We've finally reached October, which means that Halloween is drawing nigh.
Halloween is a special time of year for Team Last Call, when we not only get to use Halloween-y words like "nigh" and "thither," but we get to dress up our Jack Russell in his little cowboy outfit and tell really, really bad Halloween jokes, like this one:
Question: Why didn'.t the skeleton dance at the Halloween party?
Answer: It had no body to dance with.
And this one:
Question: Why did Dracula take cold medicine?
Answer: To stop his coffin.
And this one:
Question: How do you know if a ghost is lying?
Answer: You can see right through him.
This month, Team Last Call decided to do a little research on the history of Halloween so that you, the reader, can look smarter at parties. Now, as you know, we here at Team Last Call are sticklers for facts. As frontrunners in the field of investigative journalism, we don't rest until we're sure we've delivered the most factual facts available. That being said, we knew there was only one resource we could turn to for a story like this: the Truthnet. So thither we went.
But as it turns out, the history of Halloween is really, really boring. It's not nearly the satanic jamboree some people make it out to be. Most of the reports we read just babbled on and on about things like "Celtic traditions" and "harvest festivals" and other boring topics that should be banished behind the walls of the Renaissance Faire for all eternity.
Unlike Christmas or Independence Day, Halloween doesn't have any kind of exciting back-story .. no bombs bursting in air, no baby saviors lying in mangers. But if you look hard enough .. which we did .. it is possible to find a historian or two who link Halloween straight back to the chicken-slaughtering, broomstick-riding, pentagram-wearing pagans we all know and love. No, not Republicans. We're talking about real, live Satanists!
Now keep in mind, these are some of the same sources Team Last Call turned to in the past for such hard-hitting exposés as our profile on Mark Wahlberg's third nipple and our report on the scientific link between driving a Hummer and having extremely tiny genitalia. But you have to admit, while our sources might not be "legitimate" or even "real," they make for much more interesting reporting.
And so, like so many Fox News reporters before us, we will spare you the parts of the story that get all truthy and boring and skip right to the fun stuff. Our story of Halloween might not be the actual "truth," but it's truth-like, and that's good enough for us.
ORIGINS OF THE HOLIDAY
According to our sources, Halloween stems from an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain, which was a feast held in honor of the Lord of Death (www.wikipedia.org), during which the pagans did many appalling things such as sacrifice humans (www.jeremiahproject.com), drink their blood, eat their skin (Natural History Magazine) and vote republican (Team Last Call). (1)
So in short, what your "teachers" in your "schools" with their fancy "textbooks" would have you believe is an innocent holiday full of fun and joy and candy is really an extension of a bloody, gory, cannibalistic demon-worshipping ritual. (2)
TRICK-OR-TREATING
There are a lot of fluff stories out there concerning the origins of trick-or-treating. For example, the BBC claims it can be traced back to an old Irish custom during which peasants would go from door to door on All Hallow's Eve and ask villagers to contribute food for the next day's harvest festival.
This, of course, is total crap. What Team Last Call discovered on a very reputable website (3) is that trick-or-treating actually comes from the pagans' Halloween ritual of sacrificing virgins, which they would find by going from door to door asking villagers for the donation of their daughters. If the villagers refused, a hexagram was painted on their door in blood to indicate that the people living in the house were wicked and should be punished by the gods. In modern terms, this would be the equivalent of having a Hummer parked in your driveway. (4)
So now you know the truth. Nice try, BBC! Maybe you should change your name to CRAP. Nice!
COSTUMES
The tradition of dressing up in costumes comes from the ancient belief that, on Halloween, the disembodied spirits of all the people who died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess. In order to scare away the spirits, the villagers would dress up in costumes, parade noisily around the neighborhood and recklessly destroy everything in sight, a tradition that lives on today in such American activities as "mischief night" and Operation Iraqi Freedom. (5)
JACK-O-LANTERNS
Apparently, Jack was a legendary drunkard who used to wander around Ireland. One day, Jack tricked the Devil into climbing an apple tree and then quickly carved a cross into the tree trunk, preventing the Devil from coming down. Jack made the Devil swear that he would never come after his soul, which the Devil did.
Years later when Jack died and arrived at the gates of heaven, he was turned away, presumably because he voted Republican. Desperate for a resting place, he went back to the Devil, who, true to his word, also turned Jack away. However, showing that he's not a total bad guy, the Devil tossed Jack a coal from the fire of Hell to light his way. Jack, who was eating a turnip at the time, placed the coal inside, and wammo, the first jack-o-lantern was invented.
As for the Devil, he eventually escaped the tree and went on to live a prosperous life of evil and terror until eventually he won the presidential election and tricked America into invading Iraq. (6)
The end.
(1) Other sources, by which I mean most sources, describe Samhain as a simple harvest festival.
(2) Not really
(3) Not reputable at all
(4) Also a sign of small genitalia
(5) Zinger!
(6) We still have some fact-checking to do on this one.
Halloween is a special time of year for Team Last Call, when we not only get to use Halloween-y words like "nigh" and "thither," but we get to dress up our Jack Russell in his little cowboy outfit and tell really, really bad Halloween jokes, like this one:
Question: Why didn'.t the skeleton dance at the Halloween party?
Answer: It had no body to dance with.
And this one:
Question: Why did Dracula take cold medicine?
Answer: To stop his coffin.
And this one:
Question: How do you know if a ghost is lying?
Answer: You can see right through him.
This month, Team Last Call decided to do a little research on the history of Halloween so that you, the reader, can look smarter at parties. Now, as you know, we here at Team Last Call are sticklers for facts. As frontrunners in the field of investigative journalism, we don't rest until we're sure we've delivered the most factual facts available. That being said, we knew there was only one resource we could turn to for a story like this: the Truthnet. So thither we went.
But as it turns out, the history of Halloween is really, really boring. It's not nearly the satanic jamboree some people make it out to be. Most of the reports we read just babbled on and on about things like "Celtic traditions" and "harvest festivals" and other boring topics that should be banished behind the walls of the Renaissance Faire for all eternity.
Unlike Christmas or Independence Day, Halloween doesn't have any kind of exciting back-story .. no bombs bursting in air, no baby saviors lying in mangers. But if you look hard enough .. which we did .. it is possible to find a historian or two who link Halloween straight back to the chicken-slaughtering, broomstick-riding, pentagram-wearing pagans we all know and love. No, not Republicans. We're talking about real, live Satanists!
Now keep in mind, these are some of the same sources Team Last Call turned to in the past for such hard-hitting exposés as our profile on Mark Wahlberg's third nipple and our report on the scientific link between driving a Hummer and having extremely tiny genitalia. But you have to admit, while our sources might not be "legitimate" or even "real," they make for much more interesting reporting.
And so, like so many Fox News reporters before us, we will spare you the parts of the story that get all truthy and boring and skip right to the fun stuff. Our story of Halloween might not be the actual "truth," but it's truth-like, and that's good enough for us.
ORIGINS OF THE HOLIDAY
According to our sources, Halloween stems from an ancient Celtic festival called Samhain, which was a feast held in honor of the Lord of Death (www.wikipedia.org), during which the pagans did many appalling things such as sacrifice humans (www.jeremiahproject.com), drink their blood, eat their skin (Natural History Magazine) and vote republican (Team Last Call). (1)
So in short, what your "teachers" in your "schools" with their fancy "textbooks" would have you believe is an innocent holiday full of fun and joy and candy is really an extension of a bloody, gory, cannibalistic demon-worshipping ritual. (2)
TRICK-OR-TREATING
There are a lot of fluff stories out there concerning the origins of trick-or-treating. For example, the BBC claims it can be traced back to an old Irish custom during which peasants would go from door to door on All Hallow's Eve and ask villagers to contribute food for the next day's harvest festival.
This, of course, is total crap. What Team Last Call discovered on a very reputable website (3) is that trick-or-treating actually comes from the pagans' Halloween ritual of sacrificing virgins, which they would find by going from door to door asking villagers for the donation of their daughters. If the villagers refused, a hexagram was painted on their door in blood to indicate that the people living in the house were wicked and should be punished by the gods. In modern terms, this would be the equivalent of having a Hummer parked in your driveway. (4)
So now you know the truth. Nice try, BBC! Maybe you should change your name to CRAP. Nice!
COSTUMES
The tradition of dressing up in costumes comes from the ancient belief that, on Halloween, the disembodied spirits of all the people who died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess. In order to scare away the spirits, the villagers would dress up in costumes, parade noisily around the neighborhood and recklessly destroy everything in sight, a tradition that lives on today in such American activities as "mischief night" and Operation Iraqi Freedom. (5)
JACK-O-LANTERNS
Apparently, Jack was a legendary drunkard who used to wander around Ireland. One day, Jack tricked the Devil into climbing an apple tree and then quickly carved a cross into the tree trunk, preventing the Devil from coming down. Jack made the Devil swear that he would never come after his soul, which the Devil did.
Years later when Jack died and arrived at the gates of heaven, he was turned away, presumably because he voted Republican. Desperate for a resting place, he went back to the Devil, who, true to his word, also turned Jack away. However, showing that he's not a total bad guy, the Devil tossed Jack a coal from the fire of Hell to light his way. Jack, who was eating a turnip at the time, placed the coal inside, and wammo, the first jack-o-lantern was invented.
As for the Devil, he eventually escaped the tree and went on to live a prosperous life of evil and terror until eventually he won the presidential election and tricked America into invading Iraq. (6)
The end.
(1) Other sources, by which I mean most sources, describe Samhain as a simple harvest festival.
(2) Not really
(3) Not reputable at all
(4) Also a sign of small genitalia
(5) Zinger!
(6) We still have some fact-checking to do on this one.
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