The Holocaust deniers(in fact all deniers of known, established historical fact who support their position via incredible rationalizations) have already “appropriated” the term “historical revisionist” much as people who hate whole groups of other people based upon their skin colors have “appropriated” the term “racist”.If someone wants to embark upon a campaign to change the common usage of the word “racist” to mean “one who enjoys ‘racing’ to each of his destinations” then I will think it strange but I will not object much because this is the nature of language.Words shift meaning with context and usage.
Historical revisionism as a term is a lot like the term “conspiracy theorist”.If the term “conspiracy theorist” were invented just 5 minutes ago it could easily and sensibly mean someone who developes working theories/explanations about plots/conspiracies without much of the negative connotations the term currently has.
However, the common usage of the term “conspiracy theorist” denotes one who speculates wildly without regards for rules of inference, logic or rationality about extraordinary proposed conspiracies.
Likewise the common accepted usage of the term “historical revisionist” describes someone who states an assertion as historical fact which at the very least, lacks evidencial support adn is often contradicted by the available evidence.
No, “revisionist” is different from “racist”. For a start, “Holocaust revisionists” have attempted to hijack the word for its (admitedly vaguely) positive connotations. By contrast, racists - though there’s an obvious commonality - do not , in general, self-identify with being racist.
Of course words “shift meaning with context and usage”. But I suggest you read Lipstadt’s discussion of history of the term. Or chapter 9 of Shermer and Grobman’s Denying History (California, 2000), which maintains a similar distinction between revisionist and denier.
But harvest festivals are yet another example of a tradition which is much more recent than it seems. In this case, it is known exactly how the tradition originated. It was simply invented by the celebrated Cornish poet and antiquarian, Stephen Hawker, as the Anglican vicar of Morwenstow in 1843.
It is true that there had been some earlier celebrations to mark the completion of the harvest, but the extent to which those celebrations had pagan origins, if any, is disputed. Once again, most of the evidence is very late. There is the suspicion that they were neither ‘pagan’ nor ‘Christian’, but just an excuse for a good piss-up.
Except among professional historians. Indeed, many historians would argue that limiting the term only to Holocaust deniers etc. is a step back. Far better to call Holocaust deniers ‘Holocaust deniers’ than to accept their preferred euphemism.
‘Revisionist’ meant something before the Holocaust deniers tried to appropriate it and professional historians still use it in that original sense. And that original sense meant something very specific. The term seems to have first come into use in the early 1970s when it was used to describe the wave of new research which proposed a complete reinterpretation of the causes of the English Civil War and, by extension, of historians’ more general assumptions about politics and society in early-modern England. Far from lacking ‘evidencial support’, those revisionists were notable for their willingness to underpin their case with detailed archival research. They included some of the leading historians of their generation and the impact they made on that particular field will probably be permanent. Coincidentally, Ronald Hutton first made his name in the 1970s as a seventeenth-century historian aligned to those ‘revisionists’. Like Hutton himself, those revisionists now occupy some of the major academic positions within the UK and the USA.
The term ‘revisionist’ thus became one of the academic buzzwords of the last quarter of the twentieth century. Other historians in other fields applied it to other controversies. This was partly because the arguments about the origins of the English Civil War had more general implications elsewhere. ‘Revisionism’ in the context of early-modern England was part of the wider turn against grand historical narratives and it became a useful label for any historian who thought that this was a good thing. Like all buzzwords, it has come to mean much more (and much less) than that, but it retains enough meaning in specific contexts for professional historians to want to continue using it. Admittedly the debate on the English Civil War has itself moved on. One could argue that most historians of that subject are revisionists (or ‘post-revisionists’) now. The best overview of the changing uses of the term is the essay, ‘Revisionism in Britain’ in Companion to Historiography, ed. Michael Bentley (Routledge, 1997), pp. 377-91, by - yes, you’ve guessed it - Professor Ronald Hutton.
Yep, at my (Lutheran) Church we observed Reformation Day this week; sang “Mighty Fortress”, heard about Luther’s attempt at reform (rather than scism), etc. Then we all trooped into Sunday School classes to make ghosts out of tootsie pops, black cats and jack-o-lanterns out of foam core - good ol’ Halloween scariness.
Later this week, my daughter will go Trick-or-Treating with the Church Youth Group, collecting for Charity. And on Friday it’s the REAL DEAL - trolling the neighborhood for candy. The only sad thing is how far the kids have to walk between participating houses these days - it seems like every year, more people turn off their porch lights and hunker down. I doubt I’ll get a chance to take my grandchildren trick-or-treating - the fearful and judgemental will have killed it off completely by then. It’s too bad.
My take? It’s harmless fun, a way for kids to get “scary” without danger. For adults, its a goof. Even IF Halloween’s genesis was in pagan ritual, what really matters is what it is NOW. And in the present day, it’s been stripped of any “satanic” encumbrances (if indeed there ever were any), and it’s just a chance for kids to wild.
I suppose it could be the flip side of the Christmas coin - just as American commercialism leeches the sacredness out of Christmas, it also bleaches the paganism out of Halloween.
Just out of curiosity, Rimshotgdansk, but do you live in the southern U.S. or somewhere else in the “Bible Belt” where people are more likely to get uptight about Halloween? I’m sorry if I’m stereotyping a section of America but it seems as such “fearful and judgmental” attitudes toward the holiday would be more prevalent there then in, say, the Pacific Northwest.
NDP, I live in Michigan. I don’t see the lack of participation in my neighborhood as a religious thing necessarily; it may just be that I have pissy neighbors.
In my town (Houston, Texas) few houses have decorations up anymore. Most of them turn off the lights and pretend not to be home. You can’t get hardly any candy past 8:30.
Actually, the “flip side” of the Christmas Coin is St. John’s Day, in honor of St. John the Holy Forerunner (the Baptist). It is celebrated around June 24th.
March 25 was New Year’s Day (in England at least until the 1700s) and is Annunciation. Yes, at one time, March 24, 1447, was followed by March 25, 1448.
And September 8th is the Nativity of the Theotokos.
As usual in such matters, generalisation is dangerous. Cheney and Jones, A Handbook of Dates (Cambridge, revised 2000) cite the example of Pepys as someone for who dated the years based on 25th March, but didn’t regard this as New Year’s Day. That was January 1st.
Halloween’s approaching, so, in keeping with the season, here’s a zombie thread.
Has anybody had any encounters with the fundy forces against Halloween? Or, are they too busy this year campaigning for Bush that they don’t have time to ruin everyone’s fun?
Christmas is a great example. The timing was “borrowed” from the pagan Romans, the Yule log came from a pagan Germany, and Santa Claus is the “artist formerly known as Odin”. Then there is Easter. The Easter Bunny and Easter eggs are from pagan fertility symbols. I guess we better stop celebrating everything. :eek:
After slogging through all 4 pages of this thread, and trying not to forget what the original OP was, I am left with one simple idea. If “the Fundies” don’t like Halloween, fine. Let them celebrate or not celebrate whatever they want. Nobody puts a gun to their head, makes them wear silly costumes and forces them to beg for candy. On the other hand how someone else chooses to spend the day or night is absolutely none of their business.
Thanks though. I had made a list of my son’s costumes and totally forgot the red m & m one.
This year he is an alien (he’s into ufos)
Me, I may be a “sexy rag doll” or some other such.
And then, for some, absolutely no holiday traditions are OK. Just yesterday I had a conversation with a fifth-grade teacher whose class includes three Jehovah’s Witnesses. Just this year she had to refrain from decorating the classroom because these kids’ parents said they would keep their kids home if the class observed any holidays. Without a doubt, that extended not just to the parties or pageants on the actual day, but also to merely having the decorations up throughout the preceding month. J-Ws do not approve of any holidays, except parents’ anniversaries. ON this day, so the teacher said, the kids are showered with gifts, compensating in a way for their deprivation otherwise.
So in this class, they have neutral ‘holidays’ to avoid offending anyone. Instead of Halloween they have a ‘harvest festival’. And instead of Valentine’s Day they have ‘Warm And Fuzzy Day’, in which the kids come to school in pajamas and give each other candy. I’m sure every other traditional holiday on the calendar has a similar replacement. I find this appalling. Certainly religious holidays should not be celebrated in public schools, in my opinion. But that should not prevent the social and cultural elements from being enjoyed.
My parents used to talk about the time before trick or treating came to the area. This would be about 55+ years ago in semi-rural southern California (the same area is completely suburban now, but they moved when it got too crowded). They remembered it as a time that kids went out and pulled pranks. There would also be a big party at the high school.
Outhouses were alledgedly pushed back along their paths. Windows were soaped. Noisemakers were rattled against walls. This is back before toilet papering was popular, and probably toilet papering would have been considered too expensive for a prank.
No one bought costumes, everyone cobbled them together. Popular ones were cross-dressing and burning cork to give you something to black your face with. At the high school party there was a big bonfire. The highlight was tossing in the effigy of the witch, which was life sized.
They would wax nostalgic and you kind of got the feeling that they thought that trick or treating was a really watered down version of the old holiday. So the downfall of Halloween has been progressing for a long time. I think it began with the new-fangled indoor plumbing.
Interesting; I’m not particularly big on Hallowe’en - it’s just never been such a big thing here in the UK as (it seems to be) in the USA - I do remember as a child carving turnips (yes, turnips, well, actually swedes(rutabaga), but we called them turnips) into lanterns, I do remember a couple of fancy dress parties.
My church has a big thing about it though - all sorts of dire warnings about how evil it is to carve a pumpkin lantern etc. There is some sort of ‘alternative’ party being organised, but it’s going to be the lamest thing ever. I’m a little dismayed really and I may, in defiance, carve a pumpkin with my kids.
What someone else said earlier in this thread’s previous incarnation; there are folks out there who seem to dedicate their lives to sucking out the enjoyment from the lives of others.
