the timboucher experience

Halloween was a hoot. Finally on a Saturday for once. Tons of tricker-treaters in my neighborhood. Daylight Savings equals an extra hour at the bar. Almost a full moon. My costume was a jointed plastic skeleton I bought for $19.99 and modified by reinforcing the joints with wire. I cut slits into the back, through which I clipped the front of a pair of suspenders to allow the skeleton to dangle in front of me. I put on my full backstage blacks, with a balaclava pulled over most of my face like a terrorist, and dark goggles covering my eyes. The hands and feet of the skeleton I tied to my hands and feet, so that it worked like a puppet. I could move my arms and legs or bend at the waist and its joints would (more or less) follow my movements. Ended up walking into a townie bar to buy carry out, and most certainly freaked out the locals. But, that’s exactly what you should be doing on Halloween, in my opinion.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately about especially European folk customs which are related to at least the spirit of Halloween, or at least to dressing up and acting foolishly. January 5th, the day of my birth, is Twelfth Night in the Christmas season, traditionally associated in England with the practice of mumming. Mummers dressed up (and still do, where the tradition survives) in outlandish costumes and perform a dramatic scenario related to the mythological slaying of the Dragon (evil, darkness), by St. George. Stock characters are typical to mumming, one of several elements the tradition shares with the Italian commedia performances. Mummers would don their costumes and disguises, get tremendously boozed up, and - so the stories go - appear uninvited at the homes of lords and nobles to crash their parties with impromptu performances of their ritual folk custom. The proper response was to give them food and drink, and maybe a small cash donation. Afterwards, money gathered would go to a big party put on by the mummers, to which they would invite their victims/audiences. {See also: Wren Day}

From a blog called Transpontine:

In January 1414, a plan was put in place to use mumming as a means of overthrowing the state with a focus on Eltham Palace, where the royal family was spending Christmas. The abortive insurrection was associated with John Oldcastle, a former friend of King Henry V, who had embraced the doctrines of the Lollard movement and been imprisoned as a heretic in the Tower of London before escaping. The Lollards criticised the wealth and corruption of the Church, anticipating the later Reformation.

In 1414, it was proposed to use a Twelfth Night Mumming as a cover to seize the King and his brothers at Eltham Palace. However the King was tipped off and returned to London. When the Lollard supporters gathered in the following week in St Giles Fields (near to the current Soho area) they were routed and many were exectued.

The Saturnalia was another inversion festival which the Romans practiced around roughly the same time of year, if a few weeks earlier. In it, social roles were inverted (however temporarily), where slaves and masters would switch places, etc.

It was a time to eat, drink, and be merry. The toga was not worn, but rather the synthesis, i.e. colorful, informal “dinner clothes”; and the pileus (freedman’s hat) was worn by everyone. Slaves were exempt from punishment, and treated their masters with (a pretense of) disrespect. The slaves celebrated a banquet: before, with, or served by the masters. Yet the reversal of the social order was mostly superficial; the banquet, for example, would often be prepared by the slaves, and they would prepare their masters’ dinner as well. It was license within careful boundaries; it reversed the social order without subverting it.

The John Canoe or Jonkonnu parades of West Africa, the Carribean and parts of the United States bear a striking similarity to this particular vein of folk theatrics:

Essentially, it involved a band of black men–generally young–who dressed themselves in ornate and often bizarre costumes. Each band was led by a man who was variously dressed in animal horns, elaborate rags, female disguise, whiteface (and wearing a gentleman’s wig!), or simply his “Sunday-go-to-meeting-suit.” Accompanied by music, the band marched along the roads from plantation to plantation, town to town, accosting whites along the way and sometimes even entering their houses. In the process the men performed elaborate and (to white observers) grotesque dances that were probably of African origin. And in return for this performance they always demanded money (the leader generally carried “a small bowl or tin cup” for this purpose), though whiskey was an acceptable substitute.

Closely allied with these traditions were the charivari or shivaree, ritual events in which community members appoint themselves as correctives against what they consider to be anomalous or aberrant behavior. Consider also the “rough music” of 18th and 19th century England.

Rough music is noisy, masked demonstrations usually held at the home of the wrongdoer, involving the banging of frying pans, saucepans, kettles, the rattling of bones and cleavers, the ringing of bells, hooting, blowing bull’s horns, and utilizing any other kitchen or barn utensil with the intention of creating a cacophonous noise to the discomfort and lingering embarrassment of the subject.[1] During a rough music performance, the victim may be ridden upon a pole or donkey, and his crimes may be the subject of mime, theatrical performances, recitatives, along with a litany of obscenities and insults.

Of course, lynchings and activities of the Ku Klux Klan fall pretty squarely into this last category as well, so the whole thing is necessarily quite a mixed bag. Fascinating subject though, regardless, the notion that there is some kind of holy power associated with a masked and costumed mob of people. {See also: Devil’s Night and Mischief Night} Interestingly, in the Carnival season of late Renaissance Italy, masked men were not permitted to carry weapons of self-defense, as they were considered to have revoked personal responsibility by wearing a mask. That is, if you can’t be recognized and identified, you can’t be held socially responsible for your actions. That explains, in a round-about fashion, why all the local 7-11’s and Rite Aid stores in the area had hand-lettered signs asking patrons to remove all hoods and masks before entering the premises.

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