In early 1997, the owner of Llewellyn Worldwide decided to produce a book entitled “The Truth About Halloween” to assuage the many historical misconceptions held by the general public about this delightful holiday. He decided that the book should come from the pen of a magickal person, and asked me if I would like the project. My answer was a resounding “Yes!”
Every year when Halloween rolls around, the magickal community is inundated with requests for interviews that range from the truly serious and informative to the bizarre grocery-store-type hype. I receive many of these requests and was eager to delve further into a topic that often led the media to my door. Witches are not the only individuals called on during the month of October for that newshound hunting frenzy. You’ll see interviews of pseudo-vampires, ghost hunters, psychics, and fiction writers that deal with occult subjects, as well as a nonstop plethora of horror films, both new and old, to enhance your viewing pleasure. Almost every newspaper in the nation uses Halloween and harvest themes for ads and entertainment purposes. I could go on, but you get my drift.
More so than the other holidays the public currently enjoys, the American Halloween is often used as a political and religious kickball as real Witches (along with the rest of the folks mentioned) step into the limelight and grant newspaper interviews, visit radio talk shows, and greet television audiences across the country. It isn’t that Witches push Halloween, it is that this is basically the only time the media is interested in the Witches, ghosts, goblins, and things that go bump in the night. In all honesty, it is rare for the media to look at the religion of Wicca at other times of the year, unless a discrimination case is so blatant (i.e., Congressman Barr against Wiccans in the military at Fort Hood in the spring and summer of 1999) that the community must step forward in a concerted effort to correct misinformation that is hundreds of years in error.
When I took on this project I thought it would be a snap. Do a little research, plug in some fun stuff, and presto-change-o (or should I say, “hocus-pocus”?) we’ve got a nifty little book on the history of Halloween combined with cool things to do during the month of October, and a great little tome for magickal people to wave and say, “here, this is the real history that may help you with your story.” On to the next project. Done deal. Wrong. At the onset I discovered a horrible fact—although there are hundreds of books on the market today that carry a Halloween theme, less than a handful deal with accurately researched history of the holiday, from its Pagan roots to the present-day American institution of Halloween. When you limit an author’s pool of research material, said author panics.
As I delved deeper into the history of Halloween, I knew I had a very real problem. History isn’t always pretty. There are a lot of bad things lurking there. If I was going to honestly present my research, someone’s nose was going to get out of joint simply because I am a magickal person, and therefore might hit too hard on current religious institutions. No one likes to think that there were bad people who did mean and nasty things in the name of one’s religion, and if you list a particular religion by name people tend to ball up the doctrine and the history into one muddy snowball and be offended. As you read the first few chapters of this book, please don’t practice guilt by association if you are not involved with a magickal religion. The historical information given is to render a mighty “thwap” to misinformation, not denigrate anyone’s current religious choice. My editor, Becky Zins, was very helpful in making sure that the information is presented as realistically and honestly as possible.