Bibliography by W.J. Bethancourt III

© copyright 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000

Editor's Note: Starting about 1994, W.J. Bethancourt III began keeping detailed records of sources and purported sources of information about Halloween, including the spurious "sources" that are often quoted as proof that Halloween has satanic origins. We are keeping that list available because other sources frequently refer to it. That said, many of the documents mentioned are either out of print or more or less impossible to find Sadly, this works to the benefit of folks who want to make outrageous claims about Halloween, because they can cite a book or magazine article that no one can ever cross-check. On the other hand, I DID cross-check Jacob Grimm's "Teutonic Mythology" to see what it says about Halloween, Samdhain (in any spelling) or Beltane (in any spelling), and it says nothing at all about any of those "key words." This is significant, because it's the only thing approaching a scholarly work that the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica cites as a reference for the whole "Celtic holiday stolen by the Church" myth. (The others are collections of fairy stories and myths.) Yet hundreds, if not thousands of articles, tracts, books, and web articles have cited the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica (or other works that cited the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica) as "proof" of those claims.

In other words, the so-called Celtic holiday called Samdhain (by any number of spellings) was apparently invented in the 18th (or perhaps even the 19th) century, which would have made it pretty hard for the Catholic church to usurp it in the 6th.

The remainder of this page links to documents of all kinds, including New Age groups, so I'm not recommending that you turn this into a "reading list," but if you doubt Bethancourt did his "homework," this should help fill in any blanks.

Except for other "editor's note" sections, and some formatting corrections, the following text is from Bethancourt - Paul




(While we try to keep these links as current as possible, please realize that many of them are seasonal, and may not still be up.)

Mrs. Phillips, and the anonymous author of Tract 2, attach bibliographies to their articles. Unfortunately, many of the sources must be regarded as suspect (as in "biased") because of their author's occasional (or not so occasional) extreme Fundamentalist Christian agendas ( marked with ).

I have done the same with the neo-pagan references ( marked with ) in my own bibliography, using those so marked as references for modern Pagan and Wiccan beliefs only, and have checked any historical information taken from them against other references.

Many of these tracts seem to use each other as references ....... I find the same mis-information repeated over and over again, sometimes almost word for word. You will notice this in many of the anti-Halloween references listed further down on this page.

I must also point out that bibliographies such as Phillips' and that of Tract 2 (Margadonna and Tract 1 had none) would be laughed out of a freshman High School English class. They just give names of publications, with no publishers and few dates, making it difficult to check the references for oneself. I have been able to check most of the magazine references, and the results of that check are noted below.



BIBLIOGRAPHY (PHILLIPS):


BIBLIOGRAPHY (TRACT 2):


BIBLIOGRAPHY (BETHANCOURT):



Net Resources
Re: Halloween Hysteria

Editor's Note: In this section, Bethancourt included links to about thirty online hyperlegalistic web sites that make false and exaggerated claims about Halloween, some expressing extreme variations to prove some shibboleth important to the group. All but a couple of those links were broken when I tried to follow them, but don't worry; there are still plenty nut-cases and well-motivated but uninformed people repeating those false claims today. - Paul



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© copyright 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998
All Rights Reserved, but you can link to this page without my permission, and reprint rights are liberally granted to religious and non-profit publications if you contact me first. God bless you all!