Work due on Tuesday, Nov. 10 (Quiz this week on your Block Day)
Are you ready for a massacre and a giant tea party? I hope so!
Monday night you will need to read Chapter 6, Section 2 and complete the study guide. The next few days we’ll be discussing how the colonists began to resist tighter British control.
Don’t forget – For this chapter if you finish all of the study guides on-time, you can use them on the Chapter 6 Test!!
This week on your Block Day, you will be taking an open-book quiz on Chapter 6, Sections 1 & 2. (You may also use your study guides as well.)
On a cold March day in 1770 a tragic accident, which would be labeled a massacre but really wasn’t, united the 13 colonies in a way England could not have predicted.
On a cold Boston December night in 1773 a group of colonists decided to show their extreme displeasure with the Tea Tax by throwing a tea “party.” Their brazen destruction of British property would result in some pretty severe punishments from the Mother County.
Enjoy Section 2 and Happy History!
Happy Halloween
I thought you might appreciate the HISTORY of Halloween. After all, I am a history teacher. Enjoy!
Many of the ancient peoples of Europe marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter by celebrating a holiday in late autumn. The most important of these holidays to influence later Halloween customs was Samhain, a holiday observed by the ancient Celts, a tribal people who inhabited most of Western and Central Europe in the first millennium bc. Among the Celts, Samhain marked the end of one year and the beginning of the next. It was one of four Celtic holidays linked to important transitions in the annual cycle of seasons.
Samhain began at sundown on October 31 and extended into the following day. According to the Celtic pagan religion, known as Druidism, the spirits of those who had died in the preceding year roamed the earth on Samhain evening. The Celts sought to ward off these spirits with offerings of food and drink. The Celts also built bonfires at sacred hilltop sites and performed rituals, often involving human and animal sacrifices, to honor Druid deities.
By the end of the 1st century ad, the Roman Empire had conquered most of the Celtic lands. In the process of incorporating the Celts into their empire, the Romans adapted and absorbed some Celtic traditions as part of their own pagan and Catholic religious observances. In Britain, Romans blended local Samhain customs with their own pagan harvest festival honoring Pomona, goddess of fruit trees. Some scholars have suggested that the game of bobbing for apples derives from this Roman association of the holiday with fruit.
Pure Celtic influences lingered longer on the western fringes of Europe, especially in areas that were never brought firmly under Roman control, such as Ireland, Scotland, and the Brittany region of northwestern France. In these areas, Samhain was abandoned only when the local people converted to Christianity during the early Middle Ages, a period that lasted from the 5th to the 15th century. The Roman Catholic Church often incorporated modified versions of older religious traditions in order to win converts. For example, Pope Gregory IV sought to replace Samhain with All Saints’ Day in 835. All Souls’ Day, closer in spirit to Samhain and modern Halloween, was first instituted at a French monastery in 998 and quickly spread throughout Europe. Folk observances linked to these Christian holidays, including Halloween, thus preserved many of the ancient Celtic customs associated with Samhain.
Halloween traditions thought to be incompatible with Christianity often became linked with Christian folk beliefs about evil spirits. Although such superstitions varied a great deal from place to place, many of the supernatural beings now associated with Halloween became fixed in the popular imagination during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance(14th to 17th century). The jack-o’-lantern, originally carved from a large turnip rather than a pumpkin, originated in medieval Scotland. Various methods of predicting the future, especially concerning matters of romance and marriage, were also prominent features of Halloween throughout the British Isles.
Between the 15th and 17th centuries, Europe was seized by a hysterical fear of witches, leading to the persecution of thousands of innocent women. Witches were thought to ride flying brooms and to assume the form of black cats. These images of witches soon joined other European superstitions as symbols of Halloween.
Attitudes in the United States towards Halloween varied widely among the various European groups that settled in North America. New England was initially settled by English Puritans, members of a strict Protestant sect that rejected Halloween as a Catholic and pagan holiday. However, other British colonists successfully transplanted Halloween traditions in southern colonies such as Virginia and Maryland. Irish immigrants helped popularize Halloween traditions throughout the United States in the mid-19th century. As belief in many of the old superstitions waned during the late 19th century, Halloween was increasingly regarded as a children’s holiday.
Welcome to Mr. Babiar’s Blog!
Welcome to my new students!!
This is the blog for Mr. Babiar’s U.S. History classes at Thurston Middle School. In order for you to begin using the blog, please click on the “Blogging Rules” page, read the guidelines for using the blog and type. “I have read the rules and agree to them.”
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I am looking forward to hearing from my students on and to an AWESOME year!
Happy History!
Mr. Babiar
