Traditions of Holiday History - Why Is the Halloween Witch's Face Green?

.   

As a child, my teachers in grades 1-3 (ages 6-8 or so) encouraged students to dress in Halloween costumes for an afternoon parade around the neighborhood and some cake or cookies back in the classroom afterwards on the holiday or the day before. Most of the children enjoyed the day and dressed as cartoon characters, animals, princesses, kings, superheroes, and fairies, although a few wore no special costumes at all. They still had a good time walking with us and waving at the neighbors as some spectators tried to guess what the non-costume costumes were. We all laughed.

The department stores carried a popular line of costumes for the holiday in a fairly wide range of prices, but the commonality among them was the heavy, smelly rubbery mask for all the witch costumes.

The mask was usually green or a yellowish-green and included warts, a huge hooked nose, wrinkles, and the odd bristly hair. Some included a cobweb on one cheek. None of the kids wanted to smell the odor and sweat from this mask all day at school, so not many of these costumes were sold. We didn't think much about the green. We just hated the smell.

In comic strips and cartoon strips or graphic novels, a green face traditionally indicates nausea and expected vomiting. It does fnot eel or look good to the victim - or to anyone who sees him. A green witch face looks doubly ugly and sick.

Some historians trace the green witch face all the way back to the Spanish Inquisition of 1478 - 1834; Inquisition from the monarchs Ferdinand and Isabela, who gave the Native Americans Christopher Columbus. Others trace it to the Salem Witch Trials. Both were horrid sequences of continued physical punishment, torture designed to result in confessions of witchcraft from the accused. Once so confessed, the labeled witches were executed.

Some of the women physically tested in the investigations into charges witchcraft during the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials (late 1690s), and other time periods were tortured long-term. Many were pilloried and tied into stocks where they stood with their necks and wrists restrained in a yoke 24 hours a day. They were not fed, but beaten regularly, bruised, and burdened with broken noses, cheekbones, and teeth.

Bruises and Gangrene

Bruises on these women's faces, necks, arms, and hands began to change color from black and blue to green and brown after a few days of standing in the stocks and regular beatings. Some of the skin discolorations were covered by fresh bruises and bleeding as tissues underneath began to die.

Under the bruises, cases of gangrene began to develop in these women, as the blood supply began to fail to reach the hands and face because of the restrictions of the stocks and damaged blood vessels. The skin would also be black and blue, similar to first bruisings. Tissues under the skin experienced different changes.

Tissues just under the skin's surface in the tortured women, affected by gangrene, began to turn brown and bronze (in some cases, almost a yellow-greenish-brown). This is the first recorded indication of a type of greenish skin hue among witches, to my knowledge.

Other symptoms include confusion and foul smelling discharges (a bit like the smelly rubber masks), which, along with other symptoms, likely reinforced local authorities' belief in the accused's "witch-ness." Many of these women were paraded through town for spectators, spat upon, stoned, and then killed by the dunking stool, a burning at the stake, or by other methods. Some died before they could be tied to the stool or wooden stake. The idea of the elementary school Halloween parade through neighborhood is a little less happy now.

Additional stories about the color green and its relation to witches appeared in popular legends in the UK and America from the 1600s onward and by the 20th Century, the green-faced witch had become a distasteful joke.

As the Hub Question was posed, just what are we celebrating at Halloween with the various traditions from UK, America, and elsewhere?

In the case of the green-faced witch of Halloween, I think we are inadvertently celebrating the undeserved torture and execution of many women and men in American and Spanish History. The mask and poster/clipart/coloring sheet imagery of the green-skinned Halloween witch is a set of traditions that I can do without.

Thanks for reading!