The Think Tank

So Christmas has come and gone again leaving us all a little dazed, a little poorer and, at least in my case, a little fatter.  Okay, a lot fatter.  And how can it be helped?.  I mean with the grand Thanksgiving feast, a bevy of Christmas parties, a birthday and then the grand Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners I figure I consumed maybe a billion calories in the last six weeks.  Not to mention the the keg of beer and vat of Champagne to ring in the new year.

The good news is, we are are all done with the damn eating.  Right?  Well… not really.  There’s one left.

I am speaking of Epiphany.  Its celebrated on January 6th and is known by many different names, including Kings Night, the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus, and many others.  It’s a holiday that has largely fallen from grace, but for an awfully long time it was celebrated as Christmas Day proper.  Here in the New World it was decided that December 25th was the big day, but Epiphany still hung around as the infamous 12th day of Christmas.  There are many traditions, most of them concentrating on the arrival of the Three Kings (Melchor, Gaspar, and Balthazar) in Bethlehem.  They are said to have brought gifts of Gold, Frankinscence and myrrh to the baby Jesus, but in most Latin countries they will also bring gifts to good little boys and girls who set their shoes outside the door or under the tree.  And should you leave some hay for their camels and elephants, you’ll get an extra special present from the Kings, much as Santa will leave you a little something extra if you leave him some cookies and carrots for the reindeer.

But that’s not a feast.  And what is Christmas without eating yourself into a new weight class?  As if our fabulous, seven course Christmas Eve dinner weren’t a monumentous enough event, I now find that in order to properly celebrate Epiphany we are not just supposed to eat yet another giant meal, we are supposed to celebrate the whole octivus: 8 full days chowing down on fruit cake layered with whipped cream while drinking a sweet tea thickened with corn flour, called atole.  It’s like an incredible conspiracy between the fitness industry and the heart surgeons association.

So I for one will do my part to fulfill tradition.  I will eat and drink and be very merry this weekend as the last official feast of the Holiday Season comes and goes.  I will put hay in my shoes and set them outside the door and I might even try a sip of that vile sounding tea.  But then we had all better work our asses off in the pagen days to follow… soon enough it’ll be time to waddle up to the Easter table and start all over again.

In 1996 Larry Page and Sergey Brin invented an internet search engine that revolutionized the industry.  Starting out in the humble surroundings of a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California Google quickly grew to be a true tech giant, rivaled only by Microsoft.  Today it employs almost 10,000 people, holds nearly 80% of the market share (leaving Yahoo in a very distant 2nd) and processes an estimated 3 billion queries per month.  The companies popularity has become so great that the word “Google” is not just a name, its a verb.  Both the Webster and Oxford dictionaries list the term “Googling” as using the Google search engine to find information on the internet.

It achieved this incredible level of success by offering awesome products at the awesome price of “free”.  The money comes from the ads that other companies purchase and appear along the edges of the search screens.
From the very start the company has used the motto “Don’t be evil”, and part of its mission statement is to provide “unbiased, accurate, and free access to information.”  Pretty lofty claims.  But does the company live up to that reputation?  We had a discussion about that the other night during my Holiday Open House and so I thought I’d look in to it.

Google, which at one time was the fair-haired child of the tech business, has increasingly found itself facing some hard criticisms, similar to what Microsoft faced in the 1990’s.  There have been a lot of accusations that Google has become so large that anyone wanting to advertise on the net must do so according to Google’s terms or else be left off of their servers and out of 80% of people’s searches, making it all but impossible to do business.  These sorts of accusations come with the territory for industry leaders and are difficult to substantiate, although it does smack of a certain amount of truth.  That isn’t what really concerns me, though, and it isn’t where the company finds most of its criticism.

One of the things that makes Google so profitable is that it tailors the ads that it displays to the individual searching.  It does this by installing a “cookie” on your hard drive when you logon to the Google site or install any of the Google components, such as the Google Toolbar, Gmail, Gtalk or any of the others.  Cookies are basically little programs that serve as an identifier and communicate information about the computer you are using, typically the IP address, to the server you are connected to.  Cookies are commonly used by most websites and allow for the “remember me” options we see all over the web.  Typically they represent a minor security risk and are viewed as a necessary evil by most people, if they are considered at all.

But Google took the use of cookies a little farther.  Whereas most cookies expire when you close your web navigator or after a few days or weeks, Google’s cookie does not expire until 2038.  The little delicacy sits on your computer and communicates every search query you make and every link you click on back to Googles servers, where the information is used to figure out what kind of sites you like to visit and therefore what kind of ads you are most likely to respond to.  By customizing the ads that their users see, Google dramatically increased the percentage of people who followed the pay-to-play links and made everyone a lot of money.  It was a stroke of genius.  99% of Google’s revenue comes from these ads.

Here’s the wrinkle.  In several different articles, Google representatives have very proudly stated that in nine years of operation they have “never knowingly deleted a single search query.”  Nor have they deleted any of the emails sent or received by Gmail or any of the conversations that take place every day on Google Talk.  All of that information is sitting in text files someplace in the basement of Googleplex.

You don’t need to be a hardcore conspiracy theorist to see the potential problems with that.  When I raised this point in our weekend conversation, my friend said that Google had never given over any information to any one, and that their records were used only for targeting their advertising.  And indeed, we all remember earlier this year when Google spit in the Justice Departments eye and refused to hand over search queries regarding pornographic websites.  But in an interview with Mother Jones magazine, Google Associate Council Nancy Wong said that Google has been subpoenaed for user records and that the company has complied, but declined to comment on the number of subpoenas or what type of information was handed over.  Even the Google website says that the company “does comply with valid legal processes, such as search warrants, court orders, or subpoenas seeking personal information.”  But as the aftermath of “War on Terror” has shown us, those “legal processes” aren’t always so legal.

“What’s the problem with the feds looking into my records?” you might ask.  “If I have nothing to hide, why does it matter what someone might know?”  Well, there are several rebuttals to that idea.  You might want to ask some of the AOL users whose personal information was accidentally made public what the harm is.  Would user 1997374 have wanted the world to know that he was looking up information on increasing erections and better cunnilingus techniques?  Or what about user 22155378 who repeatedly looked for information on Marijuana detox?  Would he or she have wanted that information made public?  I’m guessing not.  Some people may believe that a user number or IP address does not correlate to a name, but it does.  Having the IP address of a given computer is akin to having a license plate number: that alone does not give you the person’s name or address, but with it you can get other information that will reveal exactly who you are.

Even more scary to me is that Google has proven itself willing to acquiesce to governmental demands if it is advantageous enough.  In dealing with the government of China, Google agreed to filter the content that it would provide to Chinese users based on the demands of the countries rulers.  How does that mesh with their “unbiased, accurate, and free access to information” claim?

One of the things my friend said the other night when I told him I was apprehensive about having that much personal information warehoused was that “sensitive information shouldn’t be discussed in email or chat programs anyway.”  And sure, he has a point.  But the broader point is this: raw information can be taken out of context.  And its not like our government hasn’t gone on witch hunts before.  Remember the McCarthy Communist trials?

Throughout the 1950’s Senator Joseph McCarthy led an unconstitutional crusade against suspected Communists and Communist sympathizers.  There is a great movie pertaining to this called Goodnight, and Good Luck, which tells the story of the fight between McCarthy and Edward R. Murrow that eventually led to end of the Communist crusades.  But long before they came to an end, Senator McCarthy and many other governmental and private review boards pulled people off the streets and demanded that they prove they weren’t working for the Russians.  The accused were seldom allowed council and most of the evidence against them was never made public, for reasons of “national security”.  People were not allowed to face their accusers, and in some cases were sent to prison based on the testimony of people they had never met and no judge ever heard from.  Even for those who weren’t sent to prison, being accused of sympathizing with the Communist Party was enough to cost you your job and livelihood, banks wouldn’t lend to you, people wouldn’t hire you and your neighbors often would destroy your property and even take your life.

McCarthy’s power seemed almost endless.  Eventually though, do in no small part to the televised fights between Ed Murrow and the Senator, McCarthy was proven to be a despot.  Most if not all of the convictions were overturned, most of the laws passed were declared unconstitutional and overturned, and people’s names were cleared.

Of course, that was all at the end of a 10 year march and the damage had already been done: lives had been ruined, property seized and people killed.  And all of it was thanks to baseless claims.  What would have happened if McCarthy could point to 57 emails and countless searches for organizations linked one way or another with the Communist Party?  Would McCarthyism have died in 60’s, or would this country be an entirely different place today?

Here’s an example of what could happen today.  I like to write stories.  I hope one day to get them published.  Many of the adventure stories I write deal with paramilitary groups and anti-terrorism squads.  As such I have done a lot of research into Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and many themes that relate to terrorism.  Our government has already set the precedent that people can be snatched off the street and transported to Guantanamo Bay or other detention centers and interrogated without any of our constitutional protections if the government feels the person in question is a terrorist or a terrorist supporter.  What might they think about my searches into terror groups should they be allowed access to my Google records?  What might you think if you heard that I was on trial for being a terrorist supporter and that among other evidence, I had visited sites where Al-Qaeda left messages and that I had started searching out information on Osama bin Laden all the way back in 1996?  Would you find that more compelling then if they cited undisclosed facts against me?  I’m guessing that most people would.  But as I said earlier, all of that “evidence” has been taken out of context.  I was simply doing book research.

You might think that a farfetched idea.  You might say that America is different now.  But remember that McCarthyism existed only 50 years ago, and many of the same people are in power now as were then.  Robert Byrd has been a sitting Senator since 1959, Strom Thurmand served from 1956 until his death in 2003, and Ed Kennedy has been Massachusetts Senator since 1962 – just to name a few.  In fact six of the 20 longest serving Senators have held their seats in the last 50 years.

The Bush administration wanted the Patriot Act and uses it to wiretap US citizens right now.  Clinton allowed the FBI to monitor the books we check out at the library.  And they want even more power, with the so called Terrorist Tracking, Identification, and Prosecution Act they very well may try for access to to the very kind of information currently warehoused on Google’s servers, if they don’t already have it.  Of course the obvious point is, if they knew they were tracking and identifying real terrorists, they wouldn’t need new laws.  But they don’t know for sure who the terrorists are, so they want access to our cell records and search records and our emails so they can read between the lines and ascertain if we are terrorists or not.

So… is Google evil?  The answer is “Probably not”.  But they do have an awful lot of information stockpiled on all of us.  And as sure as the day is long, someone wants that information: be it salesmen, hackers or our very own government.  Even if Google has no intention of using their power for any dastardly purposes, the simple fact that they have these detailed glimpses into our lives represents a threat to our personal privacy.

Am I advocating a boycot of Google?  No.  I use many of their of services and I like them very much.  I just think people should be aware of the man who might be behind the curtain.  And even if he’s not there now, he could be there tomorrow.

If you agree with my sentiments please call, write or email your congressional representative and tell them to support Rep. Ed Markey’s (D-Mass) legislation that would protect internet searches as personal space, just like your home.

Who hasn’t heard those famous words?  Surely if you live in the US or UK you have heard at least that 007 phrase, and probably many more.  If you were ever a young man, chances are you stood in front of a mirror and uttered that line more then once.  After all, it seems to work on the ladies in the movies, right?

The dashing and stylish British spy has been a cult hero since the 1950’s and has been the main character in 21 (official) feature films.  The 007 series is the second largest grossing film franchise in history at $3.9 BILLION world-wide (bested only by Star Wars) and one of the longest running too: there has been a new Bond film every year or two since 1962, save for a few exceptions when legal battles delayed a films release.

With his suave mannerisms, roguish good-looks, witty one-liners and downright awesome gadgetry – who wouldn’t want a car that turns into a submarine or a watch that has a built-in laser beam – James Bond is a staple of American pop culture.  But unless you are a real Bond aficionado like myself (read “geek”), there is some confusion about the franchise.  Many people are unsure of who portrayed the first Bond, what was the first film, and even how many films there have been total.  So, here are the facts about Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

Ian Fleming invented James Bond in 1952 while staying at his Jamaican resort named Goldeneye.  Bond was named after an American ornithologist who wrote several books on Caribbean birds.  (This was later referenced in Die Another Day when Bond poses as an ornithologist during a foray to Cuba).  Fleming himself was an avid bird enthusiast and was a fan of the real James Bond’s works, so he barrowed the name for his infamous hero.  When asked about the choice of names, Ian Fleming was quoted as saying “I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, James Bond was much better than something more interesting like ‘Peregrine Maltravers.’ Exotic things would happen to and around him but he would be a neutral figure – an anonymous blunt instrument wielded by a Government Department.”

There is great debate about who served as inspiration for the character of James Bond, but the most likely conclusion is that Bond was based on Ian Fleming himself:  Both served in British Naval Intelligence, both rose to the rank of Commander, and both were renowned for drinking, smoking and womanizing.  Fleming himself would never comment on Bond’s inspiration however, so I guess we’ll never know.  What we do know is that Fleming said the plot for his first novel Casino Royal was based on real (or at least partially real) events from a trip he took to Lisbon with the Director of Naval Intelligence.

The first “Official” Bond film was 1962’s Dr. No, starring Sean Connery.  Other possible choices for 007 were James Mason or Carey Grant.  Fleming eventually settled on Connery after first having dismissed him as being a “overgrown stuntman”, and came to like Sean Connery’s portrayal so much that he rewrote James’ history to include having a Scottish father.  Interestingly, Bond’s mother was named Monique Delacroix, after a young woman Ian Fleming was once engaged to marry.

So… Dr. No was the first “official” film appearance of James Bond.  But what about “unofficially”?  In 1954, CBS paid Ian Fleming $1000 for the rights to produce a made for TV version of Casino Royal, starring American actor Barry Nelson as fledgling CIA agent Jimmy Bond.  This TV movie is not widely known and is not considered to be a real James Bond movie since it was not produced by Albert Broccoli’s EON Productions or MGM, which has produced every “official” film since Dr. No.  (Albert – or “Cubby” as he was known – passed away shortly after the 1995 blockbuster Goldeneye, but his legacy has been carried on by his daughter Barbara, who has produced all of the Bond films since).

In addition to this years release of the new, gritty, series-reinventing version of Casino Royal, there was one other adaptation of of Ian Fleming’s first novel.  It was a very peculiar spoof movie released in 1967, starring David Niven as Sir James Bond and 5 other actors as “fake” Bonds, most notably Peter Sellers.

Another Bond flick that has been reincarnated is 1965’s Thunderball.  The first “official” version starred Sean Connery and is considered in many circles to be finest Bond movie of all time (the other usual front runner being the 1964 smash Goldfinger.)  Thunderball was revamped and re-released in 1983 as Never Say Never Again, also starring Sean Connery and produced by Sony Pictures instead of MGM, who owns the rights to the 007 legacy.  The legal wiggle-room came about because Ian Fleming had some help in writing the screenplay for Thunderball, from a man named Kevin McClory.  With the success of the James Bond Franchise, McClory claimed a right to part of the series and petitioned the courts for the ability to start a rival Bond series with Sony Films.  The courts granted the claim in a limited fashion, allowing McClory to produce the remake in 1983.  Afterward McClory tried again to get permission to start a rival series starring Liam Neeson as 007 in a screenplay tentatively titled Doomsday 2000, but ultimately EON Productions and MGM prevailed, leaving Sony and McClory both shaken and stirred.  These legal battles were the primary reason for the six year lapse between Licence To Kill and Goldeneye.

One of the most consistent traits of all the Bond films is his transportation.  Always sleek, always stylish and always hot off the production lines, James Bond can always be found behind the wheel of a damn nice ride.  The true classic of the franchise is the silver Aston Martin DB5 that first debuted in Goldfinger and made special appearances in 4 other films, despite Bonds penchant for Bentley’s in the novels. In addition to being a beautiful piece of machinery, the DB5 also introduced us to such lavish amendments as ejector seats, radar capabilities, machine guns behind the headlights, rotating license plates, and a special compartment for chilled champagne.  Over the course of the franchise, several DB5’s have been used, one of which sold this year to a collector in Arizona for a whopping $2 million bucks.

Other cars include the Lotus Esprite, the Toyota 2000 GT and the Citroen 2 CV.  Beginning with GoldenEye BMW became a marketing partner, and James started driving Bavarian beauties.  The Z3, Z8, 750iL and even BMW’s first motorcyle, the R 1200 C Cruiser made everyone’s mouths drool in the 90’s.  But come the new millenium 007 was back to his good old English Aston Martins, racing around the ice in Die Another Day behind wheel of a V12 Vanquish (complete with cloaking device) and then demolishing the absolutely stunning new rendition of the DB S in Casino Royal.

To date there have been a total of six actors who portrayed James Bond in the official films.  Sean Connery starred in 6 (plus the unoffical Never Say Never Again for a total of 7) and Roger Moore did 7 films as well.  George Lazenby wore the tuxedo only once for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, after which he voluntarily left the series because he felt it was losing its audience.  Timothy Dalton took the reins in the late 1980’s for two films before he was replaced by Peirce Brosnan in 1995.  Brosnan had been offered the job prior to Dalton, but was unable to disengage himself from his Remington Steele contract.  He starred in 4 films before being replaced by Daniel Craig in this years rendition of Casino Royal.  I will admit that at first I was very skeptical of Craig, who, Like George Lazenby, does not have the traditional suave appearance we’ve come to expect from Double Oh Seven.  But having seen this new, gritty, reinvention of the series that Casino Royal seems to be, I am quite pleased.  It feels like the production crew is trying to steer Bond back to his roots, casting him as more of the “blunt instrument” that Ian Fleming talked about and concentrating less on the technical wizardry of Q Branch (which did not appear at all in Fleming’s first novel or this latest film.)  All in all I think I am happier with the grittier, more realistic version of Bond even if it means losing the ejector seats and laser-beams, and I think Daniel Craig fits this new bill very well. 

Interesting trivia:

The longest bungee jump ever recorded was for the opening scene of GoldenEye.  Wayne Michaels jumped more then 750 feet from the top of the Verzasca hydroelectric dam in Switzerland.  The stunt took more then two weeks to set up and resulted in less then one minute of film.  And of course there was only one take.

James Brolin, Robert Wagner and Burt Reynolds were all considered and auditioned for the role of James Bond.

Every actor who auditions for James Bond is required to do the same scene, out of From Russia With Love.

Joe Don Baker and Charles Gray are the only people ever to play both a Bond villain and ally.  Baker played the evil Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights and later CIA agent Jack Wade in GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. Gray played Bond’s contact in You Only Live Twice and the infamous Earnst Blofeld in Diamonds are Forever.

Desmond Llewleyn, who played Bond’s gadget man Q, was the only person to appear in 18 official James Bond films.  Until his death in 1999, he had been in every film except Dr. No, in which the only gadgets were a watch that glowed in the dark and a Geiger counter.

Five Ian Fleming book titles have never made it to the big screen: The Property of a Lady, Quantum of Solace, Risico, The Hildebrand Rarity, and 007 in New York.

Only one Bond vixen has returned to play the same role in more the one film.  Eunice Gayson played Sylvia Trench in both Dr. No and From Russia With Love.

Both the 2006 Casino Royal and the 1965 Thunderball were filmed at the casino resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.

George Lucas based his Indiana Jones title character on Sean Connery’s Bond, which is why he asked Connery to play Dr. Jones’ father in The Last Crusade.

The phrase “My name is Bond.  James Bond” was honored in 2005 by being ranked the 22nd greatest quotation in cinematic history, by the American Film Institute.

“Vodka martini.  Shaken, not stirred” was ranked 90th on that same list.

Only one James Bond title song has become a #1 hit: “A View to a Kill” by Duran Duran.  Several other have made the Top 10 list.

Chris Cornell, who performed “You Know My Name” for the 2006 version of Casino Royal was the first male lead vocalist for a Bond film since A-Ha in 1987.  The song is also only the 5th song to have a different title then the film it appears in.

Shirley Bassey is the only singer to ever perform more then one opening theme.  She has performed three.

The other night we were playing cards and listening to something on the TV about a young woman from a “normal, healthy family” – i.e. a home with married heterosexual parents and one or more children – who killed her newborn child.  It started a small discussion around our poker table about the “normality” of families, given that greater than 50 percent of marriages in this country end in divorce, which in turn led to whether or not singe-parent homes are more likely to produce children who commit crime then “normal” two-parent homes.  Being the only child from a one-parent home at the table, and given that I am a fairly upstanding citizen (and further given that I personally know several other one-parent kids who turned out respectable), I of course took the side that it didn’t really matter how many parents were in the home, and that poverty had a greater impact on whether or not you were likely to commit a crime.  Given the great range of infractions covered by the word crime, we agreed to limit ourselves to violent crime, severe drug addiction or distribution and habitual breaking and entering.

The discussion was short lived and offered no real conclusions aside from the fact that most everyone thought I was wrong, and while they conceded that kids from single-parent families weren’t doomed to be criminals, they felt the chances were significantly better.  So, I looked into it.

What I found was that we were all a little bit right.

According to all of the studies I could find, whether it was conducted by the extremely conservative Heritage Foundation, or the somewhat more liberal NAACP, there most certainly is a link between single-parent families and the likelihood of a child to commit the types of crime we were talking about.  The numbers vary wildly from one survey to the next, but the gist is that if you come from a single-parent home you are 5-10 times more likely to commit crime.

Chris: zero, everyone else: 1.

I would counter with the argument that if you come from a single-parent home where the mother is the only parent and has never married (which is roughly 75% of single-family homes) you are 20 times more likely to live below the poverty line then if your parents are married.  Add to that the fact that if you live below the poverty line you are 5 times more likely to commit a crime then if you are from a middle- or even working-class home, and it would appear that the score is 1 to 1.

Furthermore several studies conducted in England and Australia showed very conclusive evidence that increases in poverty lead to increases in child abuse (or neglect), and that those two factors have a linear relationship to juvenile crime rates.  When neglect and abuse go up, crime rates go up equally.  (Oddly enough, crime rates seem to jump higher for neglect then abuse).  Add in the fact that single parents tend to be less educated and therefore work for lower wages and are often forced to work multiple jobs, which in turn leaves the child unsupervised and free to associate with the less desirable peer group offered by the impoverished neighborhood the family is economically forced to inhabit, and you begin to see the vicious circle of poverty that I was talking about.

Call it 2 to 1 in my favor.

Here’s where my theory tanks.  When looking at single-parent families where the numbers have been equalized to account for socio-ecnomic discrepancies, married couples produce kids with fewer addictions, fewer mental disorders and who commit fewer crimes.  And it doesn’t seem to matter how many studies you look at, that results are the same.  While the numbers vary wildly about how much of a difference it makes, it is still undeniable.  Even when single-parent families are moved to better neighborhoods, the criminal activities of the kids are still higher then those from two-parent families, albeit by a lower percentage.  It even holds true for kids from homes where the parents are married but unhappy.  At this point you may think I might as well give up and go home, because I’ve lost.

But I haven’t.  At least not entirely.

While coming from single-parent homes might indeed cause greater instances of criminal behavior and mental anguish, the greatest link to raising happy, well adjusted kids who stay on the right side of the law is not being married to the child’s other parent, or even having another parent-figure in the home: it’s simply having access to other people.  A grandparent, an aunt or uncle, a step parent, even neighbors who have strong positive relationships and spend a reasonable amount of time with the kids produce statistically identical results to those children who come from married homes.  In fact, studies that are currently ongoing seem to suggest that kids who have large extended families beyond the “traditional” nuclear family (mother, father and 2.5 kiddies) are smarter, get higher paying jobs and have better social skills.

So what the evidence seems to prove is this: raising kids isn’t a single player sport, but the other players don’t have to be biological parents.

Almost any village will do.

Halloween is a huge holiday in the US and Canada.  As a nation we are expected to have spent more then $5 BILLION dollars this year on Halloween decorations, costumes and candies.  That ranks it second for the most retail holiday in North America, falling victim only to Christmas.  According to the nightly news, the average American is expected to spend $60 bucks this year on Halloween stuff.  Now clearly there are fools such as myself who skew the bell curve, but the point is that people here love the holiday.  Strangely, unlike its more Christian counterpart, few people know much about the roots of our traditions surrounding Halloween.  So, read on and we’ll discover why we spend so much effort to honor the ghosts, ghouls and skeletons that walk the streets every October 31st.

Most of our traditions are rooted in ancient Celtic traditions, pagan celebrations and very old Catholic holidays.

By the 9th century the Celts inhabited much of what is now the UK and western Europe, as well as an isolated enclave in Turkey.  Long before then they held an annual celebration called Samhain (pronounce sow-en), which was held near the end of the month we now call October.  It was similar to many summer solstice celebrations common to Pagan peoples the world over, but the Celts felt that the veil between the afterlife and present was at its thinnest during Samhain.  (There is a common myth that Samhain was the name of a Celtic God of Death, but that is not correct.)  It was a celebration similar to Easter or Christmas, except that unlike those two Christian holy days which look forward to the return of the Savier, Samhain was a time when friends and loved-ones would return from the netherworld to spend time with those of us left here on Earth.  (This is a very similar belief held by the Aztec’s and that are still expressed in Mexico today during The Days of the Dead, celebrated between October 31st and November 2nd.)  The Celts believed that often times these spirits would return in the form of animals, most notably as black cats.

While many people felt that these spirits were welcome members of the family returning to celebrate the end of summer, others felt it was an opportunity for evil spirits to return to the earth and again take human form.  In an attempt to ward off these dastardly ghosts, people would dress themselves as scary hob-gobblins to ward off the evil spirits, or to confuse them into thinking the wearer wasn’t human.

Another facet of the Samhain celebration was going door to door collecting food to offer the Gods in asking for a gentle winter, and of collecting firewood to use in a massive bonfire built atop the highest hill in the area.  After the bon fire celebration, the participants would take embers from the bon fires to their home, where they would relight the fires in their hearth – a symbol of extending God’s blessing for a prosperous winter to the home and family that lived there.  These embers would be carried in lanterns, which were more often then not carved from turnips or gourds.  In addition to dressing in costumes to scare off or fool the evil spirits, people would carve ghoulish faces into the ember lanterns to further scare away the evil spirits.

One notorious ember carrier was a very unlikable and mean spirited Celt by the name of Jack.  As the legend goes, Jack somehow managed to trick the Devil into climbing a tree and before the Devil could climb down, carved a crucifix into the trunk.  This trapped the Devil in the tree, and gave Jack a great deal of glee.  Many years later when the old miser died, God refused him admittance to Heaven due to his general level of despicability and the Devil, who has a very long memory, likewise refused to admit him to Hell.  This left Jack’s ghostly spirit wandering the world in eternal darkness.  Eventually the Devil took pity upon him and give him a piece of coal to light his way, which Jack placed in a turnip and carved into a latern.  His legend was, of course, known as Jack of the Lantern, which eventually became Jack ‘O Lantern.

One last tradition may date back to the Celts: Bobbing for apples.  Apples have long since been linked with the Goddess and fertility, dating all the way back to the Garden of Evil.  The main reason for this is that if you cut an apple across its equator, the seed pocket is shaped like a pentagram, an ancient symbol for the Goddess among Celts, Romans and many other people.  Bobbing for apples used to be a similar tradition to catching the garter belt at a wedding: the first person to bite a bobbing apple would be the next to marry.

All Saints Day (presently celebrated on November 1st) was created by Pope Boniface IV in the 7th Century AD and is where we got the name Halloween.  The word “Hallow” is an Old English word meaning “Saint”.  So, if November 1st was All Hallows’ Day, then October 31st would be All Hallows’ Eve.  In good Cockney tradition, All Hallows’ Eve was shortened to “Hallows’eve” and eventually “Halloween”.

So that’s where the name Halloween came from.  But where did All Saints’ Day come from?  Well, as I said earlier it was invented by Pope Boniface the IV.  It was needed because by the 7th Century, there were so many saints that there were not enough days in the calendar year to go around.  Hence All Saints’ Day, celebrating all the saints who did not have their own special day (for instance, St. Patrick’s Day or St. Valentine’s Day), or who had not been officially recognized by the church.

What’s interesting about All Saints Day is that it was not always celebrated on November 1st.  When Pope Boniface IV created the holiday, he decreed that it be celebrated on May 13.  Problem was, try as the Holy See might, it could not convert those pesky Pagans to Christianity, nor could it get them to stop celebrating their own holidays out in the woods, much less recognize the churches holy days.  So in 835AD Pope Gregory decided if he couldn’t beat them, he’d assimilate them and thus moved All Saints’ Day to November 1st, successfully linking the Samhain celebration with a Catholic holiday.

All Souls Day (November 2nd), was created to celebrate not those in Heaven, but those stuck in Purgatory, and it too closely resembled the Pagan tradition of honoring spirits that walk the earth.  The tradition of Souling is going door to door asking for soul cakes, small square pieces of bread with currants, in exchange for prayers for the members of the family who may be awaiting entrance into Heaven.  Sound familiar?  Remember the tradition of the Celtic Samhain, going door to door asking for food to offer the Gods?

All three days came be to known en masse as Hallow Tide, and are all still celebrated within the Church, though most modern Halloween traditions are still treated with ill-respect by Christianity and often linked with the practice of Satanism.

Some other international holidays are rooted in the same Samhain traditions, most notably in England where they celebrate Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night, celebrated on November 5th.

In 1605 Guy Fawkes and several other conspirators attempted to blow up the House of Commons as a symbol of revolt against an aggressive anti-Catholic king, James I.  The whole attempt came to be known as the Gun Powder Plot.  On the night that Guy was to light the 36 barrels of gunpowder, the Kings men captured him.  He was quickly tried, convicted and killed by disembowelment in a public square.

The very same night that the Gun Powder Plot was foiled, Londoners heard that their King was safe and lit bonfires all over town.  By the next year, the bonfires were coupled with effigies of Guy Fawkes.  But then a peculiar thing happened…  as distrust and ill-will toward both England’s Monarch and the Pope grew and the people found themselves further and further under the boots of the wealthy and influential, Guy Fawkes and his Gun Powder Plot gained in popularity.  Eventually the King, the Pope and many other politicians and heavy-handed policemen found their effigies roasting on November 5th.

Harkening back to Samhain, children began going door to door asking for coins which were cast into the flames while reciting “Remember, Remember the Fifth of November.”  To this day likenesses of the Pope, the Queen and more recently Prime Minister Tony Blair are burned alongside Guy Fawkes, a tradition which is accepted but frowned upon by the Vatican, the Monarchy and the elected government of the United Kingdom.

Another noteworthy fact is that the town of Hancock, MD has refused to recognize a permanent date for Halloween, stating that if a child were to be hurt during trick-or-treating on a day the city sponsored, it may be held liable for damages.  This is, of course, a silly suggestion.  But it does mesh well with my own theory that we should unleash ourselves from the 31st and move Halloween to the last Saturday in October, because let’s face it: Halloween sucks mid-week.  The kids have to wait until their parents get home from work and they have to get the trick-or-treating over with early, thereby cheating the kids out of their well-earned goodies; Halloween Parties held mid-week suck and leave you with a terrible hangover at work the next day; and you can’t buy dry ice on Sundays, so the Sabbath is out too.  And from a purely personal point of view, I spend countless hours setting this crap up for two hours of trick-or-treating on a weeknight, as opposed to the whole night of fun offered by Fridays or Saturdays.  So write your Congressmen and help me start Weekend Only Halloween Revolution!