But she announces to the courtroom that she will also prove that no 17th-century suspect was a witch. Accused of witchcraft in old Salem, she winds up manacled, on trial for her life.

Samantha goes on to do something no mere mortal could, venturing back to the 17th century. Sometimes it seems as if the trauma of an event can be measured by how long it takes us to commemorate it, and by how thoroughly we mangle it in the process. When George Washington passed through Salem in October 1789, he witnessed neither any trace of a witch panic nor of Halloween. It addressed the unpleasantness the New England way: silently. It preferred not to count the witchcraft delusion among them no one cared to record even where the town had hanged 19 innocents. They were off by only a few centuries.Īmong the oldest settlements in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and for years among the wealthiest cities in America, Salem had many claims to fame. They renounced even saints days, to wind up with a calendar that has been described as “the dullest in Western civilization.” They feared that boatloads of nefarious Christmas-celebrating Irishmen were to disembark imminently on American shores. Our Puritan forefathers had a horror of holidays. That the least decorous, most disorderly of holidays should have established permanent residence in eastern Massachusetts is incongruous on any number of counts. How did Salem, Mass., repackage a tragedy as a holiday, appointing itself “Witch City” in the process? You have to be more inventive yet to brand yourself as a Halloween capital - extending a one-night affair into a monthlong celebration and inviting hundreds of thousands of visitors into your streets - when for centuries you were known as the community that put innocents to death for witchcraft. The Pilgrims would be astounded to discover they laid any claim to the fourth Thursday in November.Įven allowing for an especially American elasticity, you have to engage in some wacky contortions to come up with Halloween, a holiday most of us would be hard-pressed to explain. Valentine never met a metallic red Cupid. While we like to think them wholesome and organic, they more resemble our breakfast cereals an awful lot of fluorescent marshmallow charms have crept in among the toasted oats. They also tend to develop by accretion and misconception.

HOLIDAYS restore us, reassure us and remind us of who we are - a reason some of us hesitate to head home for Thanksgiving.

Wiccan holidays calendar 2015