The April Party 2015

“Grimm’s Fairy Tales — the Dark Origins”

DATE:  April 25th 2015
SITE: Dachaigh (Dominic’s Home)
15815 N. 48th Ln, Glendale

Party Starts at 7pm
Food at mmmmmmm
Anthem at Midnight
Bar closes at 2 am
Site closes at 3 am
Cleanup at 10:00 am on Sunday, April 26th

Costume Ideas:
Dark Grimm’s Fairy Tales Characters: Rumpelstiltskin,
Rotkäppchen, Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella,
Hansel, Gretel, etc, Your Dark Ones Persona,
Medieval Garb

Once upon a time…

Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm told folktales that today we know as Snow White, Rumplestiltskin, Rapunzel, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood among many others. But the collected “Grimm’s Fairy Tales” had gruesome scenes more typical of a modern horror movie.

At this year’s April Party, it is not the sugar-coated versions of the modern day stories, but the original adult themed tales written over 200 years ago that we pay homage to.  

For example, the stepmothers of “Snow White” and “Hansel and Gretel” were, originally, their mothers. So it is Snow White’s own mother who orders the huntsman to “stab her to death and bring me back her lungs and liver as proof of your deed. After that I’ll cook them with salt and eat them”.

In “Cinderella” her stepsisters go to extraordinary lengths to win the prince in the original Grimm’s version of the tale, slicing off parts of their feet to fit the golden slipper – to no avail, in the end, because the prince spots the blood spilling out of the shoe. “Here’s a knife,” their mother urges… “If the slipper is still too tight for you, then cut off a piece of your foot. It will hurt a bit. But what does that matter?”

Another example is one of the many stories deleted from the later Grimm’s editions …

“How the Children Played at Slaughtering”, stays true to its title, seeing a group of children playing at being a butcher and a pig. It ends direly: a boy cuts the throat of his little brother, only to be stabbed in the heart by his enraged mother. Unfortunately, the stabbing meant she left her other child alone in the bath, where he drowned. Unable to be cheered up by the neighbors, she hangs herself; when her husband gets home, “he became so despondent that he died soon thereafter”.