My first Halloween lesson
Okay! We’re going to start writing in this thing again. Right? Right!
Tonight I taught my evening adult class about Halloween. It was pretty fun, and more interesting than I thought it would be. Though I keep finding out that what I think might be interesting to my students tends to confuse them. But at least they tell me when they don’t understand something. They actually ask questions! Holy crap!
I had a fair amount of free time at school today, so I spent most of it working on what I was going to teach them. I loaded up Wikipedia (a good source for information, but take it with a grain of salt) and printed up some information. It took me almost an hour to root through everything. I decided that it might be interesting to explain why Americans do what they do on Halloween, or at least explain where the traditions came from. Why do they carve pumpkins? Why do they dress up? What is Trick-or-Treating? And what the hell is “Halloween” anyway? I answered all of these questions to the best of my ability and the ability of my sources (never use less than three respected sources!) and typed up two worksheets. I even added cute little pictures to illustrate certain points.
I started out the way I usually do when presenting a holiday lesson: I ask “What do you think of when you hear the word _____?” Since the Japanese don’t celebrate Halloween, and only three of the five students showed up, they couldn’t give me much. So I drew pictures of popular Halloween symbols (i.e., jack-o’-lanterns, ghosts, demons, etc.) and asked them if they had heard of those things before. They seemed to like my rather childish sketches (especially the one of Death).
I followed the introduction of the lesson with the introduction of Halloween. I started with where the idea started. You know, explaining the concept of Samhain and ancient inhabitants of a country they don’t know about is very difficult. Apparently, they didn’t know where Ireland even was.
“It’s next to England,” I explained. They made the typical sounds of “Ah, I see,” that any student of any age in any country makes when he or she finally grasps a concept. At least some things are constant.
Next up was explaining where the wearing of costumes came from. I spent a good ten minutes just going over what the “Otherworld” was. It’s a pretty simple concept if you don’t go into too deep into it. In so many words, it’s the place where spirits and demons live (though that’s like saying a library is the place where the books live). Since I just wanted to give them an idea of it, I drew a picture of human beings, then a picture of ghosts and devils, and drew a thick line in between the two of them. I labeled each side: “Our World” over the humans, “Otherworld” over the non-humans. That was apparently a little too broad for them.
“The Otherworld is just a name for where these things live,” I told them. “They don’t live in our world. They have their own world.”
They made their understanding sounds.
I explained that on Samhain, the border between our world and the Otherworld became thinner, and the things from the Otherworld were able to come over into our world. At this point I erased all but a small fraction of the line on the board. Then I drew arrows signaling the ability of the non-humans to cross over.
“Do you understand?” I asked.
“No.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“How do the ghost come over?”
I redrew the line between the humans and non-humans, and erased the arrows. “During the year, there is a border between our world,” (here I pointed at the humans) “and the Otherworld” (here I pointed at the non-humans). “It’s like a strong wall. Nothing can get through.” I drew arrows bouncing off of the line on both sides.
“But on Samhain, the border, or wall, thins. It becomes weak.” I erased most of the line again. “So ghosts and demons can come over.” Once again, I drew arrows signifying the ability of the Otherworld inhabitants to cross into the human world. “Only on Samhain. The rest of the year, no coming over. Samhain equals come over time.”
Yes, that is how I put it. It must have worked, because they made the understanding sound.
Getting back on track, I told my students that good spirits and bad spirits came out on Samhain. “Good spirits are welcomed into the home.” I drew a house, and a ghost with a smiling face, then an arrow going into the house. Beneath the arrow I put the Japanese symbol for correct: “O.”
“Bad spirits are not welcomed. They cannot come inside.” I drew a ghost with a mad face, an arrow into the house, and the Japanese symbol for incorrect: “X.”
“So, good spirits, yes! Bad spirits, no!” I concluded.
“What a good spirit?”
“An ancestor,” I said. “Your dead family. Your grandfather, his father, his father, and so on.” I drew faces on the board and pointed at them as I spoke. This concept they instantly grasped. Go figure.
I told them that to protect themselves on Samhain from bad spirits, people dressed up to look like bad spirits. I drew an angry ghost and an angry ghost with feet. Angry Ghost was labeled “Bad Spirit” and his footed counterpart was labeled “You.”
“You dress up like a spirit. The real bad spirit sees you. He thinks, ‘Oh! Look! Another spirit! I will leave him alone.’”
I drew a human on the board, on the other side of the “Bad Spirit.” I also labeled him “You.” “You do not dress like a spirit. The bad spirit sees you. He thinks, ‘Oh! Look! A human! I will kill him!’” I drew Xs in the human’s face and a frown.
“Once again, if you dress up as a spirit, a bad spirit will leave you alone. If you don’t dress up as a spirit, a bad spirit will hurt you. This is why people dressed in costumes on Samhain. Any questions?”
One of the students checked her understanding by repeating what I had just said, only in question format.
To be honest, I kind of hate it when people do this, at least in an academic setting. If you’re repeating directions or a phone number back, that’s one thing. It’s the question phrasing of what the professor says that gets to me. It’s as if the speaker is saying, “Hey, look! I understand!” without doing any critical thinking. It’s easy to parrot what the teacher has just finished saying, and I can’t help but think that the people who do thins in class are trying to look smarter than the rest of the class while hoping nobody catches on to the verbal plagiarism. It’s always tempting to reply to such students with, “Yes, that is exactly what I just said. Thank you for your contribution.” But because my students are English language learners and not pedantic college freshmen, I let them get away with repeating my phrases as questions. It’s helping them learn a language they don’t know very well, and every little bit helps. Besides, the point of my lessons is not that they grasp the idea I’m trying to convey so much as getting them to understand the words coming out of my mouth. They don’t have to write a term paper on the subject . Just getting the basic premise is enough.
After spending almost half an hour on the subject of costumes (including the most popular choices in America), I moved onto the concept of Trick-or-Treating. Luckily, my students were already familiar with the phrase “Trick or Treat!” They just didn’t know what it meant. So I told them it essentially means, “Give us treats, or we’ll play a trick on you.”
It took a minute for them to understand what a trick was, so I acted out some examples. I threw imaginary eggs at imaginary houses. They didn’t get it. I slashed the imaginary tires of an imaginary car with an imaginary knife. They still didn’t get it. I finally rang an imaginary doorbell and pretended to run away. The understanding sound echoed through the small classroom.
I’ve found that acting things out helps immensely when trying to convey something to a student. Plus, it’s always entertaining watching the teacher act like a spaz. Oh ho, those silly foreigners!
For some reason I decided to explain the background of Trick-or-Treating. I don’t know why I decided to do this, and I ended up regretting the decision. I told my students that in the Middle Ages there was a practice called “souling,” where the poor would go around knocking on doors on the Eve of All Souls’ Day, and in exchange for food from the inhabitants would offer up prayers for them the next day. To be fair, this was a brand new concept to me, so I’m sure my language was confusing as I, myself, tried to work through the idea. All Souls’ Day occurred on November 2nd. The day of “souling” was Hallowmas (or “All Hallows’ Day”), which occurs on November 1st. Halloween (or “All Hallows’ Evening”) occurs on October 31st. My students seemed impressed by my knowledge, if a little confused. So I tried to clear it up for them.
That was my first mistake. I had read that All Souls’ Day used to be in May, way back when, but was placed in November to coincide with the Celtic Samhaim, which was part of a plot to make conversion of the Celts to Christianity that much easier. I told them this, as clearly as I could and with lots of pictures drawn on the board.
And then one of my students asked me a simple question that always leads to a terribly complicated discussion. “Why?”
“Why did the Christians want to convert the Celts to Christianity?” I asked.
She nodded her head vigorously.
I paused. “Because the Celts were pagan,” I replied. That was always the answer, wasn’t it? The Christians wanted to convert [insert religious group here] because they weren’t Christian. Plus, it was easier to subdue a group that believed the same dogma as you than it was a group who though your religion was stupid. To put it simply, “The Christians wanted the Celts to be Christian, too.”
My students seemed to be satisfied with that answer, or at least couldn’t think of a question to follow it up. So then another student asked, “What pagan?”
“Pagan refers to any person or religion that has more than one god, according to the Church,” I responded, a little hesitantly.
Can I just say how much I love how easily I can get away with referring to an entire, diverse group of Christian sects as “The Church?” It’s amazing, really. When I use it, I typically am referring to the Catholic church, and sometimes toss in the Lutheran and Episcopalian churches. Still, it’s a nice umbrella term to cover my ass with. Christians told me this, they went to a church, so I heard it from “The Church.” It’s lazy and insulting, I know, but let me have this crutch for now, please. I swear I’ll stop once I start writing academic papers again.
I continued, “ Jews and Muslims are not pagan, because they believe in one god, just as Christians do. But Shintos, Buddhists, Hindus, and so on, they are all ‘pagan.’” I sectioned the groups off on the board, dividing them up as “pagan” and “not pagan.”
“Christian not pagan?” a student asked.
I’ll admit, I was surprised. “What?”
“Christian had Jesus and God. Two gods.”
I paused a moment. “Oh! You like in the Holy Trinity!” I drew a triangle on the board. “Actually, the Holy Trinity is made up of three people: Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit.” I wrote the three names at separate points on the triangle, with subtitles: “Jesus (Son),” “God (Father),” and “Holy Spirit (Dead Jesus).”
“According to the Bible, God created Jesus as his son. But Jesus died. So he became the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit then went to Heaven to be with God.”
I asked if they understood so far. They nodded.
“However, Christians believe that these three people are part of one god.” I wrote a 1 in the middle of the triangle and circled it. “They believe that Jesus is God, and that God is Jesus. That’s one person.” I wrote “God = Jesus” on the board below the triangle. “And the Holy Spirit is Jesus, but dead. So he is God, too.” I finished my equation as “God = Jesus = Holy Ghost.”
“So God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all one god to Christians.”
I looked at my students. I asked them if they understood. They shook their heads.
“Okay, let’s try this a different way.” I drew a blob on the board. I labeled it “God.” “This is God,” I said. “And this” (I sectioned off a bit of the blob) “is Jesus. As you can see, Jesus is a part of God. The Holy Spirit is Dead Jesus, so they are the same person.” I labeled the smaller section of blob as “Jesus/Holy Spirit (Dead Jesus).”
“Three people are all part of one person. So there is just one god.”
This time they understood. Sort of. I could tell it was a hard idea for them to handle, which is fair. It’s not something they were brought up to believe in, or particularly want to believe. I guess it makes more sense if you’re looking at it through the eyes of faith.
At that point we were out of time. I was ready for the class to end, since I felt as though I had been backed into a corner from which there was no escape. I admitted to them that I wasn’t a Christian, and that this was what I had been taught as a child (which wasn’t entirely true, exactly. I simply took it was truth that Jesus and God [and, of course, Dead Jesus] were all one person. I hadn’t really asked for a detailed explanation). However, they seemed satisfied with the answers I had given. Out of courtesy for my time they didn’t ask me any more questions. They paid me my 5000 yen, I locked up the classroom, and we all went home.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t know much about the small events and practices that led to the creation of what is the modern celebration of Halloween. And I don’t like to pretend that I know. I feel bad for giving my students information I am not completely convinced of. Yes, I think that the modern Halloween has its roots in the Celtic Samhain, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same celebration. The Halloween as we know it has been influenced by a lot of things, be it “souling” or the legend of “Stingy Jack.” Who can say with absolute certainty that he knows the history of Halloween utterly and completely?
Or rather, what truly intelligent person can say with absolute certainty that he knows the history of Halloween utterly and completely? One would have to devote a portion of his life to in-depth study of the subject just to be considered an expert. And that’s not worth it to me. Maybe to some folks, and good for them.
To me, Halloween is a celebration of the things that go bump in the night, of our fears and uncertainties. I don’t particularly care if that was its original intention. I figure as long as I find something meaningful in the holiday I’ll be all right. The Halloween gods will spare me another year.
I suppose I’ve rambled on long enough. Stay tuned! I’m hoping to make a daily habit of this journal writing. (Though hopefully not this long...)
~Mai
“So would Jesus be considered the first zombie?”
Tonight I taught my evening adult class about Halloween. It was pretty fun, and more interesting than I thought it would be. Though I keep finding out that what I think might be interesting to my students tends to confuse them. But at least they tell me when they don’t understand something. They actually ask questions! Holy crap!
I had a fair amount of free time at school today, so I spent most of it working on what I was going to teach them. I loaded up Wikipedia (a good source for information, but take it with a grain of salt) and printed up some information. It took me almost an hour to root through everything. I decided that it might be interesting to explain why Americans do what they do on Halloween, or at least explain where the traditions came from. Why do they carve pumpkins? Why do they dress up? What is Trick-or-Treating? And what the hell is “Halloween” anyway? I answered all of these questions to the best of my ability and the ability of my sources (never use less than three respected sources!) and typed up two worksheets. I even added cute little pictures to illustrate certain points.
I started out the way I usually do when presenting a holiday lesson: I ask “What do you think of when you hear the word _____?” Since the Japanese don’t celebrate Halloween, and only three of the five students showed up, they couldn’t give me much. So I drew pictures of popular Halloween symbols (i.e., jack-o’-lanterns, ghosts, demons, etc.) and asked them if they had heard of those things before. They seemed to like my rather childish sketches (especially the one of Death).
I followed the introduction of the lesson with the introduction of Halloween. I started with where the idea started. You know, explaining the concept of Samhain and ancient inhabitants of a country they don’t know about is very difficult. Apparently, they didn’t know where Ireland even was.
“It’s next to England,” I explained. They made the typical sounds of “Ah, I see,” that any student of any age in any country makes when he or she finally grasps a concept. At least some things are constant.
Next up was explaining where the wearing of costumes came from. I spent a good ten minutes just going over what the “Otherworld” was. It’s a pretty simple concept if you don’t go into too deep into it. In so many words, it’s the place where spirits and demons live (though that’s like saying a library is the place where the books live). Since I just wanted to give them an idea of it, I drew a picture of human beings, then a picture of ghosts and devils, and drew a thick line in between the two of them. I labeled each side: “Our World” over the humans, “Otherworld” over the non-humans. That was apparently a little too broad for them.
“The Otherworld is just a name for where these things live,” I told them. “They don’t live in our world. They have their own world.”
They made their understanding sounds.
I explained that on Samhain, the border between our world and the Otherworld became thinner, and the things from the Otherworld were able to come over into our world. At this point I erased all but a small fraction of the line on the board. Then I drew arrows signaling the ability of the non-humans to cross over.
“Do you understand?” I asked.
“No.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“How do the ghost come over?”
I redrew the line between the humans and non-humans, and erased the arrows. “During the year, there is a border between our world,” (here I pointed at the humans) “and the Otherworld” (here I pointed at the non-humans). “It’s like a strong wall. Nothing can get through.” I drew arrows bouncing off of the line on both sides.
“But on Samhain, the border, or wall, thins. It becomes weak.” I erased most of the line again. “So ghosts and demons can come over.” Once again, I drew arrows signifying the ability of the Otherworld inhabitants to cross into the human world. “Only on Samhain. The rest of the year, no coming over. Samhain equals come over time.”
Yes, that is how I put it. It must have worked, because they made the understanding sound.
Getting back on track, I told my students that good spirits and bad spirits came out on Samhain. “Good spirits are welcomed into the home.” I drew a house, and a ghost with a smiling face, then an arrow going into the house. Beneath the arrow I put the Japanese symbol for correct: “O.”
“Bad spirits are not welcomed. They cannot come inside.” I drew a ghost with a mad face, an arrow into the house, and the Japanese symbol for incorrect: “X.”
“So, good spirits, yes! Bad spirits, no!” I concluded.
“What a good spirit?”
“An ancestor,” I said. “Your dead family. Your grandfather, his father, his father, and so on.” I drew faces on the board and pointed at them as I spoke. This concept they instantly grasped. Go figure.
I told them that to protect themselves on Samhain from bad spirits, people dressed up to look like bad spirits. I drew an angry ghost and an angry ghost with feet. Angry Ghost was labeled “Bad Spirit” and his footed counterpart was labeled “You.”
“You dress up like a spirit. The real bad spirit sees you. He thinks, ‘Oh! Look! Another spirit! I will leave him alone.’”
I drew a human on the board, on the other side of the “Bad Spirit.” I also labeled him “You.” “You do not dress like a spirit. The bad spirit sees you. He thinks, ‘Oh! Look! A human! I will kill him!’” I drew Xs in the human’s face and a frown.
“Once again, if you dress up as a spirit, a bad spirit will leave you alone. If you don’t dress up as a spirit, a bad spirit will hurt you. This is why people dressed in costumes on Samhain. Any questions?”
One of the students checked her understanding by repeating what I had just said, only in question format.
To be honest, I kind of hate it when people do this, at least in an academic setting. If you’re repeating directions or a phone number back, that’s one thing. It’s the question phrasing of what the professor says that gets to me. It’s as if the speaker is saying, “Hey, look! I understand!” without doing any critical thinking. It’s easy to parrot what the teacher has just finished saying, and I can’t help but think that the people who do thins in class are trying to look smarter than the rest of the class while hoping nobody catches on to the verbal plagiarism. It’s always tempting to reply to such students with, “Yes, that is exactly what I just said. Thank you for your contribution.” But because my students are English language learners and not pedantic college freshmen, I let them get away with repeating my phrases as questions. It’s helping them learn a language they don’t know very well, and every little bit helps. Besides, the point of my lessons is not that they grasp the idea I’m trying to convey so much as getting them to understand the words coming out of my mouth. They don’t have to write a term paper on the subject . Just getting the basic premise is enough.
After spending almost half an hour on the subject of costumes (including the most popular choices in America), I moved onto the concept of Trick-or-Treating. Luckily, my students were already familiar with the phrase “Trick or Treat!” They just didn’t know what it meant. So I told them it essentially means, “Give us treats, or we’ll play a trick on you.”
It took a minute for them to understand what a trick was, so I acted out some examples. I threw imaginary eggs at imaginary houses. They didn’t get it. I slashed the imaginary tires of an imaginary car with an imaginary knife. They still didn’t get it. I finally rang an imaginary doorbell and pretended to run away. The understanding sound echoed through the small classroom.
I’ve found that acting things out helps immensely when trying to convey something to a student. Plus, it’s always entertaining watching the teacher act like a spaz. Oh ho, those silly foreigners!
For some reason I decided to explain the background of Trick-or-Treating. I don’t know why I decided to do this, and I ended up regretting the decision. I told my students that in the Middle Ages there was a practice called “souling,” where the poor would go around knocking on doors on the Eve of All Souls’ Day, and in exchange for food from the inhabitants would offer up prayers for them the next day. To be fair, this was a brand new concept to me, so I’m sure my language was confusing as I, myself, tried to work through the idea. All Souls’ Day occurred on November 2nd. The day of “souling” was Hallowmas (or “All Hallows’ Day”), which occurs on November 1st. Halloween (or “All Hallows’ Evening”) occurs on October 31st. My students seemed impressed by my knowledge, if a little confused. So I tried to clear it up for them.
That was my first mistake. I had read that All Souls’ Day used to be in May, way back when, but was placed in November to coincide with the Celtic Samhaim, which was part of a plot to make conversion of the Celts to Christianity that much easier. I told them this, as clearly as I could and with lots of pictures drawn on the board.
And then one of my students asked me a simple question that always leads to a terribly complicated discussion. “Why?”
“Why did the Christians want to convert the Celts to Christianity?” I asked.
She nodded her head vigorously.
I paused. “Because the Celts were pagan,” I replied. That was always the answer, wasn’t it? The Christians wanted to convert [insert religious group here] because they weren’t Christian. Plus, it was easier to subdue a group that believed the same dogma as you than it was a group who though your religion was stupid. To put it simply, “The Christians wanted the Celts to be Christian, too.”
My students seemed to be satisfied with that answer, or at least couldn’t think of a question to follow it up. So then another student asked, “What pagan?”
“Pagan refers to any person or religion that has more than one god, according to the Church,” I responded, a little hesitantly.
Can I just say how much I love how easily I can get away with referring to an entire, diverse group of Christian sects as “The Church?” It’s amazing, really. When I use it, I typically am referring to the Catholic church, and sometimes toss in the Lutheran and Episcopalian churches. Still, it’s a nice umbrella term to cover my ass with. Christians told me this, they went to a church, so I heard it from “The Church.” It’s lazy and insulting, I know, but let me have this crutch for now, please. I swear I’ll stop once I start writing academic papers again.
I continued, “ Jews and Muslims are not pagan, because they believe in one god, just as Christians do. But Shintos, Buddhists, Hindus, and so on, they are all ‘pagan.’” I sectioned the groups off on the board, dividing them up as “pagan” and “not pagan.”
“Christian not pagan?” a student asked.
I’ll admit, I was surprised. “What?”
“Christian had Jesus and God. Two gods.”
I paused a moment. “Oh! You like in the Holy Trinity!” I drew a triangle on the board. “Actually, the Holy Trinity is made up of three people: Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit.” I wrote the three names at separate points on the triangle, with subtitles: “Jesus (Son),” “God (Father),” and “Holy Spirit (Dead Jesus).”
“According to the Bible, God created Jesus as his son. But Jesus died. So he became the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit then went to Heaven to be with God.”
I asked if they understood so far. They nodded.
“However, Christians believe that these three people are part of one god.” I wrote a 1 in the middle of the triangle and circled it. “They believe that Jesus is God, and that God is Jesus. That’s one person.” I wrote “God = Jesus” on the board below the triangle. “And the Holy Spirit is Jesus, but dead. So he is God, too.” I finished my equation as “God = Jesus = Holy Ghost.”
“So God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all one god to Christians.”
I looked at my students. I asked them if they understood. They shook their heads.
“Okay, let’s try this a different way.” I drew a blob on the board. I labeled it “God.” “This is God,” I said. “And this” (I sectioned off a bit of the blob) “is Jesus. As you can see, Jesus is a part of God. The Holy Spirit is Dead Jesus, so they are the same person.” I labeled the smaller section of blob as “Jesus/Holy Spirit (Dead Jesus).”
“Three people are all part of one person. So there is just one god.”
This time they understood. Sort of. I could tell it was a hard idea for them to handle, which is fair. It’s not something they were brought up to believe in, or particularly want to believe. I guess it makes more sense if you’re looking at it through the eyes of faith.
At that point we were out of time. I was ready for the class to end, since I felt as though I had been backed into a corner from which there was no escape. I admitted to them that I wasn’t a Christian, and that this was what I had been taught as a child (which wasn’t entirely true, exactly. I simply took it was truth that Jesus and God [and, of course, Dead Jesus] were all one person. I hadn’t really asked for a detailed explanation). However, they seemed satisfied with the answers I had given. Out of courtesy for my time they didn’t ask me any more questions. They paid me my 5000 yen, I locked up the classroom, and we all went home.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t know much about the small events and practices that led to the creation of what is the modern celebration of Halloween. And I don’t like to pretend that I know. I feel bad for giving my students information I am not completely convinced of. Yes, I think that the modern Halloween has its roots in the Celtic Samhain, but that doesn’t mean they’re the same celebration. The Halloween as we know it has been influenced by a lot of things, be it “souling” or the legend of “Stingy Jack.” Who can say with absolute certainty that he knows the history of Halloween utterly and completely?
Or rather, what truly intelligent person can say with absolute certainty that he knows the history of Halloween utterly and completely? One would have to devote a portion of his life to in-depth study of the subject just to be considered an expert. And that’s not worth it to me. Maybe to some folks, and good for them.
To me, Halloween is a celebration of the things that go bump in the night, of our fears and uncertainties. I don’t particularly care if that was its original intention. I figure as long as I find something meaningful in the holiday I’ll be all right. The Halloween gods will spare me another year.
I suppose I’ve rambled on long enough. Stay tuned! I’m hoping to make a daily habit of this journal writing. (Though hopefully not this long...)
~Mai
“So would Jesus be considered the first zombie?”