Let's write about the Buddhism tradition of Bodhi Day

 Found this essay in The Conversation, by Megan Bryson, an Associate Professor of Religious Studies, University of Tennessee. 

In the article's lead, the importance of lighting lamps🪔 to combat darkness reminds me about how creating light to conquer darkness is a common theme in Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism. A trifecta of enlightenment symbolized by candles and lamps.

(Just an FYI, in the Catholic church calendar, December 8 is a major Marian holy day. many celebrate as a Holy Day of Obligation.) My husband Dick and I visited the bronze Great Buddha of Kamakura, when we were in Japan.

We took the bullet train from Tokyo. The statue dates back to the 13th century; it is a huge iconic sight and a tourist attraction.

On Bodhi Day, Buddhists commemorate Siddhartha Gautama’s enlightenment by lighting lamps 🪔 to combat darkness. December 8, marks the celebration of Bodhi Day in Japanese Buddhism. Bodhi means enlightenment or awakening in Sanskrit. It commemorates the enlightenment of Siddhartha Gautama, who became the Buddha. Buddhists throughout the world celebrate Bodhi Day, but they do not all celebrate Siddhartha’s enlightenment on December 8.


In China, South Korea and Vietnam, his enlightenment is observed on the eighth day of the 12th lunar month. In 2025, but they do not all celebrate Siddhartha’s enlightenment on Dec. 8. In China, South Korea and Vietnam, his enlightenment is observed on, this falls on January 7.

In the Theravada form of Buddhism, followed in Southeast Asia, Gautama’s enlightenment, is commemorated along with his birth and death during the Vesak festival celebrated in April or May. This is similar to Tibetan Buddhism, which also combines the observation of the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and death in the springtime Saka Dawa festival.

As a scholar of Buddhism in East Asia, I study how people adapt Buddhism to their own cultural contexts. Bodhi Day is a good example of how Buddhists in different parts of Asia developed their own versions of important Buddhist holidays.The story of Bodhi Day: No matter when Buddhists celebrate the Buddha’s enlightenment, the story behind the holiday is consistent.


Biographies of the Buddha describe how young Prince Siddhartha became disillusioned with the fleeting luxuries of palace life. He eventually left home to find a cure for the inevitable suffering caused by old age, sickness and death. Siddhartha sought guidance from various religious masters, including one who taught his students to practice extreme self-denial, such as eating only a spoonful of gruel per day. Following this method, Siddhartha wasted away until he was just skin and bones, but he got no closer to resolving the problem of suffering. It was at just this time that a young woman named Sujata* came by with milk porridge, which she offered to the skeletal Siddhartha.

This meal gave Siddhartha the energy he needed to resolve the problem of suffering once and for all. He realized that no external teacher could give him the answers he sought, and he would have to solve this problem on his own.

Siddhartha decided to meditate under a pipal tree, also known as a sacred fig tree, until he reached enlightenment.

Over the next seven days he meditated, deepening his insights into the true nature of existence. On the seventh day, Siddhartha attained complete awakening to become a buddha. Buddhas are people who reach full enlightenment on their own, like Siddhartha, without direct guidance from a teacher.

Monks and nuns in Japanese and Korean Zen Buddhism follow this model by meditating intensively for the seven days leading up to Bodhi Day.

As a buddha, Siddhartha began sharing his insights with other spiritual seekers, attracting a group of followers who were the first Buddhists. Buddhist monks and merchants spread the religion to the north, east and south, and by the fourth century C.E. it was well established in China.The Laba Festival and congee: China already had its own religious and philosophical systems, along with its own calendar of holidays, when Buddhism came onto the scene. Buddhists in China adapted their religion to Chinese language and culture, including some existing holidays.


The 12th and final month of the Chinese lunar calendar was already a time for making sacrifices for ancestors in advance of the new year. In fact, the 12th month is called La, which originally referred to the cured meat that people offered to their ancestors at this time of year. “Ba” means the number eight, so Laba translates to “the eighth day of the La month” or “eighth day of the 12th month.”
Buddhism entered China in the first century C.E. By the third century, Chinese Buddhists identified the eighth day of the 12th month as the date of the Buddha’s enlightenment. Celebrating the Buddha’s enlightenment – or Bodhi Day – at the same time as the Laba Festival required adaptation.

The Laba Festival involved meat offerings and hunting, both of which violate Buddhist rules against killing animals. Over time, a compromise emerged, and rice porridge, or congee, became this holiday’s signature food for Buddhists and non-Buddhists alike. Rice has been used in Chinese religious offerings since at least the eighth century B.C.E., and rice congee also recalls the offering of milk porridge that helped Siddhartha on his journey to Buddhahood.
Light in the darkness: Another aspect of the Laba Festival, or Bodhi Day, is that it falls around the winter solstice, the darkest part of the year. Like other holidays at this time of year, Bodhi Day involves lighting lamps to combat the darkness. 

For East Asian Buddhists, these lamps 🪔 symbolize the Buddha’s enlightenment, which lights the path for others to follow.
Bodhi Day is celebrated in Japan and throughout the Japanese diaspora on December 8, because Japan switched from the lunar to solar calendar in 1873. Buddhists in other East Asian countries, such as China, Vietnam and South Korea, will observe Bodhi Day on January 7, 2025.

East Asian Buddhists will celebrate the holiday in different ways – some by lighting lamps 🪔, some by eating congee, some others by meditating for a full week straight. But for all Buddhists, Bodhi Day represents hope and the potential to overcome suffering.

*Julie's personal editorial comment, stands to reason, a woman brought Siddhartha the nourishment he needed to achieve enlightenment, just my opinion.

Let's write about Ludwig von Beethoven uniting humanity!

Wonderful echo essay published in The Conversation by Ted Olsen Professor of Appalachian Studies and Bluegrass, Old-Time and Roots Music Studies, East Tennessee State University. (Video performance link is at the end of this essay.)

Ludwig Von Beethoven composer baptised on December 17, 1770 and died on March 26, 1827

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at 200: Revolutionary work of art has spawned two centuries of joy, goodwill and propaganda

In early 1824, 30 members of Vienna’s music community sent a letter to Ludwig van Beethoven petitioning the great composer to reconsider his plans to premiere his latest work in Berlin and instead debut the symphony in Vienna.

Beethoven had lived in Vienna since 1792, when he left his hometown of Bonn, Germany, to pursue a career as a composer. Beethoven rose to world renown, but by the 1820s he had fallen out of favor with Viennese arts patrons who, at the time, were drawn to the sounds and styles of Italian composers.

Beethoven had not appeared before a Viennese audience in a dozen years, but he was moved by the letter’s sentiment and agreed to debut his new work, Symphony No. 9 in D minor, in the city. 

The premiere performance was on May 7, 1824, at Kärntnertor Theater.

Symphony No. 9 premiered at the Kärntnertor Theater in Vienna

Concert promoters promised the public that the legendary – and legendarily antisocial – composer would be present at the performance of his latest symphony. Indeed, during the entirety of the performance, he was on stage, his back to the audience, as described by Maynard Solomon in his acclaimed biography of Beethoven.

The composer insisted upon conducting the symphony from a conductor’s stand. The official conductor at the concert, Michael Umlauf, had instructed the musicians – a Viennese orchestra and choir – to ignore Beethoven, who was completely deaf and who theoretically could not be relied upon to keep time.

The performance was interrupted several times by rapturous applause from the approximately 2,000 attendees, but Beethoven could not hear the reaction. According to eyewitnesses, the composer “threw himself back and forth like a madman” and fell several bars behind in his “conducting.”

The enthusiastic response to the symphony’s debut performance presaged its reception in the European music community, globally and across time.

Global appeal:  Symphony No. 9, sometimes referred to as the Choral Symphony, was the capstone to Beethoven’s extraordinary career. In the 200 years since its debut, the symphony has become an essential composition in the orchestral repertoire and is often cited as the crowning achievement of Western classical music.

A central reason for the symphony’s accessibility to a broad audience was Beethoven’s incorporation of the 1785 poem “An die Freude,” or “Ode to Joy,” by Friedrich Schiller, a leading German author, historian and philosopher. Matched to a memorable melody in the fourth movement, this text – with its uplifting, humanitarian sentiment – contributed to the symphony’s character as an anthem.

Widely interpreted as Beethoven’s plea for a global “brotherhood,” the fourth movement has been incorporated into ceremonial events sponsored by international organizations such as UNESCO, the Olympics, the Council of Europe and the European Union. Given the work’s fame the Ode to Joy section of the symphony has also been appropriated for propaganda by supporters of Nazism, Bolshevism, Maoism and other ideologies.
Groundbreaking composition

Symphony No. 9 is extraordinary in many ways, according to Teddy Abrams, music director of the Louisville Orchestra and a Grammy Award-winning conductor.

The Ninth Symphony was not the first long piece of music at the time, but the others were generally built by stringing together many shorter sequences. In contrast, Beethoven crafted the Ninth Symphony – a 74-minute work – out of just four long movements. “The proportions alone are staggering,” Abrams said in an interview for this article.

Each of the Ninth’s four movements is a single cohesive, coherent musical statement. This, more than the innovation of using a chorus in a symphony, was what made Beethoven’s Ninth revolutionary, according to Abrams.

At the beginning of the last movement, Beethoven reprised elements of the previous three movements. This “quoting” was a highly unusual technique at the time, according Abrams. “It is from these musical ‘memories’ that the timeless Ode to Joy theme emerges,” he said.

Energy and drive: The symphony has influenced artists across the cultural spectrum, including various modern and avant-garde music genres. British composer Gabriel Prokofiev, grandson of famed Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev, was commissioned by a French orchestra in 2011 to create a new work, Beethoven9 Symphonic Remix, that interpreted the symphony through a fusion of classical and electronic music.

When interviewed for the 2020, documentary film “Beethoven’s Ninth: Symphony for the World,” Prokofiev commented: “A lot of the techniques and approaches [Beethoven] used, particularly his climactic finales and his codas and the drama and the sense of energy and drive he had, we find that everywhere, especially in dance music and electronic music.”

Beethoven’s Ninth has been interpreted and reimagined countless times.

For over a century, Symphony No. 9 has played an iconic role within the recording industry. Given the ongoing popularity of Beethoven’s work, record companies since 1923 have sought to release commercial recordings of this particular symphony. Early records couldn’t fit the entirety of the symphony, however.

Then, around 1980, two record companies – Sony and Philips – negotiated the length of the new digital compact disc format at just over 74 minutes per CD. According to Joop Sinjou, a Philips engineer who played a key role in developing the technology, Sony Chairman Akiyo Morita and his wife insisted that the new format be designed to fit the full Symphony No. 9. However, there are variations of the story, so it’s not certain that the companies’ decision to make CDs capable of holding more than an hour of music was specifically to accommodate Beethoven’s Ninth.

Goodwill symphony: Embedded in the symphony’s fourth movement is a message for peace with particular resonance in the 21st century. In one section of that movement, Beethoven incorporated a “Turkish March” featuring two instruments associated with Turkey: the cymbal and bass drum. According to Prokofiev, during Beethoven’s era Europeans discriminated against Turks.

Daniel Barenboim & the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, composed of young Israeli and Arab musicians, performed Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in 2006.

Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 was performed in 2006, by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an ensemble that consisted of young Israeli and Arab musicians. The performance was part of a campaign for a peaceful resolution to the Middle East conflict.

Check out this Carnegie Hall perfermance at the links below.

Ode to Joy section of the Ninth Symphony is among the most recognized melodies in the world. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uooe16ILaPo&t=141s

https://youtu.be/uooe16ILaPo

YouTube videos of this performance have been viewed by millions. The aspiration of Beethoven’s “goodwill” symphony continues to inspire a vision of a united humanity.

Let's not take the joy out of the Nutcracker by overthinking a subject

I vote "no".  A politically correct "Nutcracker" is "no way" to reinvent a treasured ballet.  

Actually, "Nutcracker" is more than likely the only ballet in the world where people of all ages and cultures can appreciate the wonderful miracles we feel about Christmas. In my opinion, Sarah Kaufman might deliberately be trying to take the joy out of Christmas. This article is a classic study in how not to "overthink" a subject, especially when the issue is universally considered to be iconic in story, beauty and dance. 

Sugar Plum Fairy and Prince

Cracking open ‘The Nutcracker’s’ dark Russian past

Behind the holiday classic lies an unsavory history that may change the way you think about it.

Echo essay published in The Conversation and The Washington Post by Sarah L. Kaufman.

Cute kids, antic elders, a dessert buffet that springs to life, all swirling to those gorgeous Tchaikovsky melodies — is it any wonder that “The Nutcracker” is one of the most popular ballets in the country, if not the world?

It's likely that the fruits of a violent imperial system lie behind the work’s bright, bouncy “Chinese” dance, with its pleated fans and parasols, and its slow, seductive “Arabian” scene, with ballerinas in gossamer harem pants. At “The Nutcracker’s” premiere on Dec. 18, 1892, in St. Petersburg, the ballet paid homage to the czar and his empire, and within its affectionate tale of family celebration and childhood fantasy are the footsteps of a more brutal narrative. If you look at some of the forces giving rise to it, and that still live within it, “The Nutcracker” isn’t all that sweet.

Clara receives a nutcracker from Herr Drosselmeyer, her mysterious godfather.

Yet when you dig into the Russian roots of this holiday classic, there’s a dark history that may change the way you think about it.

“It was reflecting a czarist culture,” says Jennifer Fisher, author of “Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World.” “What it is to have a master when you’re a servant and you’re supported by the czar, and royalty always has to be celebrated. The choreographers do know who’s paying the bills.”

To be clear, this isn’t about canceling “Nutcracker.” It’s about understanding the lived experiences from which the ballet sprang. They’re not entirely unique to Russia (consider, for example, America’s colonial past). But they prompt reflection on why they were carried into the ballet. Their traces circle back to an authoritarian system that foreshadowed expansionist events today.

"The history of Russia is a history of violence,” says Princeton music professor Simon Morrison, author of “Bolshoi Confidential: Secrets of the Russian Ballet from the Rule of the Tsars to Today.” “The reason Moscow became its head was through acts of incredible aggression. And a lot of the culture was imported, including ballet. Music came in via Ukraine and Poland — in some cases musicians and singers were kidnapped from Kyiv and hauled up to Moscow. There are horror stories all the way to the Far East.”

Indeed, the Russian empire ballooned in the 19th century, swallowing up the Caucasus and Central Asia on its march into the Far East. One can only imagine the sorrow and worse produced by these occupations. Czarist control also bound “The Nutcracker’s” creators, of course. Tchaikovsky, for instance, was a favorite of Alexander III, and composed music for his coronation. 

Coronation rituals were deeply ingrained, and included a lavish banquet and a parade of foreign ambassadors paying homage. These rituals are transformed into child-friendly fun in “The Nutcracker,” where the second act brims with human depictions of imported delicacies from Russia’s trade routes. Chinese tea, Arabian coffee, chocolate from Spain and so on: They’re all served forth on the stage.

“This ballet is essentially a trading post, with a battle in the middle and then an imperial banquet,” says Morrison.

As a matter of fact, after all these years later, in just about any version of “The Nutcracker” that you might see today, Act II follows the coronation-banquet ceremony quite neatly.

Performed in an atmosphere of lavish pomp and royal luxury, the queenly Sugar Plum Fairy presides over choreographed tributes by different groups of leaping, frolicking, food-bearing “ambassadors.” Of course, part of “The Nutcracker’s” durability into the modern age is that it’s endlessly adaptable to different locales and time periods, giving rise to fresh decor and even new names for some of the original dances. The Washington Ballet’s production, for example, takes place in tony Georgetown by the Potomac River. But in most cases, this second-act parade of goodies and other key elements of the story haven’t changed in 130 years.

Here’s the basic plot: At her parents’ Christmas Eve party, young Clara (or Marie, in some versions) receives a wooden nutcracker doll, and after the household goes to bed, she helps the doll fend off an invasion of rats and mice. The grateful nutcracker becomes a living prince and leads Clara through a spinning snowstorm of ballerinas to a sugary kingdom where flamenco-style dancers spin with twisting torsos and entwining arms as fleshly embodiments of Spanish chocolate. French “Mirlitons” — the name describes a kind of flute and a flute-shaped pastry — evoke the origins of Russian ballet in the courts of France. There’s also energizing tea and rich coffee: hot drinks from afar.

Of course, these lands are made up of people and customs and cultures, but in the czarist view — necessarily, that is also “The Nutcracker’s” view — the people are secondary to what they produce. That is, goods on the empire’s shopping list.

“The Nutcracker” was dreamed up after the smashing success of “The Sleeping Beauty,” which also featured music by Tchaikovsky and dances by Russia’s prized French-born choreographer Marius Petipa. Both ballets were hatched by a man named Ivan Vsevolozhsky, whom Alexander III installed as director of the imperial theaters. So Petipa, working for the man with a direct line to the czar, was under a little pressure.

According to Morrison, this meant honoring Alexander by recapping his coronation feast — a big deal in a czar’s life — and promoting the splendors of the empire, particularly foods from distant lands carried back to Russian kitchens.

And so the ballet’s Act II Kingdom of Sweets, Morrison says, “is a childlike version” of the banquet, “without the wanton drunkenness. There’s no dances of vodka and wine, but tea and coffee.”

These, along with the dancing chocolates and pastries, represent “what you can take from the land, all in service to the crown. And it includes the commodification of peoples. It’s about what these places are worth to us, not in terms of the people but in terms of spices and goods.”

And the French pastry? It performs double duty here, as a delicious symbol of the brand-new military pact between Russia and France. Efforts to flatter the French are also clear in photos from the 1892 original, Morrison points out, with hints of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia — disastrous for both nations, each suffering hundreds of thousands of dead. Yet “The Nutcracker” gives it a friendly spin.

“The Franco-Russian alliance was depicted in the original costuming,” Morrison says. “Initially the nutcracker is fighting the mice on his own, then he has to summon the toy soldiers. And they’re in Napoleonic garb — reserves from the past. And some guests in the party scene are costumed from the Napoleonic era. It’s celebrating an alliance in the making.”

“It’s all distilled into something that delights children but is full of references to the nation that produced it,” he continues. “It’s not like you can say there’s a coherent geopolitical story told here, but here and there are echoes of history.”

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893) Russian composer.

Tchaikovsky filled out the ballet with imported melodies. The “Arabian” music is a Georgian lullaby.  The bravura “Russian” dance — with its deep squats and high leaps — is based on a Ukrainian folk dance. The “Grandfather Dance” in the Act I Christmas party is a 17th-century German folk tune. The airy tinkling sound that gives the Sugar Plum Fairy’s solo an aspect of the supernatural was produced by a celesta, a French keyboard instrument that Tchaikovsky asked his publisher to order from Paris, in secret.

“I am afraid Rimsky-Korsakov and Glazunov might hear of it,” the composer wrote, “and make use of the new effect before I could.”

“The Nutcracker” is, basically, a mosaic of musical, historical and cultural influences, right down to its literary inspiration: a German short story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, titled “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.” And the art form itself — classical ballet — was transplanted from France, as was Petipa, the choreographer. In all of this, Morrison sees a metaphor for the patchwork nature of the Russian empire.

“It is all borrowed sounds. That’s what Russian culture was, a lot of borrowing,” he says. “This is a beautiful, childlike, quaint illusion of empire. But it’s fantasy of empire because the empire is a fantasy. It was very fragile, and then a couple of wars took it down. End of the empire, and the Bolsheviks took over.”

Inside the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, where “The Nutcracker” was being created, things were also in a fragile state. Petipa’s 15-year-old daughter had recently died and, possibly weakened by grief, the choreographer fell gravely ill while working on the ballet. His assistant, Lev Ivanov, finished it. Tchaikovsky was also reeling from loss. His beloved younger sister had died the previous year, and he composed “The Nutcracker’s” second act in her memory. This undoubtedly accounts for some of the mournful notes in an otherwise romanticized, nostalgic view of youth.

And audience reaction?

“It seemed to me that the public did not like it,” Tchaikovsky wrote. “They were bored.” He died less than a year later, believing his ballet had flopped, never dreaming it would achieve great fame.

It took decades for this to happen. Even in the 1930s, the cliched depictions of national dances in the second act came under fire. Dance historian Cyril Beaumont panned a 1934 revival of “The Nutcracker” in London, which he assumed was based on Ivanov’s original choreography. “It passes the understanding,” Beaumont wrote in his “Complete Book of Ballets,” “that ‘Coffee’ should be conveyed by a Stomach Dance … and that ‘Tea’ should be suggested by a couple of ridiculous Chinese whose ‘number’ seems to have been borrowed from a pantomime version of Aladdin.”

Yet he praised the duet for the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Cavalier, as well as their solo variations, and indeed these remain some of the loveliest expressions of tenderness and grace in the ballet canon.

In this country, “Nutcracker” versions by Willam Christensen for the San Francisco Ballet in 1944 and, a decade later, George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet caught the public’s imagination and ignited a holiday tradition. Yet in many productions, much of the stereotyping that pervaded the 1892, original remains.

The ballet “immigrated, so it’s now reflecting not only the stereotypes the Russians had, but an anti-Asian bias here in the U.S. is baked into ‘The Nutcracker’ stereotypes,” says Fisher. “The Fu Manchu mustache, the peaked worker’s hat. Even if there are authentic elements, they’re put together in a mishmash.”

Gradually, the ballet world has begun rethinking some of the cultural insensitivities in works based on European fantasies of “exotic” locales — and “The Nutcracker” is only one of these. For example, depictions of Hindu rites in the Indian fantasy “La Bayadere” and the enslavement of women in the pirate-themed “Le Corsaire” have raised criticisms.

“Is ballet a multiracial art form that includes everyone, or is it just a folk dance done by kings and queens?” asks Phil Chan, an advocate for ending Asian stereotyping and author of “Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing between Intention and Impact.” “Is it just a regurgitation of the past, or is ballet an art form that is urgent and alive? We have to choose.”

He’s taken particular aim at the “Chinese” dance in the “The Nutcracker.” Chan points with pride to a new version, unveiled last season, by Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet, which performs Balanchine’s choreography but has renamed (and re-costumed) the male lead in its celebration of tea as the Green Tea Cricket.

“Crickets are a potent Chinese symbol of hope and good luck and spring,” Chan says. “To Chinese people they’re a beautiful symbol that fits what is happening in ‘The Nutcracker’ but it’s not cliche. It’s not another dragon dance with a fan and kung fu kicks.”

This is exactly the kind of informed, imaginative and artistically sound update that ballet needs, says Fisher.

“Ballet is a beautiful technique, with a beautiful, illustrious history,” she says. “There is so much to save of it. But not the attitude toward groups of people.

“We should focus on new ways,” she continues, “that don’t depend on the authoritarianism of the czar’s ballet.”

Let's write about ancient roots of Halloween rituals

Op-Ed: Halloween’s Celtic roots are a lot spookier than witches and candy bars:

Samhain, halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice.

This interesting history about the roots of celebrating Halloween was published in The Los Angeles Times with The Conversation. 

"As the light of summer fades and the season of darkness begins, the ancient holiday of Halloween arrives to celebrate the dead mingling with the world of the living, as it has for thousands of years."

As Halloween approaches, people get ready to celebrate the spooky, the scary and the haunted. Ghosts, zombies, skeletons and witches show up in yards, windows and stores. Festivities revolve around the realm of the dead, and some believe the dead might actually mingle with the living on the night of Halloween.

Scholars have often noted that these modern-day celebrations of Halloween have origins in Samhain, a festival celebrated by ancient Celtic cultures. In contemporary Irish Gaelic, Halloween is still known as Oíche Shamhna, or Eve of Samhain.

In 9th century Irish literature, Samhain, halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, is mentioned many times as an integral part of the Celtic culture. It was one of four seasonal turning points on the Celtic calendar, and perhaps the most important one. It signaled the end of the light half of the year, associated with life, and the beginning of the dark half, associated with the dead.

Archaeological records suggest that commemorations of Samhain can be traced back to the Neolithic period, some from 6,000 years ago. Neolithic Ireland had no towns or cities, but the people did craft huge architectural monuments, which acted as seasonal gathering spots and housed the remains of the societies’ elites.
These megalithic (“big stone” in Greek) sites would at times host huge numbers of people, gathered together for brief periods around specific calendar dates. Archaeological records reveal evidence of massive feasts yet little to no evidence of domestic use. If people did live year-round at these sites, they would have been a select few.

Data from animal bones can reveal approximate time periods of the feasts, and additional data come from the monuments themselves.

The monuments are not only situated in key places in the landscape but are also celestially aligned to allow the sun or moon to shine directly into the center of the monument on a particular day.
These sites connect the landscape to the cosmos, creating a lived calendar, scripted in stone. The UNESCO World Heritage monument of Newgrange, for example, is built so that a shaft of sunlight illuminates the innermost chamber precisely on the winter solstice.
Less than 30 miles away lies the hill of Tara, another massive megalithic site. The Mound of the Hostages, the oldest extant megalithic structure at Tara, is aligned to Samhain. Tara is known as the traditional spiritual and political capital of Ireland, and here too archaeologists have found evidence of mass seasonal gatherings of people, with the remains of feasts and great bonfires.

Samhain ghost art

According to early Irish literature, as well as traditional folklore collected in the 19th century, Samhain was a time for people to come together, under a command of peace, to feast, tell stories, make social and political claims, engage in important sacred rituals and, perhaps most important, commune with the dead.

The traditional, pre-Christian realm of the dead was referred to as the Otherworld. The Otherworld was not somewhere far away but, rather, overlapping with the world of the living. The Irish beliefs about the Otherworld were detailed and complex. It is full of magic, of witchcraft, of speaking with the dead as well as seeing into the future. The dead were traditionally believed to continue to see the living, although the living could only occasionally see them. The most prominent occasion would be on Samhain itself, when lines between the Otherworld of the dead and the realm of the living were weakened.

There were not only particular days that one might encounter the dead but at particular places as well: the megalithic sites. These sites are known in Irish Gaelic as sí sites, the word sí meaning the spirits of the mounds. This word is often translated into English as “fairies,” which loses a great deal of meaning. “Fairies” in Ireland are spirits deeply connected with the realm of the dead, the mounds and, perhaps most especially, Samhain.

The connection can be witnessed in the figure of the banshee — or bean sí, in Irish — an important mythological figure in Irish folklore, believed to be heard wailing with grief directly before the death of a family member. With “bean” meaning simply “woman,” the banshee is thus a female spirit of the mounds and a ruler of the realm of the dead.

The sí spirits are not only spirits of the dead but are a particular aristocracy, who host the dead with feasting, merriment and eternal youth, often at the megalithic sites. In Irish lore, they are powerful and dangerous, able to give great gifts or exact great damage. They once ruled Ireland, according to folklore, and now they rule the world of the dead.

The Otherworld is always there, but it is on the beginning of the dark half of the year, the evening of Samhain — now Halloween — when the dead are at their most powerful and the lines between this world and the next are erased.

As the light of summer fades and the season of darkness begins, the ancient holiday of Halloween arrives to celebrate the dead mingling with the world of the living, as it has for thousands of years.

Tok Thompson is an anthropology professor at USC Dornsife and author of “Posthuman Folklore.” This article was produced in partnership with The Conversation.

Let's write about alien life!

To search for alien life, astronomers will look for clues in the atmospheres of distant planets – and the James Webb Space Telescope just proved it’s possible to do so.

Echo essay published in The Conversation by Chris Impey and Daniel Apai. 

There are many known exoplanets in habitable zones – orbits not too close to a star that the water boils off but not so far that the planet is frozen solid – as marked in green for both the solar system and Kepler-186 star system with its planets labeled b, c, d, e and f. NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech/Wikimedia Commons

Throughout the universe there are elements to support life.

While Earth is the only known place in the universe with life (as we know it), detecting life beyond Earth is a major goal of modern astronomy and planetary science.

Two scientists- Chris Impey and Daniel Ampei, who study exoplanets and astrobiology. Thanks in large part to next-generation telescopes like James Webb, researchers will soon be able to measure the chemical makeup of atmospheres of planets around other stars. The hope is that one or more of these planets will have a chemical signature of life.

Habitable exoplanets:  Life might exist in the solar system where there is liquid water – like the subsurface aquifers on Mars or in the oceans of Jupiter’s moon Europa. 

However, searching for life in these places is incredibly difficult, as they are hard to reach and detecting life would require sending a probe to return physical samples.

Many astronomers believe there’s a good chance that life exists on planets orbiting other stars, and it’s possible that’s where life will first be found.

The James Webb Space Telescope, the largest and most sensitive ever launched, can peer to the limits of the known universe.

The U.S. Postal Service will celebrate this remarkable device with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope Forever stamp.

Theoretical calculations suggest that there are around 300 million potentially habitable planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone and several habitable Earth-sized planets within only 30 light-years of Earth – essentially humanity’s galactic neighbors. So far, astronomers have discovered over 5,000 exoplanets, including hundreds of potentially habitable ones, using indirect methods that measure how a planet affects its nearby star. These measurements can give astronomers information on the mass and size of an exoplanet, but not much else.

Looking for biosignatures: To detect life on a distant planet, astrobiologists will study starlight that has interacted with a planet’s surface or atmosphere. If the atmosphere or surface was transformed by life, the light may carry a clue, called a “biosignature.”

For the first half of its existence, Earth sported an atmosphere without oxygen, even though it hosted simple, single-celled life. Earth’s biosignature was very faint during this early era. That changed abruptly 2.4 billion years ago when a new family of algae evolved. The algae used a process of photosynthesis that produces free oxygen – oxygen that isn’t chemically bonded to any other element. From that time on, Earth’s oxygen-filled atmosphere has left a strong and easily detectable biosignature on light that passes through it.

When light bounces off the surface of a material or passes through a gas, certain wavelengths of the light are more likely to remain trapped in the gas or material’s surface than others. This selective trapping of wavelengths of light is why objects are different colors. Leaves are green because chlorophyll is particularly good at absorbing light in the red and blue wavelengths. As light hits a leaf, the red and blue wavelengths are absorbed, leaving mostly green light to bounce back into your eyes.

The pattern of missing light is determined by the specific composition of the material the light interacts with. Because of this, astronomers can learn something about the composition of an exoplanet’s atmosphere or surface by, in essence, measuring the specific color of light that comes from a planet.

This method can be used to recognize the presence of certain atmospheric gases that are associated with life – such as oxygen or methane – because these gasses leave very specific signatures in light. It could also be used to detect peculiar colors on the surface of a planet. On Earth, for example, the chlorophyll and other pigments plants and algae use for photosynthesis capture specific wavelengths of light. These pigments produce characteristic colors that can be detected by using a sensitive infrared camera. If you were to see this color reflecting off the surface of a distant planet, it would potentially signify the presence of chlorophyll.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed primarily to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest optical telescope in space, its greatly improved infrared resolution and sensitivity allow it to view objects too early, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope.

Telescopes in space and on Earth:  It takes an incredibly powerful telescope to detect these subtle changes to the light coming from a potentially habitable exoplanet. For now, the only telescope capable of such a feat is the new James Webb Space Telescope. As it began science operations in July 2022, James Webb took a reading of the spectrum of the gas giant exoplanet WASP-96b. The spectrum showed the presence of water and clouds, but a planet as large and hot as WASP-96b is unlikely to host life.

However, this early data shows that James Webb is capable of detecting faint chemical signatures in light coming from exoplanets. In the coming months, Webb is set to turn its mirrors toward TRAPPIST-1e, a potentially habitable Earth-sized planet a mere 39 light-years from Earth.

Webb can look for biosignatures by studying planets as they pass in front of their host stars and capturing starlight that filters through the planet’s atmosphere. But Webb was not designed to search for life, so the telescope is only able to scrutinize a few of the nearest potentially habitable worlds. It also can only detect changes to atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, methane and water vapor. While certain combinations of these gasses may suggest life, Webb is not able to detect the presence of unbonded oxygen, which is the strongest signal for life.

Leading concepts for future, even more powerful, space telescopes include plans to block the bright light of a planet’s host star to reveal starlight reflected back from the planet. This idea is similar to using your hand to block sunlight to better see something in the distance. Future space telescopes could use small, internal masks or large, external, umbrella-like spacecraft to do this. Once the starlight is blocked, it becomes much easier to study light bouncing off a planet.

There are also three enormous, ground-based telescopes currently under construction that will be able to search for biosignatures: the Giant Magellen Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope and the European Extremely Large Telescope. Each is far more powerful than existing telescopes on Earth, and despite the handicap of Earth’s atmosphere distorting starlight, these telescopes might be able to probe the atmospheres of the closest worlds for oxygen.

Is it biology or geology? 
Even using the most powerful telescopes of the coming decades, astrobiologists will only be able to detect strong biosignatures produced by worlds that have been completely transformed by life.

Unfortunately, most gases released by terrestrial life can also be produced by nonbiological processes – cows and volcanoes both release methane. Photosynthesis produces oxygen, but sunlight does, too, when it splits water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. There is a good chance astronomers will detect some false positives when looking for distant life. 

To help rule out false positives, astronomers will need to understand a planet of interest well enough to understand whether its geologic or atmospheric processes could mimic a biosignature.

The next generation of exoplanet studies has the potential to pass the bar of the extraordinary evidence needed to prove the existence of life. The first data release from the James Webb Space Telescope gives us a sense of the exciting progress that’s coming soon.

Chris Impey: University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona.

Daniel Apai: Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona

Writing obituaries: what is written and notice what is unwritten

During my short journalism career, while I was working for a weekly Maine newspaper, I took on the job of writing obituaries.  

Those were the days when people read the obituaries in the newspaper before they turned to read any other reporting.  "In those days", publishing obituaries was free for the families of the deceased because, frankly, obituaries sold newspapers.

No so today, when publishing an obituary can cost as much as $600, or more! Nowadays, most obituaries are published by funeral directors who usually compose most of what is said about the deceased, given the family's approval.  Nevertheless, famous people will always be given the dignity of a published obituary. Therefore,  artful writing is required to report what people want to read about the dearly beloved, without embellishing the truth. But, also, obituarlies require clever writing to avoid saying anything that is deemed to be too negative.  

Let's write about the art of an obituary:

Write ill of the dead? Obits rarely cross that taboo as they look for the positive in people’s lives- Published in The Conversation by Janice Hume*, professor of journalism at the University of Georgia.

Capturing a life accurately and sympathetically is a challenge, more so if it is one that lasts nearly a century.

So when a notable person like the Duke of Edinburgh dies, obituary writers face a quandary: What should be highlighted, softened or even ignored?

News organizations were quick to remember Prince Philip’s long marriage to Queen Elizabeth II and decades of public service. But any character flaws or mistakes, including past public racist comments, were diminished. 

CNN’s coverage on April 9, provides a good example of this softened approach. “The duke,” it noted, “was known for off-the-cuff remarks that often displayed a quick wit but occasionally missed the mark, sometimes in spectacular fashion.”

The Associated Press made more direct mention of Philip’s racist comments – but found itself under attack online and from other parts of the media as a result. It later modified the language in the obit, changing “occasionally racist and sexist remarks” to “occasionally deeply offensive remarks.”

Obituaries are very seldom this brutal!

Obituaries for former presidents, entertainers and athletes offer example after example of selective memory. 

Negativity is taboo, even in obits written by journalists about public figures. Most people don’t like to speak ill of the dead.

As a scholar of journalism history and public memory, I examined more than 8,000 newspaper obituaries from 1818 to 1930, to see what they reveal about American culture. 

An obit is a news report of a death, but it also offers a tiny summary of what people want to remember about a life.

For most of us, that memory usually represents an ideal – we tend to filter out unpleasant aspects or episodes. Taken collectively and over time, obituaries tell us much about what – and who – society values.

A life in print

Occasionally, one can be brutally honest, such as the obituary published in 2018 in the Redwood Falls Gazette, for a Minnesota woman who evidently was not well loved by members of her own family. According to the memorial, the woman would “face judgment” for abandoning her children. The newspaper removed the obituary from its website after public criticism that it went too far.

But for the most part, they focus on the positive.

Nineteenth-century obituaries celebrated people for attributes of character. Men were remembered for patriotism, gallantry, vigilance, boldness and honesty. Women’s obits recorded entirely different qualities: patience, resignation, obedience, affection, amiability and piety.

Sarah English, a wife and mother who died in 1818, was “as intelligent as she was good.” “Not at all ambitious of worldly show, she chose to be useful rather than gay. Her domestic concerns were managed with the most admirable economy exhibiting at the same time a degree of comfort and neatness not to be surpassed,” according to 19th-century newspaper The National Intelligencer.

The 1838, obituary for 50-year-old Virginian William P. Custis told readers of the same newspaper, “There is in the life of a noble, independent and honest man, something so worthy of imitation, something that so strongly commends itself to the approbation of a virtuous mind, that his name should not be left in oblivion, nor his influence be lost.”

Not everyone was remembered. Silences on obituary pages can be as telling as what was published. The few obituaries for African Americans or Native Americans in the obits I looked at were included mostly when they died in an unusual or mysterious way, lived to be 100 or served the dominant culture.

For example, “a respectable colored man named Thomas Henry Songan,” a 32-year-old ship steward, “fell to the floor a corpse,” the New York Daily Times wrote in 1855. The obit for Chocktaw Chief Minto Mushulatubbee, who died in 1838, assured readers that “he was a strong friend of the whites until the day of his death.”

Obituaries in the early 20th century tended not to focus on attributes of character. Rather, they reflected an industrial society that valued profit and production. Men were noted for professional accomplishments, wealth, long years at work, university education or being well known and prominent. Women were remembered for their associations with successful men, social prominence and wealth.

The New York Times in 1910, recorded one woman’s death this way: “Mrs. Albert E. Plant, whose husband is the first cousin of the late Henry B. Plant, the railroad and steamship owner, was killed this morning by the express train from New York City.” Headline after headline in news reports of someone’s death and in the obituary pages mourned a man’s “Career Cut Short,” even for deceased male children.

Portraits of grief

Obituaries also revealed what Americans thought about death. In the early 19th century, illnesses were “endured with Christian patience,” the deceased “ready and willing to obey the summons of her God.”

By the 1850s, the language became more sensational. The deceased were “removed by the Omnipotent Author,” “scathed by the wing of the destroying angel,” or “paled by the mighty Death King.” That language all but disappeared after the Civil War.  After so much death, it became unpatriotic to dwell on it.

Obituaries offer a window into what we value. The New York Times’ beautiful “Portraits of Grief” tribute to the victims of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, portrayed active people in the prime of life, with robust careers and family lives.

COVID-19 brings a new collective focus on death, and obituaries for its victims, I believe, will be just as revealing. But be it a royal dying of old age or a grocery worker whose life was cut short by disease, one thing is likely: The words accompanying the death will focus more on the positive.

*Dr. Janice Hume teaches media history, ethics & diversity, and media credibility. Her research concerns American journalism history, public memory and media coverage about death.