I saw a bat tonight, while walking in the park just after dark. I may have seen bats before and not known it, just glimpsing a shadow in the air, but this one flew between me and a soccer field lamp tower, and the silhouette that batman has trained me so well to recognize was unmistakable. It was tiny and gliding much more than flapping, which both surprised me. I live in the Atlanta area; I’m not sure what kind of bats are native here.
Penny Arcade’s recent Bat House comic had already got me thinking on the subject of the flying mammals, and seeing one and then going into the grocery store and walking past their elaborate Halloween display really brought home to me how skewed our perceptions of them are, particularly on one point:
Bats hibernate during the winter, or go into torpor in warm climates. Most of them eat bugs, and are presumably most active when insect populations are highest. Doesn’t this mean bats should be associated with summer? Because in lots of places by Halloween the bugs have already all but disappeared.
I have heard that people would have bonfires to ward off evil spirits around Halloween and this would attract insects which would attract bats. When you’re trying to keep evil at bay, whatever creepy creature is circling above you flying in and out of the light all night long but never getting too close to your evil repelling fire is probably evil, or at least a handy mascot for it.
I agree. Bats (like owls and black cats) are associated with witches, so that’s why they are linked to Halloween, not because they are particularly active in the fall. And they are associated with witches because they are nocturnal and creepy looking; also, devils were frequently pictured as bat-winged.
Your logic is (respectfully) flawed because you assume the association of Halloween is with all things Fall and bats with Summer, ergo the two shouldn’t go together. In fact, Halloween is associated with scary and creepy things, which bats, by popular mythology and culture, are. So the two do go together.
There is the vampire mythology piece. Halloween is about dressing up like monsters to scare away evil spirits. Vampires are monsters. Vampires can supposedly turn into bats. Therefore, bats are associated with Halloween.
Also, bats often live in caves. Caves are scary and dark and are therefore associated with monsters.
Also, there’s the whole Vampire Bat thing (actual blood sucking bats, though Wikipedia says they’re only in the Americas, presumbly stories did spread back to the Old Country).
Also, bats are really creepy because they’re flying mammals, can carry disease, and are only seen at night. (And if you injure one, they let out a heck of a screech). Thus, it’s reasonable for people to equate them with monsters, demons, etc.
That’s not an “also”: That’s the reason for vampire myths including the ability to turn into bats. That didn’t show up in any of the myths until after the discovery of actual vampire bats. Before that discovery, vampires could sometimes turn into wolves, or a mist, or sometimes other “evil” creatures, but not bats specifically.
Yes, I agree with Colibri: it’s the association with witches that connects bats to Halloween. Bat parts are one of the traditional ingredients in a ‘witches brew’ – see the scene in Shakespeare’s Macbeth where the witches are around their cauldron – one of the ingredients they mention is “wool of bat”.
Perhaps its because of the change in daylight hours. During summer months, true darkness is late so you don’t see them as you are not out and about, but as the days get shorter, there is much more chance you’ll be out when its darker, so you associate a certain time of year with the bats that were there all along.
As a bat lover, I’d like to stress this. European lore long regarded the bat as creepy and evil like many other nocturnal creatures. However, the idea of a bat drinking blood never occurred to them. In fact, some stories have bats flying into houses to nibble at flitches of bacon that were hanging up to cure.
Legends of evil bat like creatures do occur in PreColombian myths. Do a search on Camazotz.