Lively Exhibit On The Day Of The Dead

Lynnette Pintauro heard them before she saw them.“Any second now,” she smiled ominously, standing inside the Bridgehampton Museum’s William Corwith House on Saturday morning.

Dozens of little feet pitter-pattered down the sidewalk, barreled up the stairs and burst through the threshold of the museum, stopping in their tracks at the sight of a spooky skeleton propped up in a rocking chair, sporting a Bridgehampton Historical Society baseball cap.

“Is that real?” a tiny killer shark pointed, her friends from the Hampton Library’s Pumpkin Trail Parade gathered behind her.

“No,” Ms. Pintauro, the museum’s office manager, smiled. “He’s plastic.”

“Is this a haunted house?” a young princess squeaked.

“It’s actually a Halloween exhibit of antiques from the collection of ...” she started, but was cut off by a league of superheroes.

“Where’s the candy?” they asked.

“In the back,” she laughed. “But be careful.”

Blinded by their mission, the children did not heed Ms. Pintauro’s warning. They took off, swinging their pails as they stampeded down the hallway. Within seconds, amused shrieks and giggles echoed from the back room.

“Told them so,” she said to their startled parents, who shrugged and trickled into the adjacent exhibitions to look at what the children had missed. Inside the museum there are more than 100 items from the late Jack Musnicki's Halloween collection that paint a picture of the festive holiday, starting with items from the 1800s.

But celebration of the spooktacular day was born much earlier than that. Dating back to ancient times, Halloween is believed to have been a Celtic festival of the dead celebrated across Europe. According to the Celtic calendar, the New Year began on present-day November 1, marking the first day of winter. Because they were a pastoral people, the sheep and cattle had to be moved to closer pastures on that day, and crops were harvested and stored as they buckled down for the colder months ahead.

The date marked both the ending and beginning of an eternal cycle, “Halloween at the Corwith House” exhibit curator Julie Greene explained. And the Celts celebrated the night before with their biggest and most significant holiday of the year: Samhain, when the ghosts of the dead, fairies and demons were able to mingle with the living—at this time more than ever.

“We’re still going in these cycles of life,” Ms. Greene said, walking through the exhibition last week. “The whole idea is you’d wear masks to disguise yourself, so the spirits wouldn’t know who you were. I guess it’s not as frightening if you can embrace it. You can laugh in the face of horror.”

The Christians did not see it that way and sought to convert the pagan Celts. But in 601 A.D., Pope Gregory the First issued a now-famous edict to his missionaries: rather than try to obliterate the native customs and beliefs, use them. They assigned the Christian feast of All Saints to November 1, a day that became known as All Saints Day—and then All Hallows—meant to substitute Samhain, draw the devotion of the Celts and, finally, replace it forever.

That did not happen, Ms. Greene said, but the traditional Celtic deities diminished in status, becoming the fairies or leprechauns of more recent traditions.

The old beliefs associated with Samhain never died out entirely. Virtually every present Halloween tradition can be traced to the ancient Celtic day of the dead, or All Hallows Eve, which became Hallowe’en and then its most recent incarnation, Ms. Greene said.

Costumed trick-or-treating dates to the Celtic period and first few centuries of the Christian era, when it was thought that the souls of the dead were roaming with fairies, witches and demons. Food and drink offerings were left out to placate them.

As the centuries wore on, people began dressing as these creatures and performed antics in exchange for food and drink—a practice called “mumming,” from which trick-or-treating evolved.

On the East End, the earliest record of Halloween celebrations can be traced back through local newspapers to 1878, Ms. Greene said. In those days, parties were the craze and, at the turn of the 20th century, it was a night for single men and women to find whom they were to marry.

“They had all sorts of different ways of determining that,” Ms. Greene reported. “And that was a big thing on Halloween, I know especially out here. You would be blindfolded in the backyard, sent to find an object and you’d come back with a branch or something. And then someone would say, ‘That means you’re going to marry so-and-so.’ There was a lot of foretelling and conjuring up the spirits to let you know what you were in store for.”

By the 1920s, trick-or-treating was all the rage, except children would also carry papier-mâché lanterns from Germany lit with candles, Ms. Greene said, holding up a pair—one shaped like a pumpkin-headed clown, the other the face of Japanese emperor Hirohito.

“Now, you have to remember, these were kids holding candles and papier-mâché, so a lot of these lanterns didn’t survive,” she said. “They were good for one season, so they are very hard to find. They’re rare. A lot of them are close to 100 years old.”

When World War II hit, so did sugar rationing and trick-or-treating was rendered non-existent. Celebrators reverted back to parties, bobbing for apples and carving pumpkins—a tradition brought to the United States by the Irish, who were accustomed to carving beets and potatoes before discovering the American crop, Ms. Greene said. Then, the 1950s marked a return to door-to-door festivities, she said, similar to the practice known today—with one big twist.

“We have two costumes from the 1950s. One’s a black cat and one’s a clown. They’re kind of fun because they’re, obviously, flammable,” the curator chuckled. “Very different than anything that we have today. They’re cotton-faced with a plastic back. Most people don’t know that these are all traditions that have been around for hundreds and hundreds of years. Now, it’s all about filling up a bag of candy.”

With the exception of a few history buffs, that was true of most of the children who charged into the Bridgehampton Museum’s back room last weekend. At its far end sat a long black coffin, filled to its brim with chocolates and candies. When the trick-or-treaters saw it, their eyes lit up.

Scrambling over one another, the witches, werewolves, princesses, vampires and colorful critters rushed to its edge and plunged their tiny hands into their prize. They jumped back with screams when an automated skeleton hand sticking out of the pile dropped down with a scary noise, grabbing at its victims.

The younger set fled back to their parents, while the older kids tested its mechanics, still flinching every time the hand sprang to life. But it wasn’t long before they were off, too, running down the museum hallway, out the door and on to the next business, dangling their half-filled plastic pumpkins behind them.

“Halloween at the Corwith House” will be on view through the month of November at the William Corwith House in Bridgehampton. Museum hours are Monday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. For admission, a $5 donation is suggested for adults; kids get in free. For more information, call 537-1088 or visit bhmuseum.org.