The history of Halloween with Jill Martin Rische

Good evening and thank you for joining us. I'm Robin and this is Creation Fellowship Santee. We began at the Creation and Earth History Museum in Santee, California more than a decade ago. Due to the 2020 circumstances, we needed to bring this ministry to Zoom, where we've been meeting online most Thursdays since May 2020.

Our focus is the six-day creation account laid out in the Book of Genesis, but often we stray to other Bible topics. Tonight, the 31st of October, we've asked Jill Martin Rishi to help us understand the reason this day is celebrated.

We heard about Jill by listening to her as a guest on Jan Markell's Olive Tree Ministries. Jill has become an expert on the occult and the spiritual warfare. Thank you, Jill, for joining us and I'm going to turn this over to you.

Thanks so much, Robin and Terri and everyone for having me. I really appreciate it. I'll give you just a little bit of my background. I'm the eldest daughter of Dr. Walter Martin, who is the author of The Kingdom of the Cults.

I'm also the editor for The Kingdom of the Cults and have been for, oh my gosh, since the early 1990s. I've also put together the book The Kingdom of the Occult, along with my father's top researcher, Kurt Van Gordon.

We took my father's work and put it all together and then we added things to it and wrote new things. That's The Kingdom of the Occult, along with several other books that my father's done. I'm also an adjunct professor at the University of Northwestern, St. Paul, and Crown College.

The Christian Case for Studying Halloween Historically

It's a real pleasure to be here and share with you the history of Halloween. With that, I'll go ahead and start. Our struggle, of course, we all know this verse, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against spiritual forces in heavenly places.

We must put on the armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, we may be able to stand our ground. After we have done everything, to stand. I believe that to stand, as a professor of history, I believe that to stand means to, of course, incorporate the word of God, but also to educate ourselves as to history.

And history, to me, is one of the best defenses of the Christian faith. First of all, because you rely on evidence, physical evidence. And that, to me, I mean, eyewitness testimony, we'll be going over the list of things.

That, to me, is what makes it an awesome tool to fight against this dark world. So, we all know that there's a controversy in the church when it comes to Halloween. I'm not going to get into a lot of that.

I'm just sketching out what the controversy is. So, a lot of people feel that it's a Romans 14 issue, that let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.

And that is an argument that you will hear. That applies, I think, you can actually look at that little graphic in front of you. And it was done by Lifeway Research. So, I'm thinking they were, they don't tell us that they were all Christians, but I'm thinking it was probably a good percentage of Christians.

And here's how they rated it, 59%. And this is really interesting, too, because if you read what the question is, it says, when you consider the pagan elements of Halloween, the pagan elements, which is closer to your attitude?

59%, it's all in good fun. 21%, try to avoid Halloween completely. 14%, try to avoid the pagan elements. And 6%, not sure. And I have a feeling this was done a few years ago, and we might see those numbers fluctuate as far as reflecting the state of the church today.

We might find the try to avoid Halloween completely dropping down quite a bit. But at any rate, we see this controversy in the church. And it's over what the practice of Halloween is. Are you going to do it?

Are you not going to do it? Are you going to let your kids do it? Are you not? So, Romans 14, 15, for if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love by what you eat. Do not destroy the one for whom Christ died.

So, that's another thing that we need to take into account. So, I was talking about evidence and history being a tremendous, really a tremendous weapon for Christians and their faith. And that is because you can go to physical evidence to prove what you believe.

We have physical evidence on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A lot of people don't realize the kind of physical evidence we have. We have eyewitness testimony. More than 500 people eyewitness testimony.

Just one eyewitness can send someone to their death in a courtroom, depending on what it was they actually saw. So, we have more than 500 for the resurrection. We have letters to Caesar. We have letters from Caesar.

We have actual ancient evidence on the resurrection of Jesus. So, evidence for the Christian is there. We believe by faith, but our faith is supported by that evidence. So, when we look at Halloween, we need to go back and find out are there any tomb paintings, artifacts, eyewitness testimony as to what this was in the beginning.

Ancient manuscripts, any ancient writers, books, news articles, media. What can we pull together that gives us evidence to base our statements on? If you pull up things on Halloween online, you will find, and it's a favorite word used today, misinformation.

There's so much misinformation out there about Halloween and its origins. And I encourage you, when you're looking at those articles, see if the person who is writing them actually cites their references, actually tells you where they got their information from, because that citation points back to evidence.

And evidence is what you need in order to be a strong, critical thinker. And critical thinking has unfortunately diminished greatly in this world today. I teach a lot of classes, history. I teach history, I teach English, I teach humanity, all kinds of humanities classes.

And critical thinking is not a very well-developed skill. And I'm not just talking for young people. I'm talking for adults coming back to school. It's not a very well-developed skill. How do we be critical thinkers?

Well, the first thing you do is you look at evidence. So I'm going to narrow down the broad term Halloween. I'm going to narrow it down to something that went on in the British Isles. We're going to focus on the British Isles.

And that's mainly because when you hear about people writing their articles or talking about Halloween, nine times out of ten, they're referring to the Celts and the Druids. So that's why we're narrowing this down to the British Isles.

Celtic and Druid Evidence in the British Isles

So here's a perfect example of a piece of misinformation on the Internet. It's not all misinformation, but here it is. Halloween has its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian feast of All Saints Day.

In large part, it is a secular celebration, although some believe that it has religious undertones. The word Halloween is a derivation of the phrase All Hallows' Eve. So it says here now, formerly Celts believed that the line between this world with the underworld opened in the day of Samhain and allowed good and evil spirits to pass through.

That is the piece of information, misinformation. We have absolutely zero evidence, physical evidence, on anything that the Celts or the Druids believed. So take a look at this map real quickly. And you can kind of see up here where the British Isles are here.

And over here is Gaul. Gaul is France, of course. And a key city of the Druids was Marseilles, France. And so it's kind of over down around the coastline. So right here is where we're talking about. And this whole ancient world opened up.

When you're looking at Britain and France and Italy, and you're looking at the Mediterranean and Israel and Greece, they're all within about 350 miles of each other by boat. So it's a very centered geographical location.

And that's why they all shared back and forth. They shared their information. They shared their gods. They changed the names of their gods, but they shared different attributes of their gods. And so the Celts have been around where we can trace them from about 600 B .C.

And they moved out everywhere. They spread everywhere, the Celtic group of people. And they ended up really focusing as far as a ruling city or a city of great influence. They ended up in Marseilles, France.

So pagan Halloween promoters always, nine times out of ten, go to Celtic origins of Halloween. And they cling to those origins and they grab them from all kinds of places. And you wonder where are they getting this from?

Because in history, and I'm talking physical evidence, the Celts left nothing. Zero. No physical evidence of their beliefs. Nothing. No temples, no temple paintings that the Egyptians had, no tomb paintings, no oral history, nothing.

No pottery. The Celts left nothing. And of course, part of the ruling class of the Celts were the Druids. And they left absolutely nothing. So historically, don't let anyone tell you, well, the Celts believe this or the Druids believe that because that's not necessarily the case.

You have to be very careful and check the physical evidence. Now, they left nothing, but the people surrounding them left evidence. Oops. I went too far. So I don't know if I can go back. One second. There we go.

Okay. And one of the persons who is very famous in history, who left evidence on the Druids, and I'm laying this foundation to the Celts Druids because this is of course where everyone starts. When you find the information on the internet, it's going to refer to the Celts or to the Druids.

So I'm just laying a brief foundation on what they believed. So one person who can tell us a lot about what the Druids actually believed, the Celts, the Druids actually believed was Julius Caesar. Remember, he was the guy who said et tu Brute and got stabbed to death on the floor of the Senate, that Julius Caesar.

So he invaded Britain about 43 BC and he kept these detailed journals. And Julius Caesar in his journals wrote this about the Druids, quote, it is thought the Druidic system of training was invented in Britain and taken over from there to Gaul or Marseille, France.

And at the present time, diligent students of the matter, mostly traveled there to study it. So from Julius Caesar, we find that the Druids are actively teaching at this point in history in 43 BC. And just a background on the dating here.

I always tell my students it's very important that we fight for the BC, AD time that we measure. We measure time with because when you start switching to BCE, which stands for before the common error and CE common error, what it is, what is it they're doing?

They're cutting out Jesus Christ. And that's the intent. The intent is to have a purely secular way to record history. But in reality, we have never recorded history that way in the Western world. It has always been BC before Christ and AD, Anno Domini in the year of our Lord.

That's what it transfers to. So I really encourage you when you're writing things and talking about things to, to fight for the BC, AD way of recording history. And that's if you compare the two systems to each other, there's only about a six year difference between them.

So there really is no reason to switch from one system to another, except that one has Jesus and one does not. And they go for the one that does not very sad, but unfortunately true. So that's just a little bit of the background on why I use BC, AD here.

So Julius Caesar.

Again, says about. Yes. I just want to say that if, if you used BC, I would not be happy. So thank you for using BC and AD.

Well, I, I fight for that because I feel like it's fighting for Jesus. Me too. They're trying to, it's called historical revisionism. They're trying to edit him out of history and we don't want to do that.

So anyway, Julius Caesar, and here's the proof that we know that the Druids and the Kelps did not record anything. Julius Caesar says they consider it improper to entrust their studies to writing. I think they established this practice for two reasons because they were unwilling first that their system of training should be brooded abroad among the common people.

And second, that the students should rely on the written word and neglect the exercise of his memory. And the Druids we're going to find out we're, we're famous at that time period for memorizing everything.

So I'm not going to read all the way through these, but you can kind of scan those, but it's throughout. There were actually two classes of men. Now, when they say throughout, they mean all of France throughout all of France.

There were two classes of men at this time, 43. Okay. One of the classes was Druids and the others was the Knights. The Druids basically ran everything. They were, they were concerned with worship and public sacrifice, religious matters, and young men flocked to them because of that.

But, and they were held in high honor. These Druids were very highly revered, but they also had the right to decide what went on in the public and private disputes. So they passed judgment. They were basically judges, which is, if you look at our Supreme court today, that's a lot of power.

To be able to do that. They passed criminal penalties, murder penalties, legacies, boundaries. They, they ruled on tribal disputes. So you have to see that these Druids were quite powerful, quite involved in the city and the land around them and extremely influential.

So if they ruled against you, it was probably the worst thing that could ever happen to you in your life. And that's why people would tend to avoid them, you know, avoid getting into trouble under their rule because they would literally be shunned from the population.

If the Druids ruled against you. So as you see in the next line, the, they were not fighters in war. They did not pay any kind of taxes. So no soldiers, no fighting, no taxes. They spent a lot of their time memorizing poetry.

Now you'd say, what, what, why, why would Druids be memorizing poetry and that some actually studied this for 20 years or more trained as a Druid for 20 years or more. So again, Caesar tells us why he says that, that the Druids are chiefly anxious to have men believe in the following.

And here comes their theology. Souls do not suffer death. And after death, they pass from one body to another. So they believed in a soul transmigration. And so they were not afraid to die because they would go from one body to another body.

Now, what happened to the soul that was actually in that body, that other body? I have no idea. They don't go into that, but apparently they practice this trans soul migration and they were not afraid of any kind of death.

And they also studied the stars, whether that means the actual location of the stars or whether that was tied into astrology. We do not know, but they studied national, according to Caesar, they studied natural philosophy, the power of the spheres of action of the immortal gods.

Remember that, that little piece because it's going to be linked to something else coming up here, the immortal gods, which they discussed and handed down to their students. Now, in case you're wondering, Caesar is actually a very strong source.

He's backed up by Hippolytus, who was an early church father. He's backed up by Pliny, Suetonius, Tacitus, Luzon. He's backed up by all of them. And he says here that the Druids, and this is our first link, potentially to what might have gone on with Halloween or Samhain, is that the Druids make use of the magic arts.

That is Hippolytus, A .D. 190. Some historians viewed the Druids as scientists, philosophers, administrators, but others thought that they were involved in human sacrifice, disgusting things, cannibalism, stabbings, burnings and secret ceremonies in their oak groves.

By the way, their oak groves were, the oak trees were very sacred to them. And yes, we have beautiful trees today, but in reality, and this is not really so much common knowledge, but in reality, we had spectacular trees during the time that Caesar walked the earth because they were very, very old and very, very big.

And I'll give you a perfect example. In the 1600s on the coast of America, the East Coast of America, we had Native American tribes cutting down a tree there and making a 60 foot, a 60 foot canoe out of it.

So there were very, very old, very, very big trees. So these oak groves that the Druids worshipped in were enormous and the trees of great age and great strength. And so they were much revered by the Druids as far as calling them their, their tree, you know, part of them and what they taught.

They used it in everything. They used the oak grove leaves and a lot of things. So Diodorus Siculus in his library of history, he confirms what Caesar said basically. And he said, and here we find, we see a glimpse of the real Druids and the real Celts in the sect, okay?

Because they say in matters of great concern, they devote to death a being and plunge a dagger into him. And when the stricken victim has fallen, they read the future from the manner of his fall and from the twitching of his legs, his arms, as well as the gushing of his blood.

Pretty, pretty brutal. So now we throw the window open on who the Druids really were. They weren't some peace loving, nature loving group of people that wore white robes and stood in moonlight singing.

Those were, those were not the Druids. And again, that's another piece of misinformation floating around the internet. And again, on the bottom, we see that Pliny, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Lucan all speak with basically disgust, a disgust of the Druids.

And they refer to them as uncouth and also as brutal. So this is the picture of the Druids from history. Now I'm pointing to evidence. This is the evidence of historical writers, all of whom support each other, even though they wrote at different times.

This is the type of evidence you want. It's called primary evidence, primary evidence. And you want to go to this to support what it is you're saying.

One second here. All right. So one last thing on,.

When it comes to the Druids, Hippolytus, early church father wrote, and this is a little piece that links to what I told you. Another piece that links to that little piece I told you before that, why are they memorizing all of this poetry?

What poetry and why? Well, here's the hint. The Druids among the Celts applied themselves with particular zeal to the philosophy of Pythagoras. Pythagoras, that's the Greek philosopher. He's known as the first philosopher of the Greeks, Pythagoras.

And interesting enough, interestingly enough, this is what Pythagoras taught. This is Pythagoras now. He taught belief and the transmigration of souls from one human to another writing down the teachings of Pythagoras was forbidden.

The teaching must be kept secret. You must have secret initiations, which is also what the Druids had. You need to study the stars and practice astronomy and astrology. If you're a follower of Pythagoras, you are very involved in the evolve in the city, the world around you, very involved in the life of the city.

And the Druids taught, no surprise, the same things. This points to the influence of the doctrine of Pythagoras as the first philosopher. Remember I said that all of these locations in Europe, when especially bordering on the Mediterranean, those are 350 miles approximately away from each other.

So it would have been nothing for those coming from Greece to go to Marseille, to France to teach and vice versa. So again, we mentioned how the Druids what worship the gods, right? Studied the gods. Well, what gods were they studying?

If they were so linked into Greece and the Greek poetry is probably what they were memorizing, then it was more than likely the Greek gods that they brought into what they were doing. So in summary, Druids were a brutal segment of society.

And it's important to remember this because again, they're usually pointed to as the foundation of Halloween. So it's good to remember where this is coming from and who these people really were in order to make your decision on how much applies, how much of what they were applies to what we have today.

So Julius Caesar, once again noted that those who were suffering serious illnesses in the midst of the dangers of battle, either put to death human beings as sacrificial victims. They took part in these sacrifices.

They believe that the immortal gods delight more in the slaughter of those. Basically the gods prefer to kill criminals is what Julius Caesar is saying here, but they didn't stop at that. If there weren't enough criminals around, what they would do is to send Eve to the sacrifice of the innocence.

So the Druids killed and they didn't really care honestly who they killed. And this is based on historic evidence from Julius Caesar and his Gallic wars. So we have no physical evidence of anything for the Druids, anything for the Celts.

And according to what historical sources we have, the Druids did not worship nature itself. They studied aspects of it. And that's another piece of misinformation you find in the internet that they worship nature.

You always see pictures of Druids in their white robes, worshiping in a grove, raising their hands up to the sky. And that's not necessarily the case. So here is another giant piece of misinformation that eventually gets tacked on to Halloween, Samhain and the beginning of Halloween, which is there is no evidence whatsoever, no physical evidence that they believe that the underworld opened up during the fall celebrations and the dead came back.

There is no, no physical evidence on that at all. Okay. However, we do need to remember that they're not guiltless in things that, that went on back then they practiced magic rites, who knows what that involved.

And they killed followers and enemies by sacrificing them so they could read the signs or the portents for the future. They wanted to know the future. And this is a hallmark of the occult and occult means secret or hidden things related to Satan, the occult.

They wanted to know the future and the occult wants to know the future too. And it always has. So it's an interesting parallel there. Again, they pointed to their Oak branches and the leaves that they use for the ceremony.

And sadly, this is probably the last brutal thing I'll tell you about the Druids is they collected their, their enemies. They have found information written down about large cages of wood that were made and the Druids would load their enemies into these cages and literally set them on fire.

Really sad. Again, another picture of the brutality and a picture of who the Druids really were. The first century Pliny, the elder, he confirmed that link between Druids and sorcery. So we know that's true because Pliny confirms that he pointed to the origin of the name of Druid in his natural history.

He says, the magicians perform rites without using the foliage. They don't perform rites without using the foliage of those trees. So you can see how the Oak trees were held as I probably as close to sacred as, as you could get.

And from that, from the Greek word for Oak Druze,.

We get their name, the Druids. Okay.

So Halloween and its earliest probable origins. Again, on the internet, you're going to run into a lot of information. But if we look at the evidence of history, Halloween likely developed from Samhain.

That's a Gaelic word pronounced Samhain with Sal, like rhyming like a cow. And that is a summer's end feast. So it was like the end of all the warmth and the sunshine and the beginning of cold and darkness.

And it was celebrated across all of Europe, Scandinavia, and you could find records of Samhain or a summer's end feast being celebrated. So it wasn't, I don't know why there was such a big gap between the end of summer and November 1st when they decided on the date, but Samhain was celebrated around November 1st when the dark, maybe because it got darker when the dark actually started coming and the air started getting colder, who knows, but herds were brought in and communities started to prepare for winter.

And at the same time, even though we, they saw the change in the seasons, food was at its most plentiful during that time. So they celebrated, they told stories, they, you know, gathered around bonfires, they feasted.

So Samhain was automatically a celebration, but there is no physical evidence whatsoever that it was in any way related to witchcraft or to human sacrifice. None. The Celts or Druids on the flip side of that coin, keep in the back of your mind, but the Celts and Druids practiced the magic arts and we know what they were up to.

So that you always have to leave that, that little space for doubt or that little space to question, even though you're not looking at any physical evidence for any kind of witchcraft practiced at this time.

So no actual Samhain rituals are ever recorded either in the myth or in history. We don't have any evidence of what went on at Samhain other than a general feasting and people were celebrating things going on as, as winter was setting in.

So some, there is no historical evidence whatsoever linking Samhain with the dead either. That's something that you hear a lot that the Samhain holiday is linked to the dead. No evidence of that. And here's why some scholars claim that of course it was a Celtic new year and the reason why this one scholar says there may be no linking of Samhain to the dead is because it was more than likely linked to church issues or church events that were going on.

19th century historians say that ancient pagan beliefs were more than likely remnants of Catholic teaching. Now, if you're Catholic, don't get offended. I can show you a little bit more about why that is, but they literally pulled in the dead to be part of Samhain or part of that area or praying for the dead.

And that's what that's about. And we see here a snippet from church writings, 1413, in the Fest of Al Hallowin or All Hallows, every Saint taketh his own place. So you kind of see that in the, in the medieval times, it was the Feast of All Hallows, All Hallowin was being recorded at about 1450 and much earlier than that.

So the Roman conquest of Britain took place in 43 AD. And we have to remember that Rome when it conquered was bringing with it Christianity and Christianity eventually became the official religion. So some scholars believe that early Christians, and this is the irony of it, early Christians were largely responsible for the survival of this holiday to modern times.

So a papal edict set a church feast day in November, AD 800 to remember Christians of extraordinary faith. This wasn't just those who were martyred. This was also people who gave their lives on an everyday basis to helping the poor, taking care of people.

So they set it, the Pope set aside this day to remember them, people of extraordinary Christian faith. And in Britain, All Saints Day became known as All Hallows, Hallow meaning one who is holy. So it was a remembrance of the saints, one who is holy.

And the evening before November 1st was All Hallow Eves, All Hallow Eves, and that was shortened to Halloween. That's the evidential piece of evidence to support where the beginnings of Halloween actually were.

So a monk, an order of monks called the Cluniac Order, and they were established about 1000 AD. They were involved in All Souls Day. All souls are modern Halloween. Again, a root of where Halloween comes from.

And that day was eventually chosen as a day after All Saints Day, November 2nd, to emphasize the idea, and this is where the dead come in. Emphasize the idea that saints could intercede on behalf of the dead.

Praying for the dead, remembering the dead with food. Those are our 1000 year old precedents for ghostliness, the ghostliness that's attached and associated with Halloween. Comes directly from what the church did at that time.

And of course, we don't, you know, we have the split between, you know, during the Reformation, but it didn't, you know, this was something that was integrated already deeply a part of what the church was doing.

So it affected some and did not affect others. Throughout the Middle Ages, church bells were rung at the time to remember, this time to remember the dead. And bells were forbidden when they were forbidden.

People used bonfires to remember them instead. So we had the bringing in of the bonfires, the ghostliness of remembering the dead and these church holidays. Now you'll have pagans arguing with you. If you ever get into a deep discussion on the origins of Halloween, you'll have them arguing with you that no, no, no.

You know, the church stole this holiday and we were doing this long before they were ever doing this. And I think they're referring to Samhain, but again, they have no physical evidence that this ever took place or these things ever happened on Samhain.

And that, again, I encourage you as a critical thinker, I encourage you to look at the physical evidence, to evaluate it for yourself and to say, is this something that I could use in a court of law? Is this something that would hold up?

Is this, is this something that is solid that I can quote? And if it is, hang onto it and then go from there to the next point that you support with.

Physical evidence. Okay.

Trick-or-Treating, Folklore, and the Commercialization of Halloween

So Halloween was born and basically grew, started growing in the middle ages. It was the birth of trick-or-treating now that was coming up as far as all souls day. So believe it or not, the poor were considered a stand-in for the dead and they would give out to the poor, to the poor directly food, instead of handing it to the priests to give to the poor.

So this started an all hallow season of begging and feasting rituals where the poor would go from door to door and receive soul, what they called soul cakes. And it morphed into that to all kinds of things of winter holidays, masking treats, performances, processions, exchanging treats, but the door to door, walking from door to door and begging for treats was basically directly related to all souls day in history.

And that was part of what the church did is allow the poor to go from door to door asking for food. And it was all dependent on, of course, on generosity of the Kings and the aristocrats and the Lords of the Manners.

And they were all expected to be a part or take part in all hallows. These are what records historical records indicate that they, they literally had musicians paid to play. They made a very big deal of all hallows day for church reasons and not with any link at all to Samhain.

And we have the guilds and the parishes that took over this role eventually in mid 15th century. And really churches employed seasonal customs that, that encouraged people on all hallows to beg to raise money for the church.

So it's morphing from soul cakes to begging to raise money for the church. We have more proof of this historically from Shakespeare's England, 1558 to 1603 people went souling. They called it quote unquote or begging for small soul cakes and exchange for prayers.

They'd say for the donors, loved ones. So there you go. Praying for the dead teams of performers also, also took and went to the streets offering secular plays and music in exchange for food, drink or money.

So again, another historical record saying to us that this begging or going from door to door was directly related to what the church practices were at the time. So moving on to church from the church to world traditions, and there's an infinite number of world traditions and endless amount of variations.

In the 18th and 19th century, you have Scottish and Irish immigrants and they shared their folklore. Germans brought witchcraft, a very vivid and strong form of witchcraft lore. And you have Haitians and Africans brought their superstitions about black cats.

There's the black cat and witchcraft. English and Dutch brought a love for costumes and masquerades. And here's the folklore. Now we're separating history here, that what you just heard was history, evidential history from folklore.

And here's some of the folklore that you would run into on All Hallows Eve. If you place an egg on the fire and I'm losing my piece, my part of the screen there, but you can read that and showed blood.

Would you get the man you loved? The mountains of Virginia, you could hear the future whispered in the wind. In Louisiana, you could cook a dumb supper, which was a meal cooked backwards. And if you did it all correctly and waited until midnight, you might have a ghost appear at the table.

These are some of the traditions that were brought and they're endless. Believe me that the stories from different world traditions on what Halloween is. You can see here that what was originally part of the church is starting to fade away.

And what's coming in and bypassing the historical truth or the historical evidence is folklore. Here's another thing about jack-o'-lanterns. And this is directly, you can trace jack-o'-lanterns directly to Irish folklore.

And it was about a man named Jack who played a trick on the devil. He played actually several tricks on the devil and the devil got very angry with him. And, and one night actually caught up with him.

And so he sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way. Jack put the coal into a carved out turnip. And the turnip has morphed into the pumpkin. And Jack has been roaming the earth ever since with his carved out pumpkin and his coal in there.

So the Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as Jack of the lantern, but then simply became Jack-o'-lantern. Again, based on folklore, not evidential history, but folklore stories that were told by people.

So Halloween celebrations based on a religion and folklore of each American region. We have the Caledonian society in Canada founded in 1855. They read Robert Burns' poem Halloween every Halloween. That was in 1786.

Then in the Ozarks in the 19th century, Halloween was a barn dance. Early 20th century in New York, it was parades and firecrackers and Philadelphia masquerades held in taverns. And the revelry that came from these things started to morph and change.

And revelry went to anarchy where people started playing jokes on each other. And we have that night that comes before Halloween, where you have this anarchy and now today. So this is the beginning of it.

And then during this particular time, though, in the 19th century, we have youth who removed gates and hung rocking chairs and trees and even put cows on the roof. I would have liked to see a cow on the roof, but it was the industrial revolution, the industrial revolution that really caused Halloween to go on steroids.

We had the Gothic literature and mid late Victorian era that put a romantic cast to Halloween. In the early 1900s, we had factories now that can mass produce everything. They can make everything, all kinds of costumes, paraphernalia, plates, you name it.

They could do anything. Printed stories. And the Halloween industry began. It became very big business. The first candy was shipped from Germany and you had Americans doing silly things in long dresses and their tight pants jumping over candle flames to see what their luck would be in the future.