end of the harvest season when all of the crops, the food growing in the fields, would be gathered up and the darker half of the year would begin. The Christian Church often incorporated pagan holidays like Samhain into its religious character for a variety of different complex reasons, and partially as a way to persuade populations to abandon their pagan faith in favour of Christian humanity. Christmas is actually very similar, with the date chosen for Christ's birth, probably originating with the Pagan Roman Festival of Saturnalia. So Samhain became All Saints' Day, which is the day after All Saints' Eve, Halloween. Halloween, therefore, was possibly effectively originally a Celtic holiday rather than a Christian one. And Halloween's Celtic roots mean that it's arguably more important in the Celtic nations than it was originally in England.
[00:09:31.670] - Oliver (Host)
As an example, when my mum was little, she did actually go guising, which was part of the Celtic tradition on Halloween. According to the National Trust for Scotland, Scottish children traditionally don, they put on, costumes and pretend to be malicious spirits as they go guising around the local streets. The belief of this was that by disguising themselves, these children would disguise themselves as, they would blend in with, other wondering spirits and therefore remain safe from harm. After performing tricks or songs, guises were given gifts to help ward off, to help to drive away, evil - a very different situation from some of today's trick or treaters who get treats simply for showing up in costume without the need to perform. Incidentally, when you read about guising, I love that you find little details that show how much the world has changed. When children went around asking for their treat. They weren't asking for Cadbury's chocolate or something like that. Instead, apparently, they would ask if the household had any fruits or nuts. If nowadays we tried to give a trick or treating child some fruit, I can only imagine how they would react.
[00:10:48.880] - Oliver (Host)
When I was growing up in England, despite its geographic proximity to Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, I didn't do any trick or treating or any guising despite my mum being Scottish. Meanwhile, in the USA, loads of kids were running around American streets taking part in trick or treating. This is because this Celtic origin festival had been exported to Canada via Scottish and Irish immigrants and moved from there to America. It's now been exported back to the British Isles, the geographic area of its origin, and has become a much bigger, global festival than it had been before the American influence. Even in Scotland, it has apparently changed significantly, with the American influence actually overcoming its Scottish origins. Now, Halloween has become a huge global thing, as I said. Most shops have some sort of reference to Halloween in their window dressing, in their shop design. Every nightclub has a Halloween-themed party this week. Children across the world now dress up in scary outfits with the idea of scaring away evil spirits, and teenagers and adults have now been successfully tempted into doing the same.
[00:12:00.700] - Oliver (Host)
Funnily enough, it makes me more inclined, it makes me more likely and more willing, to celebrate Halloween when I realise that its traditions probably come from my own country and are still incorporated into many parts of the festival nowadays.
[00:12:15.820] - Oliver (Host)
So César, have you got any plans this year to go trick or treating? Trick or treating, obviously, is nowadays you just put on an outfit and you go and knock on someone's door and you say, trick or treat? The idea being that if they give you a little treat, some chocolate, something like that, then you won't trick them, you won't punish them in some way.
[00:12:40.910] - César (Guest)
Yeah, trick is a bit like a prank, right?
[00:12:43.510] - Oliver (Host)
Exactly. In this context.
[00:12:44.740] - César (Guest)
Like a joke, but a really mean joke.
[00:12:47.410] - Oliver (Host)
It could be. Yeah, I think it could be all sorts of things. It, trick, implies some deception most of the time in this context. Although, trick can also be something clever, something positive. So we can say, Well, that's a neat trick, or I have a really good trick with GoogleMail.
[00:13:04.870] - César (Guest)
And you know what? Actually on the website on morethanlanguage.com, there is a guide with many tricks to improve your English.
[00:13:12.170] - Oliver (Host)
I swear, listener, that was not planned. Or if it was planned, it wasn't planned by me.
[00:13:17.980] - César (Guest)
It just came to my mind that we should let them know.
[00:13:21.520] - Oliver (Host)
Okay, yeah.
[00:13:21.800] - César (Guest)
If you want the guide, go online. It's free.
[00:13:25.950] - Oliver (Host)
It's free, yeah. It's tricks and treats. Anyway. So, César, how many of the things that you heard today did you already know about Halloween?
[00:13:37.980] - César (Guest)
I think, because obviously in Spain, we learn English from a very early age - it might be surprising for some people who have been in Spain trying to speak English because our English is not very good as a nation. But I remember when I was little, during English lessons, our teachers explaining to us what Halloween was and the origins of this festivity, could we say, or celebration.
[00:14:14.110] - Oliver (Host)
I would say probably festival. Yeah.
[00:14:16.970] - César (Guest)
Yeah. This festival. Because I feel in Spain now, it's a big thing, right? You've got so many Halloween parties in houses, clubs, even for children at school. They dress up. But in the '90s, when I was little, it was something that you would see in movies, in films, American TV series. And yeah, as many things from America, as you mentioned as well, Black Friday and things like these, we live in a global world, and I think more and more these traditions, these festivals are becoming global.
[00:15:01.920] - Oliver (Host)
But I suppose what you're saying there, if I've understood correctly, is - kind of - what I thought about Halloween as well, because my view of Halloween was informed by great childhood films like Hocus Pocus, which my brother was addicted to, so I think I've watched Hocus Pocus, unfortunately, about genuinely about 400-500 times, because for a long time, it was the only film that he would watch with dinner.
[00:15:29.880] - César (Guest)
Is that normal?
[00:15:31.800] - Oliver (Host)
Who's to say what normal is, César? I wouldn't say it's normal, but my parents obviously thought it was normal enough to allow him to do so.
[00:15:40.540] - César (Guest)
How old was he?
[00:15:42.200] - Oliver (Host)
Well, I don't know, 18? I don't know. He was probably about nine or 10 when he was truly addicted to it. But it's a Halloween film, and it has lots of, kind of, the classics of American Halloween traditions because they get into Halloween so much in America, or at least they seem to, based on films, in comparison to what it used to be like in the UK. But now in the UK, too, I think that obviously, shops have cottoned on that it's... Well, that means that they've realised, they've cottoned on to the-
[00:16:16.370] - César (Guest)
Cotton, like the fabric?
[00:16:17.400] - Oliver (Host)
Exactly. So they've cottoned on to the fact that they can use Halloween to almost advertise their services. So I guess that I'm thinking of things like Starbucks, and their pumpkin spiced latte, which is Halloween?
[00:16:35.390] - César (Guest)
Halloween-
[00:16:36.670] - Oliver (Host)
Christmas?
[00:16:37.190] - César (Guest)
Halloween-slash autumn-like coffee.
[00:16:39.480] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. And you see all over the place, like I said in my speech, you see so many kind of witches adorning shops, witches being used to decorate shops, that kind of thing. I guess it's another thing to attract your attention and bring you in off the street.
[00:16:57.130] - César (Guest)
Attract your attention from the point view of businesses, but also I think people would just like a party. Like ion Spain now as well, I'm seeing more and more gender reveal parties, baby showers. That's not something that we used to say, used to do in Spain at all. But it's just fun, I guess, gathering and meeting your friends for just whatever, for whatever reason.
[00:17:25.410] - Oliver (Host)
I suppose that's one of the other things that's good about Halloween, because when you compare it to the other big parties that people have, like Christmas, Easter, the christening that we went to for your cousin's baby last weekend, all of the - Thanksgiving in America, they're all family-based activities. Whereas I would say Halloween really is one that is, once you've grown up, entirely friend-based. I mean, I would never go back home to have a Halloween party with my parents. And I think that mostly because there's a very good line in Mean Girls where they say some variation of Halloween is the one night a year where a girl can dress up as a total slut and no one can say anything to her. And that's true for lots of adults, not just girls, but people wear things on Halloween that they would never wear the rest of the year. Are there any traditions that you have around Halloween?
[00:18:22.960] - César (Guest)
Yeah, I don't know if it's just a Spanish tradition, but we eat on 1st November - it's a national day -
[00:18:31.340] - Oliver (Host)
A pumpkin paella.
[00:18:33.160] - César (Guest)
We don't have that. On the first of November, it's a bank holiday, so we don't go to work, we don't go to school, and we go to the cemetery.
[00:18:44.180] - Oliver (Host)
Oh.
[00:18:44.630] - César (Guest)
Yeah. To clean up the tombs of our relatives who died.
[00:18:53.900] - Oliver (Host)
The tombs.
[00:18:55.160] - César (Guest)
The tombs.
[00:18:55.940] - Oliver (Host)
Or the graves.
[00:18:56.840] - César (Guest)
The graves, yeah. Thank you. We have some new flowers. So that's the tradition. And also you meet up with your family and have, as a dessert, something called Saint's Bones, which is marzipan, basically. It's made of marzipan.
[00:19:15.420] - Oliver (Host)
Oh, interesting. I saw that in a bakery here last week. And I love marzipan, but looking at the Saint's Bones, I would never have bought it because I didn't realise it was marzipan. But now I'm tempted to go and buy it. Although I did notice it was incredibly expensive for the quantity of it.
[00:19:32.840] - César (Guest)
Well, marzipan is quite expensive because I think it's made of almond, right? And almond is quite expensive. And it's like, you know, a delicatessen, I suppose, something quite fine.
[00:19:42.600] - Oliver (Host)
A delicacy.
[00:19:43.430] - César (Guest)
A delicacy. Yeah.
[00:19:45.460] - Oliver (Host)
Okay. Interesting. Well, maybe we can buy some Saint's Bones. We should try them. I like that idea of going back to visit the graves because, again, that actually reminds me of not a predecessor to Halloween necessarily, although something having similar elements, but some Roman festivals of the dead. They would go to the graves, go to the tombs, of their ancestors, and they would have a meal with them. Sometimes they would, if I'm not remembering this incorrectly, they were like, pour food and wine into the graves, basically, so that the dead ancestors could enjoy the food as well.
[00:20:24.350] - César (Guest)
That's a bit morbid, but yeah, who am I to judge?
[00:20:27.610] - Oliver (Host)
The idea is that for the ancient Romans, the dead basically almost live among us. They obviously don't literally live. But for example, I don't know if you know this, but often in a Roman town, the streets leading out of the city, that's where you would have the graves, literally on the edge of the street, so that when people would go in and out of the city, they would kind of salute the dead.
[00:20:54.220] - César (Guest)
Hmm, interesting.
[00:20:54.860] - Oliver (Host)
It also prevented disease from spreading within the centre of the city because it meant that it was a little bit more spread out on the outskirts.
[00:21:02.960] - César (Guest)
So it wasn't only symbolic, but also quite practical.
[00:21:07.170] - Oliver (Host)
Exactly. And there are some other great traditions as well. I can't remember. I think it was a festival called the Lemuria, but I apologise any Roman-studying listeners. But the master of the house, the Paterfamilias, would walk around the house, I think, throwing beans over his shoulder and kind of giving this little speech about banishing evil spirits, which I think is also quite funny. I think the idea is that the spirits would eat the beans that he threw. I suppose because death is such an important part of life, it basically defines life -Â without death, what does life even mean? I suppose, therefore, for all cultures, festivals of the dead are inevitably really important. And in that sense, I suppose I'm quite pleased that Halloween is becoming more important again in the UK, since I don't think that we have anything else like that.
[00:22:14.120] - César (Guest)
But do you think Halloween helps people to realise or cotton on to the fact that they're going to die? I think, for example, the traditions like the Mexican one, Dia de los Muertos, or going to the cemetery every year like we do in Spain, those traditions make you more aware of what is waiting for you and for everyone. But Halloween is actually quite, like, it's a festival, basically. It's people dressing up, going to parties. I don't think people think about our common destiny, which is death.
[00:22:57.370] - Oliver (Host)
I think that, I suppose that if you're going to a party where death is inevitably part of the theme, I think that's quite common, isn't it? A lot of the time, even when people don't dress up as something to do with death explicitly, they dress up as something that you're worried will cause your death.
[00:23:15.460] - César (Guest)
Something scary.
[00:23:16.430] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah, like a monster. Not always do people dress up as scary things, but often it's, kind of like, this scary, intimidating, possibly deadly monster. I suppose it's a little bit like how we interact with death most of the time: most healthy-minded people don't walk through their lives thinking every day, I'm going to die soon or I'm going to die. Because if you do that, even though it's true, it paralyses you, doesn't it? I think that Halloween maybe is an extension of that, that you think about death, but you are, kind of, making it something more light-hearted.
[00:23:59.750] - César (Guest)
And using, using humour, which is always good, no?
[00:24:03.910] - Oliver (Host)
Exactly.
[00:24:04.580] - César (Guest)
To alleviate any pressure or any hard feeling you might have.
[00:24:09.600] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. I suppose the only thing I would like for Halloween to include would be something more like what you've described, the All Saints' Day and then the 1st November here with that element of going to go and remember the people from the past.
[00:24:26.100] - César (Guest)
Yeah, and going to Church as well.
[00:24:28.020] - Oliver (Host)
There might be- Well, for me, not even necessarily going to church because I don't view it as something inherently religious. Everybody, regardless of whether you're an atheist or a religious person, everybody has dead ancestors. Everyone. I have to say, I think it's an opportunity to remember those people anyway, because it is interesting to think about the people that came before you. I like that aspect, to be honest. So, César, I only have one more question for you, actually. We've spoken about death for much longer than I expected or planned to. Did you do Halloween when you were little?
[00:25:09.620] - César (Guest)
No, I didn't. I think the first time I experienced Halloween, I was probably in London. My first Halloween ever was in London. I thought that in London everyone would be celebrating Halloween, and it wasn't the case, at least back in 2012. I dressed up like the Joker. I did the whole makeup. I was really proud of myself because I think the makeup was really good. I got on on the tube and no one was dressed up. So I was the only person dressing up on the Halloween Day, Eve, I guess. I remember this little girl staring at me, probably asking herself, Why is this guy dressed up in the tube with that horrible creepy makeup? Yeah, it was just like a student party, Halloween's student party, and it was quite fun. But that was my first time. Before that, as I mentioned, just doing our English lesson, sometimes they would talk about Halloween in the States and the tradition.
[00:26:18.410] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. Okay. Well, so that was interesting to hear that it's obviously increased a lot in Spain and the UK as well. So depending on how you view that, either as basically a nice return to our Celtic roots or the ever present American commercialism.
[00:26:40.900] - César (Guest)
Yeah, exactly. You can actually justify celebrating Halloween by using these two different routes, saying that you're promoting capitalism and Americanism or that you're very proud of your Celtic background.
[00:26:56.170] - Oliver (Host)
Or both?
[00:26:56.940] - Oliver (Host)
Or both, yeah.
[00:26:57.800] - Oliver (Host)
Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you very much, César, for talking to me about this.
[00:27:01.990] - César (Guest)
Thank you, Oliver.
[00:27:02.860] - Oliver (Host)
Okay. Well, thank you for coming.
[00:27:04.700] - César (Guest)
Thank you. It's my house!
[00:27:06.900] - Oliver (Host)
Well, yeah! Until next time, listener - bye-bye!
[00:27:10.560] - César (Guest)
Bye.
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