Hooties
As is normal, I brewed a pot of java before sitting down to write. I had broken my Trial of the Century commemorative coffee stein just yesterday, so I pulled down my Andy Rooney mug (Motto: didja ever notice—how whiny my voice is?) and filled it up before heading over to the desk.
Of course, being All Hallow’s Eve, I had to write something about the holiday. Everyone else is writing about ghosts and Frankenstein and witches and the like, so I thought I’d do something a tad different. I want to tell you how it all got started.
Back in the olden days, before Christianity made its bloody conquest of Europe, there were people called Pagans. They didn’t actually call themselves that, though. Their own name for themselves was (inexplicably) "Hootie and the Blowfish" (I swear I’m not making this up). Most folk just used "The Hooties".
So, hundreds of years (before the dawn of history, Nigel) before getting their lives disrupted and being forced to worship one god instead of many, the Hooties ran around happy for most of the year. They built their little wattle-and-daub houses, farmed their land, gathered their nuts, and did the one thing that separated them form the lower life forms and signaled the dawn of civilization—they brewed beer.
Anyway, there was one time of the years when the Hooties weren’t so happy (inventing beer would make me happy!). That was the end of the year. They called this time Samhain (pronounced "the end of the year"). At Samhain they were frightened, and reasonably so.
First, there was the issue of the coming winter, which meant rationing the beer. If this wasn’t already enough, there was the fact that the Hooties believed that on the night Samhain, the souls of those that had died in the previous year made their way to the Otherworld. This, in and of itself, wasn’t so bad. What upset the Hooties was the fact that these souls weren’t always happy about going to the Otherworld (I’ve heard that the valet service isn’t quite as good, and you can’t get Ben & Jerry’s), and were doing what they could to stay in This World (where the beer was). What they would do most often was try to inhabit the body of a living Hootie (also called "possession").
The Hooties, however, had many ways to deal with this. It was widely known that the Spirits of the Dead were skittish, although I can’t imagine being afraid of much IF I WAS ALREADY DEAD. Anyway, the Hooties did several things to scare away the Spirits. First, they dressed up in ugly costumes. After all, what Spirit would wan to possess a Hootie that had no fashion sense? Additionally, they would run around the village making loads of noise (playing gangster rap was particularly effective) and breaking things (which, of course, made noise of its own). Certainly, a Spirit wouldn’t want to live in a hut with overturned beds and shattered flatware. Breaking earthen jars on packed dirt floors presented more difficulties for the Hooties than say, dropping crystal onto linoleum, but they were hearty folk and got by.
The last thing they did was build a big bonfire in the middle of the village, because Spirits also didn’t like light and heat. It seems as though Spirits didn’t like much, actually, which was probably why there were interested in jumping back into a Hootie. After breaking stuff, the villagers would go out and dance around the fire like maniacs (beer rations were tripled for Samhain), singing, screaming and sometimes copulating (Spirits most definitely cannot possess a person in the throes of passion; it has something to do with the pull of the moon). If, in the unlikely happenstance that someone did indeed get possessed, the villagers did the only thing that they could to discourage further similar behavior by other Spirits—they tossed the possessed person on the bonfire.
If there was some disagreement as to whether or not the person was actually possessed, the villagers consulted their elder or Druid. The Druid was a wise man among the Hooties who had the special privilege of not having his beer rationed during winter. He also had the Gift of Second Sight. This means that he saw stuff that the others didn’t see, likely the result of the extra beer. Normally, his decision was "toss him on the fire anyway".
This was also a convenient time to get back a the people who had annoyed you during the previous year. "I think Morris (a very popular Hootie name) is possessed! Throw him on the fire!" The problem was, Morris would then make the same accusation. "It was the ancestor of Larry (another popular Hootie name) who possessed me! Larry is possessed, too! There were occasions when this led to entire villages getting thrown into the fire. Which is why, of course, the Hooties are no longer around today.