Halloween: The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows

this article is presented by the Library of Congress, Research Center Division
Author: Jack Santino
 Halloween had its beginnings in an ancient, pre-Christian Celtic festival of the dead. The Celtic peoples, who were once found all over Europe, divided the year by four major holidays. According to their calendar, the year began on a day corresponding to November 1st on our present calendar. The date marked the beginning of winter. Since they were pastoral people, it was a time when cattle and sheep had to be moved to closer pastures and all livestock had to be secured for the winter months. Crops were harvested and stored. The date marked both an ending and a beginning in an eternal cycle.


Halloween costume
 at a deaf social club,
photo by Stephanie A. Hall

The festival observed at this time was called Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween). It was the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year. The Celts believed that at the time of Samhain, more so than any other time of the year, the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living, because at Samhain the souls of those who had died during the year traveled into the otherworld. People gathered to sacrifice animals, fruits, and vegetables. They also lit bonfires in honor of the dead, to aid them on their journey, and to keep them away from the living. On that day all manner of beings were abroad: ghosts, fairies, and demons--all part of the dark and dread.

Samhain became the Halloween we are familiar with when Christian missionaries attempted to change the religious practices of the Celtic people. In the early centuries of the first millennium A.D., before missionaries such as St. Patrick and St. Columcille converted them to Christianity, the Celts practiced an elaborate religion through their priestly caste, the Druids, who were priests, poets, scientists and scholars all at once. As religious leaders, ritual specialists, and bearers of learning, the Druids were not unlike the very missionaries and monks who were to Christianize their people and brand them evil devil worshippers.

Read the rest of the article on the Library of Congress site
you'll also find A Selected Bibliography on Halloween and Related Topics 

International Center for the History of Electronic Games

TCC Computer Technology division recently added a new 2 year degree program for Video Game Programmers. Our reviewing guide last month included this site, sure to be of interest to gamers.

"The online collection of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games (ICHEG) includes more than 26,000 video game software and hardware items. Categories include arcade games, console games, console hardware, handhelds, PC games, educational software, and related ephemera . . . . this site represents game collections ranging from Atari to Wii--from early developments, e.g., the first coin-operated arcade game (Computer Space, 1971), to the present. Each entry includes a photograph of the game or device, release date, and a paragraph about the significance of the subset, e.g., the history of Mattel's Intellivision games. ... Developed as part of a physical museum collection, the ICHEG online collection is well organized and visually attractive. Related collections from the National Museum of Play and National Toy Hall of Fame are similarly organized, and a search box allows users to search these three collections individually or simultaneously. Colleges with programs in game design will find this site a useful addition. Gaming fans will find it nostalgically entertaining. " Choice September 2011.

National Jukebox at the Library of Congress

About the National Jukebox



Pictured here is an acoustic recording session conducted
 in the era before microphones were utilized for recording.
Music and speech were funneled through recording horns,
which in turn vibrated an attached diaphragm and stylus,
thus etching the sound waves onto a rotating wax disc.

 The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of the Library of Congress Packard Campus for Audio Visual Conservation and other contributing libraries and archives. Recordings in the Jukebox were issued on record labels now owned by Sony Music Entertainment, which has granted the Library of Congress a gratis license to stream acoustical recordings.
At launch, the Jukebox includes more than 10,000 recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company between 1901 and 1925. Jukebox content will be increased regularly, with additional Victor recordings and acoustically recorded titles made by other Sony-owned U.S. labels, including Columbia, OKeh, and others.

Recordings are streamed through an embedded player on the Web site. In addition to being searchable, recordings are browsable by composer, performer, category, genre, and target audience, among other options. The database also includes playlists, or collections of recordings, that have been assembled by the developers. Among the playlists are Early Tin Pan Alley, and Songs by Irving Berlin. The Library of Congress has made a wise decision to comprehensively digitize all recordings from each label, preserving music that otherwise might have been lost to posterity.

It took a lot of work to go from a 78 rpm disc to a digital recording that can be played online. Find out what was involved in creating the National Jukebox
Reviewed in Choice, Oct 2011. http://www.loc.gov/jukebox/