Halloween marks the occasion of the death of Nearly Headless Nick (a.k.a. Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington), which was caused by having been “hit forty-five times in the neck with a blunt axe” (CoS p. 123).
We find out in Chapter 12 of Chamber of Secrets that October 31, 1992 is Nick’s five hundredth deathday. Hoping that Harry will attest to Nick’s being impressively frightening so that he might be allowed to join the Headless Hunt, Nick invites Harry and his friends to his Deathday Party. Ron skeptically asks a good question: “Why would anyone want to celebrate the day they died?” And Hermione characteristically looks forward to what she can learn from the experience: “A deathday party? . . . I bet there aren’t many living people who can say they’ve been to one of those—it’ll be fascinating!” (CoS p. 130).
With Hermione’s inquisitive spirit, let’s have a go at wrestling with Ron’s question. Is there something more going on here than a chillingly gothic setting for the horrors to be unleashed by the re-opening of the Chamber of Secrets?
The Chains of Desire and Fear
Although Nick has invited Harry, Ron, and Hermione to a party, it’s hardly festive—in fact, as Ron keenly puts it, it ends up being “dead depressing” for some of the ghosts in attendance. Nick’s attempt to impress Sir Patrick Delaney-Podmore, the organizer of the Headless Hunt fails miserably, and as Nick tries to give a speech at his own deathday party, he’s interrupted by a rousing game of Head Hockey so that no one pays any attention to the ghost of honor (CoS p. 136). Since Nick clearly cares a great deal about being honored, this outcome undermines the entire purpose of the party.
Then we have Moaning Myrtle, who keeps re-living her troubled existence at Hogwarts. Prodded into self-pitying tears by the poltergeist Peeves, Myrtle sobs, “D’you think I don’t know what people call me behind my back? Fat Myrtle! Ugly Myrtle! Miserable, moaning, moping Myrtle!” (CoS p. 135).
And we also see an unnamed “portly ghost” who is drawn toward the table of “food,” a description of which makes my stomach lurch: “The smell was quite disgusting. Large, rotten fish . . .; cakes, burned charcoal-black . . . ; there was a great maggoty haggis, a slab of cheese covered in furry green mold and, in pride of place, an enormous gray cake in the shape of a tombstone” (CoS p. 133). (Ugh! Where are the pumpkin juice and treacle tarts when you need them?) The portly ghost approaches the table and walks through it with “his mouth held wide so that it passed through one of the stinking salmon.” When asked by Harry whether he could taste it, “‘Almost,’ said the ghost sadly” (CoS p. 133).
It isn’t until the end of Order of the Phoenix that we learn more about this phenomenon. When Harry hopes that he can communicate with his recently killed godfather, Sirius Black, he seeks out Nearly Headless Nick. Nick cannot help Harry, explaining:
“Wizards can leave an imprint of themselves upon the earth, to walk palely where their living selves once trod. . . . But very few wizards choose that path. . . I was afraid of death. . . . I chose to remain behind. I sometimes wonder whether I oughtn’t to have . . . Well, that is neither here nor there. . . . In fact, I am neither here nor there . . . . I know nothing of the secrets of death, Harry, for I chose my feeble imitation of life instead” (OotP p. 861).
Something seems unreconciled from the lives of these sad ghosts, which tethers them to this world after their deaths. In Nick’s case, what holds him is in part a fear of “moving on.” Holding on to some shred of mortal life keeps the ghosts in a discontented limbo, unable to have what they desperately want and unwilling to let it go.
Letting Go, Moving On
As we see from the grave markers in Godric’s Hollow (DH p. 328), Halloween also marks the occasion of the murder of James and Lily Potter, and here we have an instructive contrast with the death of Nearly Headless Nick. Lily and James did not become ghosts. They don’t hold a deathday party. They could let go of desire and fear, leaving this life with a wholehearted commitment to an ethical vision. As we know, Lily and James died while protecting Harry from Voldemort. Every ounce of their being was willing to put their lives on the line without regret. We can see this perspective embodied in Remus Lupin. When Harry tries to apologize to Remus for getting him involved in the war that leaves his son an orphan, Remus says, “I am sorry too . . . Sorry I will never know him . . . but he will know why I died and I hope he will understand. I was trying to make a world in which he could live a happier life” (DH p. 700).
A brief look at Harry’s experience with his loved ones after summoning them with the Resurrection Stone highlights the need to let go and move on. He has decided to allow Voldemort to kill him, and wants his deceased loved ones with him for what he believes to be his final walk on this earth: “Harry understood without having to think. It did not matter about bringing them back, for he was about to join them. . . . They were neither ghost nor truly flesh . . . . Less substantial than living bodies, but more than ghosts, they moved toward him” (DH p. 699). Assured that his loved ones will always be a part of him, Harry begins his walk: “His mind and body felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were a passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave” (DH pp. 700-701). This brief glimpse into Harry’s state of mind when he thinks he will die reveals his having transitioned away from the physical. One can hardly imagine that this was Nick’s state of mind when he was nearly beheaded and killed.
Ron has a great point, then, in wondering why anyone would celebrate a deathday. For it’s life that is to be celebrated. Keep in mind Hermione’s comment to Harry in the Godric’s Hollow cemetery, when he is shocked by the inscription “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” She explains, “It means . . . you know . . . living beyond death. Living after death” (DH p. 328). We’re best able to live after death in the hearts of the living when we’re not bound by the chains of desire and fear, but instead freed by love.
So shake off the damp chill of the dungeons and return to the Great Hall for a life-giving, non-moldy Halloween feast filled with friendship, harmless frights, candy apples, and one of Hagrid’s huge jack-o-lanterns! 
Further thoughts and insights about Nick’s Deathday Party are most welcome in the comment box below.
Tagged as: Death, Deathday Party, desire, Halloween, love, Nearly Headless Nick
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post! This made me want to dig into these books again. It’s been awhile
The Deathday Party certainly makes great Halloween reading, it has always been one of my favorite parts of Chamber of Secrets.
While we have learned in book 5 why some people become ghosts and most people don’t, it makes me wonder if this choice is final. Of course Nearly Headless Nick has been around for centuries, but has he really completely lost his opportunity to rest in peace some day? The prospect of wandering around until the end of time seems rather bleak in my opinion, so it’s understandable that he tells Harry that not many wizards make this choice.
That’s a great question, Minerva. I can’t say that I know the answer to it, though, based on any textual evidence. From Nick’s despondence in Order of the Phoenix, it seems that the choice to hang on and become a ghost is final. I base this on his sweeping aside the thought-experiment of wondering whether he should have made the choice with the comment of its being “neither here nor there.” Also, there is no mention (at least not to my recollection) of any ghost choosing to make his peace and moving on. That is definitely a depressing thought! But it also makes people think really hard about what’s important in life, and that there is such a thing as “dying well”–just as there is “living well.”
Perhaps there is extra-canon material from a Rowling interview that addresses your question, but I don’t recall coming across something like that.
Haha, the food is definitely the worst part of the Deathday Party reading experience. It always made me a little sad that Harry and Ron and Hermione missed the Halloween feast after that.
I love the contrast you draw between the ghosts and the four who appear to Harry by way of the Resurrection Stone. The King’s Cross scene with Dumbledore seems to fit well here, too. Dumbledore, when Harry sees him, is not a ghost. He has ‘gone on’ to ‘the next great adventure’, and is whole and well and radiant. Even celebratory.
I really liked this, Carrie!
Another difference is that those who had “moved on” were actually able to help Harry and comfort him. The ghosts (in particular Nick and Helena) were only able to give him information and they were both conflicted in doing it. More looking out for themselves.
The ones who had moved on, like Harry’s parents and Dumbledore, remind me of the dreams and visions so many, many people have after the death of a loved one. I think of one friend in particular whose son appeared, glowing, in a dream, to tell her he was doing well and everything was okay. It was incredibly reassuring and comforting to her, even though it did not stop her grief or her feelings of loss of him. This is a fairly common experience, even if it happens many years after the death.
The ghosts in the castle like Nick, who chose not to move on, remind me of the multitude of stories where living people feel coldness or hostility in a place, or sense that there is a presence of a dead person there, who is holding on and therefore stuck.
Apparently both types of experiences take place across time and place, in many or all cultures.
October 31st, 1492 Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington sang a self-penned ballad explaining how his head had (nearly) come off
Nearly Headless Nick remains one of the most memorable. Executed — badly — on Halloween of 1492, Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington became the ghost of Gryffindor House. The school has about 20 resident ghosts: the Grey Lady (Helena Ravenclaw) and the Bloody Baron of Slytherin House died violently as well, in a murder-suicide.
Rowling says that her editor suggested that she cut a ballad Mimsy-Porpington wrote about himself from The Chamber of Secrets. In the song, the ghost claimed to have been executed for “a mistake any wizard could make,” a “piffling error,” a case of wizardry gone wrong. Asked by Lady Grieve (otherwise unknown) to straighten her teeth, Mimsy-Porpington seems to have given her a tusk. “They” imprisoned the piffler immediately, though he cried all night that he could fix his mistake, and his beheading followed the next morning.
Unfortunately for Mimsy-Porpington, his was not the only incompetence: “they’d mislaid the rock/Where they usually sharpened the axe”! The “cack-handed twit” of a headsman said “this may sting a bit” to the gibbering wizard, and swung the axe in the air. Alas, unable to sharpen the blade, the executioner was reduced to bestowing numerous blows: “But oh the blunt blade! No difference it made,” the ghost sang,
“…My head was still definitely there.
The axeman he hacked and he whacked and he thwacked,
“Won’t be too long,” he assured me,
But quick it was not, and the bone-headed clot
Took forty-five goes ’til he floored me…”
______
“The Ballad Of Nearly Headless Nick”
It was a mistake any wizard could make,
Who was tired and caught on the hop,
One piffling error, and then, to my terror,
I found myself facing the chop.
Alas for the eve when I met Lady Grieve,
A-strolling the park in the dusk!
She was of the belief I could straighten her teeth,
Next moment she’d sprouted a tusk.
I cried through the night that I’d soon put her right,
But the process of justice was lax;
They’d brought out the block, though they’d mislaid the rock,
Where they usually sharpened the axe.
Next morning at dawn, with a face most forlorn,
The priest said to try not to cry,
“You can come just like that, no, you won’t need a hat,”
And I knew that my end must be nigh.
The man in the mask who would have the sad task,
Of cleaving my head from my neck,
Said “Nick, if you please, will you get to your knees,”
And I turned to a gibbering wreck.
“This may sting a bit” said the cack-handed twit,
As he swung the axe up in the air,
But oh the blunt blade! No difference it made,
My head was still definitely there.”
The axeman he hacked and he whacked and he thwacked,
“Won’t be too long”, he assured me,
But quick it was not, and the bone-headed clot,
Took forty-five goes ’til he floored me.
And so I was dead, but my faithful old head,
It never saw fit to desert me,
It still lingers on, that’s the end of my song,
And now, please applaud, or you’ll hurt me.
After repeated strokes of the edgeless axe, Mimsy-Porpington finally expired. On festival occasions, he re-enacts his near-beheading, a show quite popular with the Hogwarts student body (Prisoner of Azkaban,
p. 159).
However, the bone-headed, cloddish headsman was unable to completely behead the wizard. As Ron Weasly notes, the ghost is merely nearly headless.
(The last post was truncated, maybe due to storms)
This ballad was edited out by J K Rowling before publication.
“The Ballad Of Nearly Headless Nick”
It was a mistake any wizard could make,
Who was tired and caught on the hop,
One piffling error, and then, to my terror,
I found myself facing the chop.
Alas for the eve when I met Lady Grieve,
A-strolling the park in the dusk!
She was of the belief I could straighten her teeth,
Next moment she’d sprouted a tusk.
I cried through the night that I’d soon put her right,
But the process of justice was lax;
They’d brought out the block, though they’d mislaid the rock,
Where they usually sharpened the axe.
Next morning at dawn, with a face most forlorn,
The priest said to try not to cry,
“You can come just like that, no, you won’t need a hat,”
And I knew that my end must be nigh.
The man in the mask who would have the sad task,
Of cleaving my head from my neck,
Said “Nick, if you please, will you get to your knees,”
And I turned to a gibbering wreck.
“This may sting a bit” said the cack-handed twit,
As he swung the axe up in the air,
But oh the blunt blade! No difference it made,
My head was still definitely there.”
The axeman he hacked and he whacked and he thwacked,
“Won’t be too long”, he assured me,
But quick it was not, and the bone-headed clot,
Took forty-five goes ’til he floored me.
And so I was dead, but my faithful old head,
It never saw fit to desert me,
It still lingers on, that’s the end of my song,
And now, please applaud, or you’ll hurt me.
After repeated strokes of the edgeless axe, Mimsy-Porpington finally expired. On festival occasions, he re-enacts his near-beheading, a show quite popular with the Hogwarts student body (Prisoner of Azkaban, p. 159).
However, the bone-headed, cloddish headsman was unable to completely behead the wizard. As Ron Weasly notes, the ghost is merely nearly headless.