Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 7 - Halloween Origins

Episode Date: October 31, 2016

What is Halloween? Where does it come from? When did people start asking for candy? When did it become an excuse for women to dress like porn stars?? All of this and more answered on a very informative and hopefully equally entertaining episode. Shove work up your ass - it’s time for Timesuck!!

What is Halloween? Where did it come from? When do people start asking for candy? When do people start performing tricks? When did it become an excuse for grown women to dress like porn stars? All of this answered on a very informative and hopefully equally entertaining episode. Shove work up your ass. It's time for TimeSuck. to talk stuff. All right, let's start with the origins of Halloween. Like is it, as I heard growing up, Satanic? And in quick note, I don't want to turn this podcast into like a constant knock against or even reference to Christianity. But when you're talking about the history of things, which I don't consider this to be

a historical podcast, I know it's kind of leaned that way so far, but we could get into totally different time sucks to have nothing to do with digging back into history going forward. Who knows? But I think a fair amount of info when you want to learn about it,

you got to learn about the history of it. But when you're talking about history, especially in this country, Christian references are almost impossible to avoid. So yeah, it just kind of has shaped our culture. So, it's just probably going to come up with fair amounts. So, if that bugs you, maybe this isn't your podcast, but I hope you can let it go.

But as far as Halloween, Satanic and origin, the quick answer is no. It's not Satanic. It's pagan, where I grew up, was the word that was kind of synonymous with satanism, but that's just, that's not true. So let's start off by kind of defining paganism. To be pagan as defined by Merriam Webster is to be heathen, is to be a follower of Polly, Theistic religion, like an ancient realm, multiple gods,

or one who has little or no religion and who delights in sensual pleasures and materialistic goods, like an irreligious or hedonistic person. Google, as its own definitions now in Google defines, pagan as a person holding religious beliefs other than those of the main world religions. So I mean, that's a really, really wide open definition.

So basically, if you live in ancient Rome and you're either Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or you were pagan, and by that definition, the origins of Halloween are pagan, and that they are not, if you go back far enough, founded in Christianity or any other major religion. So here's what I found. So I didn't know this. I think I'd heard that maybe there was something Celtic about Halloween, whisperings of that, but I never bothered to look it up until now. So basically, the roots of Halloween can be traced, you know, almost all historians

agree to the ancient Celtic celebration of the soine. Spilled like some haine, but the soine. And this celebration can be traced back to Ireland, like parts of Wales, Britain, parts of Western France, even other little spots in kind of continental Europe. Over 2000 years ago, but primarily in the British Isles. And it's hard to pin down exactly when it started and exactly what traditions there were because the Celts weren't recording their history

and written for them at that time. And that's a big problem, I noticed with history in general, is there were only certain civilizations that were like, we need to fucking write this shit down. Because dickheads are gonna be Google-in-it, you know, in the future, to provide free, quasi-informative podcasts. You know, like, there was, there was living their lives.

You know, a lot of these civilizations were, you know, had like, you know, towns and rulers and hierarchies, but they didn't feel the need for books, you know, probably because they didn't have paper. So, you know, I'm sure that was a huge pain in the ass to like, you know, to get the job of, you know, chiseling shit into rocks, you know. And then before you can chisel shit into rocks, you got to come up with an alphabet, you got to, just because you can speak up with an alphabet, you gotta... You just because you can speak, does it mean you have to have a written language? And unfortunately, like the ancient cells, that's what I just all like this mystery about it.

It's like the druids and stuff, people like it all fucking mystical, because they don't know exactly what they did. They probably didn't do anything fucking special. Sadly. I know some people listening right now say, no, no, they were magical. I played D&D and Druids were cool characters. Yeah, they just didn't write stuff down. So in this sense with the so ween, hard to exactly pinpoint when this festival started. But we do know that there was an oral tradition

as a lot of these ones were in the even its passed down. We do know as much as we can know without going back in a fucking time machine that there was this festival, this celebration. And then and when the Romans and other empires in the first few centuries of AD, they came over and they kind of erased most of Celtic culture from mainland Europe, and then they kind of limited it to the British Isles, and especially Ireland, those were kind of like the last strongholds of Celtic culture, you know, for the most part. And that's why this festival is most strongly identified as kind of an Irish Celtic tradition today.

So we're just going to focus on that for this podcast. So, Sween, it was one of four, and by the way, this stuff was written that eventually because when the early missionaries in the first few centuries AD went over there, they did kind of like document the local quote unquote pagan practices. So, you know, once you get into like, you know,

second, third century AD, there are some written, you know, like references to this stuff. And so, okay, I'm so I'm going to explain it a little better here. The Soine, it was one of the four Gaelic, Gaelic Beans, non-emiss with Celtic seasonal festivals along with Emolge, also called St. Bridges Day, which was a Gaelic traditional festival marking the beginning of spring. There was Belting, or Belting, an anglicized name for the Gaelic Mayday, most commonly observed on May 1st, about

halfway between spring, equinox and summer solstice. And then there was Lunese, it's fucking the most fucked-up looking word. It's L-U-G-H-N-A-S-A-D-H. Big fans of constants, apparently the KILTS. Big fans of constants. Now, that was a Gaelic Festival marking the beginning of the harvest season. So again, you know, kind of a little summary recap. You got emolge, February 2nd.

That's the first story in the spring. You got Beltane, May 1st. Traditionally, at that time, first day of summer in Ireland, you got fucking Lou Ge Whatever that word is it says it's lunesse Okay, lunesse that's I'm gonna say it from now on maybe some fucking Celtic historian listening to this podcast But actually it's the prunce actually actually it's prunced lunesse or I don't know how are you fucking lucky charm as people talk So do I why did I say that but sorry?, I'm part Irish, I do love Irish people, but whenever I think of your accent,

I do think of the thousands of times that's how the lucky charms commercial as a kid. Frustrated lucky charms, the magic league, delicious. That's the only Irish thing I can say. Okay, so that's August 1st, March to be in the harvest season. And then some, so ween, which is October 31st, there we go, a little Halloween reference. Through November 1st, it marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning is the winter.

So it started like sundown, the 31st, and goes through the day of November 1st. So it was kind of like, you know, sawing Eve almost was the night before. And it was the festival went a long time. And these four along with there was four other pagan occasions, each kind of halfway in between one of the ones I just mentioned. And they make up the wheel of the year. And that was how the ancient Celestivariate that their calendar. And it was an all of them have to do essentially with the harvest. And as you can tell,

you know, they didn't have anything to do with demons. It had to do with crops, which was super important in the days before grocery stores. You know, welfare, canned goods, freezers. You know, you have a great harvest. You lived back in, you know, BC and early AD Ireland. You know, you have a bad harvest, you lost your mouth, I mean, they had a fucking potato famine. That wasn't that long ago, a couple hundred years ago, a lot of people died then. Take it back, another 15, 16, 100 years, a lot of people died when the crops,

Nana didn't make it if he didn't have enough taters. And so it made sense to take a fucking seriously. And that's why they built this whole calendar around it. You know, and that's what they did. And on Soeeneave, at midnight, they celebrated in worship. And it says, you know, various articles, clans or local villages would begin the formal ceremonies of Soeene by they'd light a giant bonfire,

they gather around it, dance, burn crops, animals, sacrifices to Celtic deities, as a method of giving gods and goddesses, they're kind of share of the previous years heard or crops. And that was a fairly, I mean, that was a pretty common, some kind of sacrificial thing, you know, a gift to the gods.

You know, it was part of a lot of different, you know, pagan religions at the time, when you're worldwide. And the sacred fires, we're a big part of like kind of cleansing the old year, a method to prepare for the coming new year. Yeah, okay, yeah, sure, I get it. And during all of this celebrating,

they did wear costumes and danced around the bonfire. Quick note on that, some historians don't think to tell us where costumes are masked with celebration of Soineev, however most do. Again, this goes back to not having them written this stuff down. So I'm gonna go with the, for this, the, I'm gonna side with the majority

of historical public opinion and that they did wear masks and costumes. And they told stories and played out cycles of life and death, commemorated, you know, like this whole with a wheel of life. And most of the stories, they wore the costumes for three primary reasons. And the first was to honor the dead who were allowed to rise from the other world. And this is, you know, they believed, you know, it's kind of makes sense where it's like seasonally.

If you think about it, you know, it's the end of the harvest. It's, you know, you're going to live or die based on your crops. You're, you're getting through the summer and fall season. You're going into winter. Winter is when most people die back then. A hard winter, you know, was one of the greatest predators of the ancient world. And it makes sense that they kind of associated

this particular festival with the kind of the worlds of the dead and the world of the living, like having like the thinnest barrier between them You know, it's like and so that you know it makes sense Again following the harvest and crops that it makes sense to not only honor The food but to honor those who had passed on And they believed that souls were set free from the land of the dead during this Eve on. And they believed that souls were set free from the land of the dead during this eve. They believed that again the barrier between the living world and the dead world was to finish this night. They believed that souls had been trapped in the bodies of animals

who the fuck knows where that came from. We're released by the Lord of the dead, sent to the new incarnations. And so they would wear costumes to signify the release of these souls in the physical world. And they believe in like the like these bad souls We're out there and they believe that not all souls were to be honored and respected Some you know that they should be feared and some of these things would return from the physical world to destroy crops You know hide livestock you know haunt the living and again I think that's just you know a kind of a common thing in a pre-scientific world You know in the in the major religions have elements of these kind of a common thing in a pre-scientific world. In the major religions have elements of these supernatural stuff, obviously. But they don't know what goes on when you die, not that we do now.

We don't know anymore, actually now. But they also didn't have science. They don't know why their crops do well sometimes and don't do well other times. They have no deep agricultural knowledge. And that's a good reason for superstitions to be born, so right? They think that bad, bad spirits can fuck up your corn for next year, whatever, whatever they're growing.

And so yeah, so they would wear these masks also as a way to kind of like escape to like hide from them Which is you know seems kind of like childish today like okay like the a There could be a ghost but be you could trick it. I wear a mask but you know, I think you always get to put the stuff in context and Genuinely and this isn't like you just me being pretentious, you know today genuinely. We're not as smart back then I mean anybody that's if one can annoys me when people look at history and they wanna like go back,

like, you know, they wanna go wicking and they wanna like honor the traditions of the ancient druids. In fact, why would you do that? None of their traditions are gonna be as good. Some people have this weird historical view that like, they get into like this homeopathic type shit and they think that people had all the answers,

you know, 3000 years ago, you know, like you go back to those holistic stuff. Maybe elements of that, but you know what? The scientific principle is that you learn from mistakes. You learn like, it's idiotic to me to think that any culture knew more a couple thousand years ago than we do now. No, because we're able to learn from their fuck-ups and build on that. to me to think that any culture knew more a couple thousand years ago than we do now. No, because we're able to learn from their fuck-ups and build on that. So yeah, so they're going to have a lot of weird beliefs. And you know what I'm sure in a thousand, two thousand years from now people are going to look back at us and think there's a lot of dumb beliefs.

What's not going to happen two thousand years from now is people living like they did, you know, five thousand years from then. That's not going to happen. That's nonsense. Okay. Final representation was the War of the Masks and Customs and Method to honor the Keldit Gods and Goddesses of the Harvest, Field of St. Flox, given them thanks, homage, those deities, you know, assisted the village, blah, blah, the previous year, and again, all these beliefs were common to pagan people the day. The Greeks had their, you know, good and bad gods, sort of the Romans, you know, blah blah blah previous year. And again, all these beliefs were common to pagan people today. The Greeks had their good and bad gods,

sort of the Romans, and sort of the Celts. However, one misconception I found, there's no record that there was some kind of specific evil god, specifically associated with Halloween itself. Like that it started off as some kind of weird tribute know, weird tribute or recognition to some kind of evil ominous God. That's there. That's nothing. That was if anything that was just a weird rumor that got perpetuated by kind of fundamentalist, you know, Christian kind of beliefs. There's no historical basis. What's so ever for that?

So then I wanted to know like how did Halloween start getting associated with the occult or with evil. And basically here's how. This is interesting to me. Some way it really started to become or so ween, excuse me, really started to become Halloween the we are familiar with when Christian missionaries tried to change the religious practices of the Celtic people in the first few centuries AD. So back before missionaries such as, you know, St. Patrick, and Verde de Keltz, you know, Christianity,

the Keltz practice in elaborate religion to their priest, the Druids, which I referenced before, who the Druids were priests, poet, science, scientists, scholars, you know, all in one, they were religious leaders, or ritual specialists, like the shaman of that culture, bears of learning. Again, long before, they were just a D&D character. They had some fucking cool, magic nature-based spells. Yeah, used to play.

The Druids, they were like the missionaries and monks who were sent to, you know, Christian and I, they were equivalent of the missionaries talking to them. And the missionaries kind of, you know, branded them as evil, specifically because they weren't Christian. And that's, and here's a note on this, any time early Christians ran into people who weren't already, you know, introduced to Christianity or didn't have, you know, another major religion like Islam or Judaism, they were just seen as heathen or pagan

and anything they believed, like any kind of religious belief they had was automatically by default associated with the devil. So they just had this logic where you either you either worship Jesus or fucking get back Satan, go on now, get Satan. Which is so messed up.

Like you could have the most peaceful belief ever, which some people believe the druids had very nature-based. Like you could believe that we should all treat each other as delicate butterflies and gently and kindly and that everyone is equal and as humans responsibility, humanities to treat nature with the same respect we treat each other and that man are no more important than women and that king

There's no more important than a peasant or a popper and and the missionaries would be like Okay, yeah, that's all fucking great, but do you believe in Jesus and his book of bylaws? Nope, all right buddy. Well then hop on the wood pile and get ready to burn the steak you fucking evil doer Again, honestly not trying to shit on Christians, but I'm not going to ignore history. And historically, fucking assholes, a lot of the time. Like so much of the time. So much, so much evil done in the name of peace. So anyway, they get the label. They get the label, and I think that's when the dark associations of Halloween kind of started there, you know there in a Christian culture.

Pagan, because that weird word pagan, pagan, pagan, it's funny, the more I learn about it, paganism, again, it's so broad, the only thing evil, quote unquote, about it is that it's not Christian. Like literally that's it. You know, they're not out there drinking baby's blood. Okay, so how did Pope Gregory, this is interesting, this is how this guy, Pope Gregory pops up and he starts transforming,

so we need Halloween. And so the missionaries, they wanna convert the Celstice Christianity, but they don't wanna completely destroy their traditions because if there was this famous edict in 601 by Pope Gregory I. And basically what he did, he told his missionaries that concerning various native beliefs and customs of the people around the world that were trying to convert, rather than just obliterate, which was the kind of default practice beforehand, rather than obliterate the local customs and beliefs, he was like, no, man, use him. And there's this example he uses like if a group of people worship a tree,

rather than cut it down, uh, consecrate it to Christ and allow its continued worship. So basically like, yeah, you can still worship your tree, but your tree is now Jesus tree. So you know, just like an end, kind of an interesting logic there. And in terms of spreading Christianity, like this is brilliant. And it became like a basic approach of Catholic missionary work in the seventh century. And a lot of church holy days that we have now have pagan roots. You know, like Christmas, for instance, was assigned the arbitrary date of December 25th because it corresponded with a lot of mid-winter celebration of many people.

Like there's a reason, you know, that is, yeah. As opposed to, I think this popular belief now is like, no, that's when it, that's when he rose or whatever. Now that's Easter. But that's it, I'm sorry, that's his birthday, I get confused. That's his birthday. No, no, it's not. It was just, so sorry, but no. You know, St. John's Day was on the

summer solitist, and the Catholic and slash Christian holiday, they got kind of thrown in with Suene to become Halloween was all Saints Day. The Catholics introduced all Saints Day in 609 AD, you know, long after Swin was established and it has some big similarities with Swin. It celebrated on different days by different Christian dominations, but the British Anglican Church, Roman Catholic Church, mainly like November 1st, and then it has its all Saints Eve, then I before, just like Swin, just like, you know, it's turned into Halloween. And Christians basically, who celebrate all Saints day and all souls day, is also kind of known sometimes.

Do so. It's a fundamental belief that there is a prayerful, spiritual bond between those in heaven, aka the dead, and those on earth, aka the living. You know, it's to pay tribute to the dead, which clearly makes it a Christian tradition strongly rooted in a pagan tradition. And I think that's, again clearly makes it a Christian tradition strongly rooted in a pagan tradition. And I think that's, again, that's why you get like this association of skeletons and things,

and you know, cemeteries strongly associated with Halloween. So there you go. That is directly the reason, because it was, you know, two different cultures. And actually, I think I'm going to get to it here in a second. There's actually a third Roman one that got merged in before it merged with the Catholic one. And they all have to do with death. And that's why, like the souls and everything on some sense, again, the end of the crop cycle, which is a vegetation death, if you will, and that's why Halloween has

the ghostly connotations that it does. A little note, despite this merger, early representatives of the rival religion druids were considered evil worshipers of devilish or demonic gods and spirits, followers of the old religion, and this is, I'm gonna bring this up because of the association with witches, with Halloween, followers of the old religion

went into hiding and were branded as witches. And there was a verse in the Bible, I saw numerous times, I didn't write it down for this podcast, but, you know, like banish witches, or something, something, I was like, you know, quote unquote witches are bad. And, and then, you know, in witches, like early like, you know, kind of books and things

are always like seen out in the woods. And it all kind of comes out of this, goes back to like these association with Celts and Druids, where again, because they kind of like worshiped nature, and were really into nature, they were pagan. Pagan was seen as evil. Pagan got the label of witches, and so that's where this association of witches

kind of comes into Halloween. And then also like modern Satanism latched on to Halloween. And I think, like, comes into Halloween. And then also like modern Satanism latched onto Halloween. And I think, like, oh, what's the guy's name, the guy who brought back Anton Levei. Anton Levei, you know, he brought back kind of modern Satanism, which really is just paganism. If you actually do analyze that, that would be a whole other podcast. But they kind of latched on to Halloween too.

And I think they kind of did that, partially because the original pagan roots, but partially just to kind of like, it's like a fuck you to Christians, because they know that it already is like a holiday with dark associations in their lore. So, all of that, I think that's why a lot of like the traditional costumes, you know, again again have to do with you know witches and

You know pagan kind of superstitions of you know black tabbie cats and all that stuff It all goes back, you know a couple thousand years and and gets twisted into Halloween costumes today And so there you go. There's the origins And now we want to, I want to like, what are the origins of trick or treating? You know, what the hell does this have to do with fucking candy? Well, 2000 years ago, the Celts didn't have any candy, but they did have apples, right?

And apples kind of came in because when the Romans came in, in the first few centuries, harvest was celebrated by the Romans with a festival dedicated to Pomona, the goddess of the fruits of the tree, especially apples, and then that kind of merged into soine, so then apples get into the mix, sweets get into the mix, and you know ripe apple was about as close as you got to candy back then, and actually they say like bobbing for apples was maybe celebrated as early as a couple thousand years ago.

And some of those so we kind of festivals. So there you go. There's the Bobby for apples. That's solved. So how does again, how does this keep morphing into modern trick or treating? Well, you know, just like organisms evolve, so do traditions. And this Hodgepodge of Roman, Keldik, Christian, Harvard celebration, Morphs, into going door to door in the Middle Ages, when people started to kind of like offer sing songs as part of this festival for the dead in exchange for food.

And at first it wasn't just kids, it was like, it's for trick-or-treating, it says this article I found that the guysine from disguising traditions began in the Middle Ages. Children sometimes poor adults dress up and the aforementioned costumes, kind of costumes about the dead. Go around door to door during the Halloween

and beg for food or money and exchange for songs or prayers. Often set on behalf of the dead. And this became called soling and the children were called soldiers or the poor grownups. And here's an example of an actual from 19th century Ireland an actual solar song. I'm gonna try and channel my Irish accents. So apologies to Irish people.

Let me warm up. Frosted lucky charms. The magic lead. Delicious. A soul. A soul cake. I can't. Okay, I'm gonna stop.

I cannot, that's the only phrase I can do in that thing. I'm gonna do it just by myself here. A soul, a soul, a soul cake. Please good misses. I can't help myself. Please good misses. A soul cake. Now it's British. An apple, a pear, a plum, a cherry, any good thing to make a soul marry. One for Peter, two for Paul, three for him, who made a soul. That was like the shittiest dickens-esque British accent while trying to unirush accent. So that was horrible, but that is the real lyrics. Now fucking sad is that. Okay, trick-or-treating, now we know,

started from poor people begging for food in Western Europe. And then, oh, and by the way, the sole cake was, this actual kind of like little cake. It was also known as a hard cake, and there were little round cakes with a cross marked on the top, represented a soul being freed from purgatory, again, all the soul stuff.

And when you eat the cake, you free the soul. What the fuck, the shit people believe. Like nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon raisins. Sounds pretty good actually. There were little sweet cakes. That has to be in my mind, the direct origin to candy. All right, a set, so okay. But now where do the tricks come in?

Well, I am getting there. So, soling in the UK starts in the 19th century. And then that keeps going, that keeps going, and then it makes its way to North America, Scottish and Irish immigrants coming over, they bring their traditions, you know, they bring over this sole-leaning thing. There's the first reference to it is 1911 in the US

that I could find, and then any historians, historians, I could find good reference. And then it becomes in the 1920s and 1930s, first in the Western US for some reason, this trick thing just starts to kind of spring up in it. And I guess there was a little bit of a respite during World War II, they took it easy. Because in actually sugar rations, there was World War II.

So that cut down on the candy people could give. So there's no point in doing tricks. But the first reference, I can find a written reference to tricking was actually in 1927, this edition of the Blacky Alberta Canada Herald. And it says, Halloween provided an opportunity for real-strenuous fun. No real damage was done except the temper of some

who had to hunt for wagon wheels, gates, wagons, barrels, et cetera, much of which decorated the front street. Useful tormentors were at the back door and front demanding edible plunder, by the words trick-or-treat, to which the people gladly responded and sent the robbers away rejoicing.

So that's when people started saying trick-or-treat, maybe in the 20s, and kids being dicks. And it spread to parts of the UK, spread to the US. And I definitely, I mean, that was definitely something my kids haven't experienced that the whole trick or treat. But we did do some like just horrible, useful things growing up in Idaho in Halloween, where we would smash pumpkins.

That was a big thing. We would just take pumpkins on Halloween. Everybody's fucking jackal innards and you would try to steal them and just smash them on the street. And then for a couple of years, we're going to go into egg fights. That was a thing. For like good five, 10 years, you just try to find other kids dressed up and smash them in the fucking face with an egg.

And then that's stopped in the early 90s when I think it was Johnny Potentrum to blame him. Got like a rocket launcher. One of these old things that was going around when I was a kid where it was like this elastic band tubing and you kind of like a wrist rocket it was called and it was like a high, high-powered slingshot like very powerful. And then you went off like a wrist rocket it was called and it was like a high, high powered slingshot, like very powerful. And then you went off of the wrist, then it went to a thing where you kind of like

had two people hold the front or you kind of like anger the front prongs into the ground. And then you could pull back on the tubing like a good literally like 10 feet and you had this little piece of cloth or something that could hold stuff and you could just fucking launch things. Like I mean people would do these with like little pumpkins and gourds and launch stuff over a hundred yards. I mean really really

launched stuff and then they started doing that with eggs and then somebody launched a very high-speed egg that hit the band director's kid in the eye. I wanna say like it almost put his fucking eye out. And what suck? You're just gonna get some candy and you just get an egg at like 200 miles an hour into your eye. And that was, yeah, it's a trick man. Ah, don't be a killjoy.

Just, we're just celebrating Halloween. So USA on that man, USA. We're the ones who really So USA on that, man, USA. We're the ones who really got the fucking trick part started. Okay, so now, let's get to the sexy, because I brought that up earlier. I always wondered when did the scandalous Halloween costumes get going?

And I have a definite answer. I know a lot of times I'm doing this research. It's like, you know, you got to pick between seven different historians versions. And you kind of go with the one that seems the most legit. And again, I'm no historian. So I'm fucking guessing if you're like a diehardist story, you probably listen to stuff and just roll your eyes, be like, then it's kind of right.

Or man, this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. And you have a voice. And you have a voice. And you have a voice exactly like that. How's that feeling, historians? I don't know why I chose that. But anyway, I found the Slate magazine article by Juliet LePitos and says that Greenwich Village 1973, so be proud in New York.

1973 specifically, they started this Halloween kind of promenade. It was like a house to house organized by a local puppeteer and mask maker. And it became like a really quickly codon became like a neighborhood wide party. So it started off as a small party by somebody who made masks and puppets and yodored a door and really

get into Halloween. And then the gay community latches on to it in New York. And then it becomes like this excuse to wear drag outfits, very rebellious costumes, it becomes very sexual, lots of fish nets and all that. Almost immediately bounces out to San Francisco's Castro neighborhood and we hoe, West Hollywood. And so gay communities they plant the seed

and it spreads on enough that it becomes popular enough to get the involvement of retailers. So they kind of, you know, capitalize on the spear of these parades, and they start making sexy outfits. They got skimpyer and skimpyer from year to year, until, you know, like 2006, the New York Times, quotes, you know, some, some, the purchasing director from bicostumes.com

is saying that that's when the quote unquote, ultra sexy costumes emerged. And then they went on to the early odds, gotten sexier and sexier with little bow peep show and similar outfits. And then it just so it goes. It just morphs and morphs. And then this year for random information, Harley Quinn, most popular female costume. And because of the popularity of the movie's suicide squad, so it takes local culture, pop culture references,

and because she wears fishnets. So there you go, we got fucking candy figured out, we got the origins of the thing figured out, we got when the actual getting going door to door, figured out poor people, sad origin, but now it's become fun for kids. And we got the origins of like pumpkins, you know, like pumpkins, you know, it's because, you know, you make jackal lanterns because, you know, they've been harvested, the ripe. It has to do with the pumpkins and the apples and stuff, and that kind of stuff goes back

to the actual harvesting early, so ween festivals. And there you go. And so, and so let's, and in this year, just a random reference. I'm going. I hope you're gonna enjoy Halloween. I'm going is evil bunny Evil bunny rabbit. I have some kind of animatronic Horrible scary fucking rabbit head that my kids thought suited me. They were the ones picked it out my wife Lindsey She's gonna be an adorable unicorn Because my kids Kyloyman row thought that's what suited her. So that's the interesting. She's a cute unicorn and I'm a fucked up rabbit.

That's honestly what my kids picked out for both of us and what they felt like, worked for us. I also have a sword, some kind of mental patient outfits. I'm sure I'll have pics on Instagram at Dan Kamen's comedy. And they're both going as some form of vampires, Kyle and Monroe, which is fitting because they are continually trying to suck the life out of me. So I guess we all get costumes that we deserve.

Alright, so what are the five most important things we learned on this Halloween edition of Time Suck that I hope some of you at least were able to listen to before you head out, you can experience Halloween in a whole new way, and tell people about where you learned about it. Number one, Halloween started in Ireland, which makes the Irish the fucking kings of cool holidays. Are you kidding me? St. Patrick's Day and Halloween. Two holidays that everyone of all races

and creeds celebrate. Holidays are about getting drunk, dressed in sexy, eating candy, and have no religious overtones. So fucking great job, Ireland. Number two, Halloween has nothing to do with a devil. So go to your homework, figure that out. Not true. Number three, it's nice not to celebrate harvest anymore because we have canned food, chemicals, and freezers. Yay,

modern chemicals and technology. On that, I'm sick of hippies, shitting on modern conveniences. Really? You don't like hormones in your milk or pesticides on your veggies? You want to live like the Druids? You know, we'll fucking go out there and starve when your dumb crops fail. Have fun with that. Okay, the tradition of trickery started right here in the USA. That's number four. If it didn't, I wouldn't have to, uh, I wouldn't have gotten to go, you know, throw

eggs on neighborhood kids back in Riggins. So, USA, USA, USA. I wouldn't have gotten to go throw eggs on neighborhood kids back in rigans. So you say you say number five The gays made Halloween sexy Definitely, that's right homophobes gay men from the 70s are the reason women today Dress up as slutty schoolgirls every October so shut the fuck up with your homophob thoughts, you silly assholes. And finally, happy trick-or-treat in time suckers. Talk to you next week.

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