{"id":7007,"date":"2015-02-06T14:11:13","date_gmt":"2015-02-06T21:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7007"},"modified":"2015-02-08T12:42:58","modified_gmt":"2015-02-08T19:42:58","slug":"how-halloween-came-back-to-derry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7007","title":{"rendered":"How Halloween Came Back to Derry"},"content":{"rendered":"

A short video (Irish with subtitles; English) describing how a large public Halloween festival in the Northern Irish city of Derry began in a pub in the early 1980s and grew from there.<\/a><\/p>\n

And while some speakers, including folklorist Jenny Butler<\/a>, do discuss the ancient festival of Samhain, you will see that the Derry<\/a> festival was not so much a self-conscious bit of Celtic revival as it was a way for people to step out of “the Troubles” (as the Irish euphemize the 1960s\u20131980s in Ulster<\/a>) for one night of the year and be someone else.<\/p>\n

You may also note a brief mention of pumpkins \u2014 the North American influence is there too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A short video (Irish with subtitles; English) describing how a large public Halloween festival in the Northern Irish city of Derry began in a pub in the early 1980s and grew from there. And while some speakers, including folklorist Jenny Butler, do discuss the ancient festival of Samhain, you will see that the Derry festival […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[66,50,69],"class_list":["post-7007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-halloween","tag-ireland","tag-samhain"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-1P1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":949,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=949","url_meta":{"origin":7007,"position":0},"title":"Today is Samhain, Really, Unless It’s Not","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 7, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"We celebrate the holy day commonly called Samhain not on one day, but on several. In other words, there is no one contemporary Pagan liturgical calendar.As I write this, the actual moment in the solar cycle is about an hour away, according to Scott Monahan's useful archaeastronomy site. (Scott is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13858,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13858","url_meta":{"origin":7007,"position":1},"title":"Angela Puca on the Origins of Today’s Pagan Samhain","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 31, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Let the velvet-voiced Dr. Puca explains how the festival of Samhain gained its present form -- and remember, Samhain is a season, a -\"tide.\" https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/nhxOHthZpKQ?si=-YqKq5Zc1N2Wga8v","rel":"","context":"In \"Samhain\"","block_context":{"text":"Samhain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=samhain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3369,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3369","url_meta":{"origin":7007,"position":2},"title":"Did You Contribute to the Halloween Economy?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"It is worth more than $2 billion annually. Not really that big in the overall holiday picture, though. Halloween's haul was the smallest, accounting for a mere 2.6% of holiday spending. But for a few industries, October 31 is the night to shine. According to the National Confectioners Association, sweets-makers\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3295,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3295","url_meta":{"origin":7007,"position":3},"title":"Feed Them to Samhain","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I mean, really, if you get lost in a corn maze and you are such a hopeless loser that you call the police to come get you, shouldn't you be fed to \"Samhain, Lord of the Dead\"? But then Midwest Chick offers another possible solution. Sort of related: I passed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12059,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12059","url_meta":{"origin":7007,"position":4},"title":"Christmas, When the Veil is Thin","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 11, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In December (yeah, this is late) I was tapped by a public library in Oregon to give an hour's Zoom lecture on the \"Pagan origins of Christmas.\" I did it, but that format is still pretty weird. How many people are watching? Three? Thirty? Three hundred? And are they awake?\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ancestors\"","block_context":{"text":"ancestors","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ancestors"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Christmas-eve-lantern-1-238x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1246,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1246","url_meta":{"origin":7007,"position":5},"title":"Organizing Halloween Ritual","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I said that I was not going to post any more Halloween items. I take that back. Here is one more. One decision we've made is to rebuff curious friends who ask to join our Halloween rituals. It seems like half the people I know want to be pagan on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Halloween\"","block_context":{"text":"Halloween","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=halloween"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7007"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7014,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7007\/revisions\/7014"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}