Arts Entertainments

Halloween masks and Halloween history

By far the most popular use of masks today, loosely but definitely within the realm of drama, is for the annual Halloween ritual, and especially within the US.

The night of October 31 has long been celebrated in Church circles as the eve of All Saints Day and is properly known as All Saints. Originally, in pre-Christian Britain, it was New Years Eve. It is basically a vigil for the feast of tomorrow commemorating all the saints and martyrs, which originally did not have specific public recognition in the form of their own feast, and was finally instituted in its current form in the 9th century. Subsequently, November 2 was dedicated to all the other holy souls who have reached heaven, but have not been canonized as saints: All Saints’ Day.

All-hallow-even or All Hallows Eve also became secularized Halloween, derived from its Celtic and Gaelic roots in Great Britain. This now includes a tradition that allows children the opportunity to “trick-or-treat”: visit houses, carry a jack-o-lantern (a pumpkin carved to look like an evil face and has a lit candle inside), to demand a prize. If the treat does not arrive, tradition allows children to play a joke on the householder.

In Scotland, Halloween took on special meaning in part because of Robert Burns’ poem by that name. Young boys and girls, who observe certain rites, are supposed to be revealed to them on this night of their future wives and husbands.

Ireland is cited as the origin of the modern secular or pagan festival and Irish emigrants are cited for taking their superstitions to the United States.

Modern popularity will have been largely boosted by the Halloween horror movie series, where a mask is used to conceal the identity of the terrifying killer. Today, popular masks for Halloween include the Slipknot range, Homer Simpson masks, and gorilla masks. The Slipknot masks, created by the heavy metal band of that name, draw on a wide range of influences, including S&M, as well as worms, clowns, and skulls.

The main characters of the popular US adult cartoon series have spawned commercially available masks, and the Homer Simpson mask in particular is in high demand.

Gorilla masks are highly rated for Halloween too, along with all sorts of other devilish creatures like hellhounds, werewolves, bats, sharks, and dangerous beasts or even mutants of all kinds.

As with so many Christian holidays stemming from earlier pagan celebrations, there sometimes seems to be a great gulf between Christian devotion, on the one hand, and the modern version of pagan ritual, on the other. If there is a link, I can’t help but feel that it lies in the common cause of trying to instill the fear of God in us (come hell or high tide, probably the former!).

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