Monthly Archives: October 2017

On the THREE days of Hallowe’en…

William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905) - The Day of the Dead (1859).jpg

There are actually “Three Days of Halloween,” ending on November 2, with All Souls’ Day …

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Jack-o'-Lantern 2003-10-31.jpgMy last post was “Hola! Buen Camino!”  It described some of my just-finished five-week trip to Spain  (I was hiking – and biking – the Camino de Santiago.)  I’ll be writing more about that trip later, but now it’s time to focus on the upcoming three days of Halloween.  That set of three feast days is called the Halloween “Triduum,” or in the alternative Allhallowtide.

Triduum* is a fancy Latin word for “three days.”  And the word “hallow” – in both “hallowe’en” and “Allhallowtide” – comes from the Old English word for “saint,” halig.  That eventually became “hallow.”  (Maybe it was easier to say.)  Which led to November 1 now being called All Saints’ Day.

The Old English “All Haligs’ Day” – November 1 – eventually became “All Hallows Day.”  The “eve” before that Feast Day – October 31 – became “All Hallows Evening.”  In time that shortened to “All Hallows E’en.”  Later still it shortened to “Hallowe’en,” then just plain Halloween.

There’s more on these three days of remembrance in “All Hallows E’en” – 2016, and earlier still in “All Hallows E’en” – 2015.  But here’s the short and sweet version.

As Wikipedia noted, this three-day period is a “time to remember the dead, including martyrssaints, and all faithful departed Christians.”  The main day is November 1, now All Saints Day, but previously referred to as Hallowmas.  It was established sometime between 731 and 741 – over 1,300 years ago – “perhaps by Pope Gregory III.”

All Hallows’ Eve – October 31 – was originally established around that time as a vigil.  That is, it was originally designed as a “period of purposeful sleeplessness, an occasion for devotional watching, or an observance.”  (From the Latin word for “wakefulness.”)  In other words, Halloween was originally designed to be more like the “Easter Vigil held at night between Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday.”  That is, “a devotional exercise or ritual observance on the eve of a holy day:”

Such liturgical vigils usually consist of psalmsprayers and hymns, possibly a sermon or readings from the Holy Fathers, and sometimes periods of silent meditation.

But boy has that changed.  (The painting above left shows “A Knight’s Vigil.”  See the notes.)

There’s more on those changes below, but first note that November 1 honors “all the saints and martyrs, both known and unknown.”  On the other hand, November 2 – All Souls’ Day – honors “all faithful Christians ‘who are unknown in the wider fellowship of the church, especially family members and friends.'”  In other words, the rest of us poor schmucks

But getting back to Halloween, a good friend recently asked how such a Holy Day “evolved into an opportunity to drink and party?”  (Not to mention getting way too much candy…)

It all started with the old-time belief that  evil spirits were most prevalent during the long nights of winter.  Those “old-timers” also believed that the “barriers between our world and the spirit world” were at their its lowest and most permeable on the night of October 31:

So, those old-time people would wear masks or put on costumes in order to disguise their identities.  The idea was to keep the afterlife “hallows” – ghosts or spirits – from recognizing the people in this, the “material world.”

Another thing they did was build bonfires, or literally bonefires(That is, “bonfires were originally fires in which bones were burned.”)  The original idea was that evil spirits had to be driven away with noise and fire.  But that evolved into this:  The “fires were thought to bring comfort to the souls in purgatory and people prayed for them as they held burning straw up high.”

Like I said, there’s more information in “All Hallows E’en” – 2016, and in “All Hallows E’en” – 2015 (On things like trick-or-treatingjack-o’-lanterns representing “Christian souls in purgatory,” and “foolish fire” leading travelers from their safe paths “to their doom.”)  But I’ll close with this:

There was another old-time custom, that if you had to travel on All Hallows E’en – like from 11:00 p.m. until midnight – your had to be careful.  If your candle kept burning, that was a good omen.  (The person holding the candle would be safe in the upcoming winter “season of darkness.”)  But if your candle went out, “the omen was bad indeed.”

The thought was that the candle had been blown out by witches.

Have a Happy Halloween!

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Wicked_witch

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The upper image is courtesy of All Souls’ Day – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The caption: “All Souls’ Day by William Bouguereau.”  See also Allhallowtide, and All Saints’ Day – Wikipedia.

“Note” also that an asterisk in the main text indicates a statement supported by reference detailed in this “notes” section.  Thus as to the term Triduum, it is usually defined as a “period of three days  for prayer before a feast.”  A better-known example is the Paschal Triduum, from Maundy Thursday through Easter Sunday.

Re:  “A Knight’s Vigil.”  That’s the title of the painting – by John Pettie (1839-1893) – to the left of the paragraph beginning “All Hallows’ Eve – October 31 – was originally…”  The painting is courtesy of Vigil – Wikipedia, which added this note on knights’ vigils:

During the Middle Ages, a squire on the night before his knighting ceremony was expected to take a cleansing bath, fast, make confession, and then hold an all-night vigil of prayer in the chapel, preparing himself in this manner for life as a knight.  For the knighting ceremony, he dressed in white as a symbol for purity and over that was placed a red robe to show his readiness to be wounded, over which a black robe was placed as a symbol of his willingness to die for his king.

The lower “witch” image is courtesy of Hail to Dorothy! The Wicked Witch is dead …54disneyreviews.

“Hola! Buen Camino!”

My Camino pilgrimage started at Pamplona, at lower right, for 450 miles of hiking and biking…

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Well, we did it.  My brother and I arrived in Santiago de Compostela on Thursday, October 12.  This was after hiking – and biking – the Camino de Santiago, as shown in the map above.  Along the way I occasionally listened to my iPod Shuffle – to help pass the time – and one of my favorite songs was It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.  Except in my mind I had to change the words to “It’s a long way to Santiago!”

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Just as an aside, Monday October 23 was the Feast day for St. James of Jerusalem.  He was also known as James, the brother of Jesus, “James the Just,” and was said to be the first Bishop of Jerusalem.*  He held that post until his death, by “martyrdom in 62 or 69 AD.”

And just in case you’re confused – about the number of “Jameses” in the Bible –  there are at least three men named James in the New Testament, and possibly as many as eight.  (See “BIO of Philip and James,” which attempts to sort them out.) 

In that list, James the Just (“Brother of Jesus”) is listed third.  James the Less – possibly the “son of Alphaeus” – is listed second.  Listed first is St. James the Greater – “for whom the Camino de Santiago is named,” and who is in fact the Patron Saint of Pilgrims.  Which is something I mentioned in my last post, On a pilgrimage in Spain.  A link in that post added this, after first noting that in English the route is known as “the Way of St. James:”

The Way of Saint James … is a network of pilgrims’ ways serving pilgrimage to the shrine of the apostle Saint James the Great in the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the saint are buried.  Many follow its routes as a form of spiritual path or retreat for their spiritual growth.

So on October 23 we remembered St. James of Jerusalem, also known as James, the brother of Jesus.  But from September 13 to October 12 – you could say – I “remembered” St. James the Greater, by going for a long walk on his pilgrimage route.  (Sore feet and all…)

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Getting back to the pilgrimage itself:  On October 3, in Puente La Reina, in Spain – “about eight miles shy of León” – I wrote that – on reaching Leon – “we will have hiked 250 miles from Pamplona, in the 21 days since we left on September 13.*”  Here’s another note:

The first 10 days after [Pamplona] – on the hike – were pretty miserable.  My left foot constantly throbbed, until it blistered up and got tough.  But the day off in Burgos helped a lot.  And since then we’ve made good progress.  Still, we had to implement a Plan B, which involves renting bikes in Leon and cycling the remaining 194 miles.

And speaking of Burgos, here’s a picture of the city’s famous Cathedral. My fellow traveller and I took over an hour, hiking, to get out of the city from there, on the morning of September 26, 2017.

Later, after we reached León, we covered the last 195 miles in seven days, riding mountain bikes, with panniers on the back.  In other words, in the first two-thirds of the trip we averaged 12  miles a day, hiking.  In the last seven days we averaged closer to 28 miles a day. But in a way that turned out to be simply a variety of Dorothy Parker‘s “different kind of hell.*”  (We just got way too sore again, but in different parts of the body.)

You can get a better idea from the map at the top of the page.  It took ten days to hike from Pamplona to Burgos, where we too our first day off.  It took another 10 days to reach Leon, where we took our second day off and picked up our pre-ordered bikes.  Then that long section from Leon to Burgos – some 195 miles of the 450 – we covered in seven days.

But not without mishap.  Neither of us had ridden a bike in 40 years or so, so it wasn’t real surprising when my right handlebar smashed the heck out of the side-view mirror of some poor slob’s nice new car.  In the second mishap I literally “ran my ass into a ditch…”

We were zooming downhill one afternoon.  I tried to adjust my left pantleg, and the next thing I knew I was laying in a ditch, bleeding like a stuck pig.  And not just any ditch.  A nice deep ditch covered with thorns and brambles on the sides and bottom.  The “stuck pig” part came when my Ray-Bans gashed the bridge of my nose, causing it to bleed profusely…

The third major mishap came a mere six kilometers from Santiago, when my rear tire when flat.

We finally got a new tube on and inflated, but then had a time getting the chain back on the derailleur.  I finally flagged down a passing Spanish cyclist.  He helped get that straight, but then – after he peddled his merry way – we found out there were no rear brakes, which posed a problem.  We knew that much of the remaining six kilometers was downhill, and also that if applied too forcefully, using front-only brakes can cause a cyclist to go “ass over teakettle.”

So my brother had us switch bikes, and we both glided – carefully and gingerly – into Santiago.

I’ll be writing on more of these adventures, including the several times I – or we – got Lost in Spain.  But after five weeks in Spain – the last part of which included a nine-hour bus ride from Santiago to Madrid, and a 10-hour flight from Madrid to Atlanta – I can only say, with feeling:

There’s No Place Like Home!!

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There is truly“no place like home” (after a long pilgrimage…)

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The upper image is courtesy of Camino de Santiago 800 PROJECT: Map of the Routesilverarrow18.blogspot.com.  

The “Tipperary” image is courtesy of It’s a Long Way to Tipperary – Wikipedia.

Note” also: An asterisk in the main text indicates a statement supported by a reference detailed further in this “notes” section.  Thus as to Jesus’ brother being the “first,” see James the Just, First Bishop of Jerusalem, Jesus’ brother.

For the “RCL” Bible readings for the October 23 feast day, see St. James of Jerusalem.

As to the asterisk next to the passage “the 21 days since we left on September 13:”  We actually reached Leon on October 4. 

The Burgos Cathedral image is courtesy of Burgos Cathedral – Wikipedia

Re: Fellow traveller.  Here referring to a person who is “intellectually sympathetic” – in this case, to the crazy idea of spending thousands of dollars and five weeks to hike in a foreign country – as opposed to the term as used in U.S. politics in the 1940s and 1950s.  At that time and place the term was a “pejorative term for a person who was philosophically sympathetic to Communism, yet was not a formal, ‘card-carrying member‘ of the American Communist Party.” 

Young Dorothy Parker.jpgRe:  “Different kind of hell.”  The allusion is to Dorothy Parker‘s famously saying – whenever the door rang in her apartment – “What fresh hell is this?”  That’s also the title of Parker’s 1989 biography by Marion Meade.  See Amazon.com: Dorothy Parker: What Fresh Hell Is This?  

Re:  “Some poor slob’s nice new car.”  City streets in Spain are generally very narrow and difficult to maneuver. 

The lower image is courtesy of There‘s No Place Like Home- Image Results.   See also No Place Like Home – Wikipedia, which noted that – aside from the famous line in the movie Wizard of Oz – the phrase may also refer to “the last line of the 1822 song ‘Home! Sweet Home!,’ words by John Howard Payne and music by Sir Henry Bishop; the source of inspiration for the other references here: ‘Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home,’” and/or “‘(There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays,’ a 1954 Christmas song most famously sung by Perry Como.”  For a “live” version, see also There’s No Place Like Home – YouTube.