HALLOW-E’EN NEXT MONDAY

Southland Times, Issue 23652, 29 October 1938, Page 5

HALLOW-E’EN NEXT MONDAY

ANCIENT CUSTOMS AND . BELIEFS There is perhaps no night of the year which the popular imagination has stamped with more peculiar character than the evening of October 31 or Hallow-e’en. It is clearly a relic of prehistoric and certainly pre-Christian origin. With the celebration of this festival many remarkable practices are handed down from the dim-distant past. The leading idea in Hallow-e’en is that it is a time when supernatural influences prevail. It is the night set apart for a universal walking abroad of spirits, both of the visible and invisible world. One of the outstanding characteristics of this mystic evening is the ability of the immaterial power of man to detach itself from its corporeal habitation and wander abroad through the realms of space. In this peculiar state witches especially were, able to commune with the intelligencies of the vast deep and avail themselves of such hidden secrets.

No holiday in all the year is so merry, informal and marked by fun unconstrained in its celebration as this night. Hallow-e’en ghosts have the reputation of being cheerfully-minded spooks, blythesome and bonney. This night the lovers read their fate as the chestnuts roast in the merry blaze, the lads read their future success or failure “Dookin’ for Apples,” while the tremorous lass awaits the appearance of her prospective lover in the candle-lit mirror. For the first time for many, many years the hospitable door of the Laird’s Mansion, the Civic Theatre, swings inwards to shelter all benighted endangered folk for here is safety and entertainment of a new type for all who enter, and all wrathful spirits will be effectively debarred by the magic of the Kale Stalks. So fun and frolic will prevail and dull care will flee on Monday night next.