Where did the term "hell in a handbasket" originate, and what does it mean?

Question

Hail and well met, my fellow Basketeers!

Are we ready to show the rest of the world how to celebrate a "Hell in a Handbasket" Tea Party?

I hear all kinds of devilry and revelry has occurred thus far.

Which is all to the good as Pagans should feel as free to express their joy and faith as any other on the planet.

What say you, my fellow Basketeers?

Answer 1

HAIL AND WELCOME!!



I LOVED this hell in a hand basket tea party soooo much that i want every day to be Pagan Friday!



While my day is almost done i ask you all to carry on and star each others questions so i can see them when i wake!



Have a very Merry Day my Friends!

Ariel

Answer 2

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"Going to hell in a handbasket"



Meaning: Deteriorating - on a course for disaster.



Origin:



This, and its alternative form 'going to hell in a handcart', originated in the US, in the first half of the 20th century. It is still commonly used there, although less so in other English-speaking countries. The precise source isn't clear.



The phrase seems to be a version of just 'going to hell', in the same sense as 'going to the dogs'. The 'in a handbasket' is an alliterative intensifier which gives it a catchy ring.



The phrase doesn't appear in print until the 1940s, although it was probably in circulation in the spoken language for some time before that. We may not know exactly where and when it was born, but we do know a little about its gestation. In the Wichita Daily Times, Wichita Falls, Texas, May 1913, we have:



"And when you won't buy from me and I can't buy from you we'll both go down the tobog to ruin in a handbasket."



That version doesn't have quite the same catchiness and it isn't surprising that it hasn't lasted. In fact, the word tobog is no longer in use at all. It seems to have had meaning in late 19th/early 20th century USA though. In a South Dakota newspaper in 1886, there's a weather report:



"Enough snow fell yesterday morning to make poor sledging. Tobog or not tobog will soon be the issue"



This makes it clear that tobog relates to tobogganing. Handbaskets might make impromptu sledges and the notion of sliding down a toboggan run to ruin in a handbasket makes some sense. It could be that that is the link between handbaskets and disaster, but that's speculation.



Tobog may be archaic but it does seem to have been a favourite word of Clarence L. Cullen, a journalist for the Syracuse Herald, around 1910-13. He wrote a regular column called 'Cheer Up Cuthbert!', containing uplifting homilies, which I'll include here for no better reason than I like the sound of them. For example:



"We never know what a Saving Virtue Vanity is till we Begin to Hit the Tobog."



"We can Trek Toward the Tobog without Taking the Turkey Trot for it."

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Answer 3

All I know about the term is when I first heard it - my husband's ex wife got confrontational with us at a non- traditional student's Christmas party at our old college.



She decided to tell the entire room full of people that we were all going to hell (why? I have no clue). My spouse, ever ready to throw fuel on the fire, quietly said "You forgot the part about the handbasket."



The entire room braced for a violent reaction from her, but liuckily all she did was scream incoherently and storm out. The room burst into laughter as she stormed out the door.



Ever since then, the family joke is "don't forget the handbasket!"



We even have a cartoon around here somewhere with a guy in a basket saying "Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket?"



Party on, Basketeers - hopefully I can return later in the day and participate more- but boxes don't pack themselves!

Answer 4

[Q] From Brian Walker: “Can you please tell me anything about the origin of the phrase going to hell in a handbasket?”



[A] This is a weird one. It’s a fairly common American expression, known for much of the twentieth century. But it’s one about which almost no information exists, at least in the two dozen or so reference books I’ve consulted. William and Mary Morris, in their Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, confess to the same difficulty. A handbasket is just a basket to be carried in the hand (my thanks to the Oxford English Dictionary for that gem of definition). The Dictionary of American Regional English records to go to heaven in a handbasket rather earlier than the alternative, which doesn’t appear in print until the 1940s (Walt Quader tells me that Burton Stevenson included a citation in his Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases from Bayard Kendrick’s The Odor of Violets, published in 1941). But DARE quotes a related expression from 1714: “A committee brought in something about Piscataqua. Govr said he would give his head in a Handbasket as soon as he would pass it”, which suggests that it, or at least phrases like it, have been around in the spoken language for a long time. For example, there’s an even older expression, to go to heaven in a wheelbarrow, recorded as early as 1629, which also meant “to go to hell”. I can only assume that the alliteration of the hs has had a lot to do with the success of the various phrases, and that perhaps handbasket suggests something easily and speedily done.

Answer 5

Hell actually exists in a handbasket kept by an evil doctor in Afganistan. He keeps it carefully locked up in a vault. Since there is no time and space in the realm where hell exists, it can exist anywhere, but Satan has chosen a handbasket for it to exist in for his own devious reasons.

Answer 6

apparently it's a spinoff of the 1940s phrase heaven in a handbasket.

Answer 7

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-goi1.htm



http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxgotohe.html



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_hell_in_a_handbasket



I say I won't be there. Have fun, though.