Is the hokey-pokey based on a slur against the Mass?

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Hi all,

I attend a weekday Mass with a group of faithful Catholic men. After Mass this week, the hokey-pokey came up and I was (rather sternly) admonished not to sing the song or dance since it was based on a mockery of the Mass.

Is this true? Is there documentary evidence either for or aginst?

Many Thanks!

Ken
 
That’s one of several thoughts on how it originated.

“As recently as 2008, a few Catholic Church officials have considered the “Hokey Pokey” as an example of “faith hate,” but it doesn’t seem most took these allegations all that seriously and there isn’t much in the way of documented evidence to back up the “Catholic hate” origin theory.”

 
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I don’t think it is. Now, I can imagine a non-Catholic saying something like “attending a Catholic Mass is like doing the hokey-pokey,” but I don’t think the invention of the hokey-pokey was to make fun of the Mass.

If it was created to make fun of the Mass, logic dictates that words would be something like this:

“you put your right knee down, you put your right knee up, you put your right knee down and your turn it all about…”

It just doesn’t make sense that the hokey pokey was created to make fun of Catholics.
 
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I was taught that “Hocus Pocus,” the term supposedly used by magicians, was a slur against the Latin words of Institution. That might have no basis either. Awfully close to Hokey Pokey though.
 
Welcome Ken! This seems to be urban legend. A perusal of the murky origins, multiple variants and alterations of content make it improbable that this is the case. It is not specifically in any case.

The song existed, in various forms since 1800s in the UK. THe alleged controversy arose in 2008:
" In 2008, an Anglican cleric, Canon Matthew Damon, Provost of Wakefield Cathedral, West Yorkshire, claimed that the dance movements were a parody of the traditional Catholic Latin Mass."
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Matt Damon? 🤨 There is all sorts of room for parody here, as well as in all aspects of life. Should you hear the claim again, ask for a source.
 
Wow!! Lots of attention on a small question! 😃

As noted, my friends are VERY orthodox and faithful Catholics and so I am generally not willing to start an argument (even a friendly one) without doing my homework first. I have been searching around for the past couple of days, but there was nothing substantial turning up (a papal bull would have been nice).

I did find references that linked ‘hocus pocus’ to ‘Hoc est enim Corpus meum’ but nothing that closed the loop to hokey-pokey.

In any case, given the responses provided, it will be easier to go in next week and ask for documentation on their assertion.

Thanks to all and I’ll post their response next week.

Thank you and Godspeed!
 
kenmon99 said:
Wow!! Lots of attention on a small question! 😃

As noted, my friends are VERY orthodox and faithful Catholics and so I am generally not willing to start an argument (even a friendly one) without doing my homework first. I have been searching around for the past couple of days, but there was nothing substantial turning up (a papal bull would have been nice).

I did find references that linked ‘hocus pocus’ to ‘Hoc est enim Corpus meum’ but nothing that closed the loop to hokey-pokey.

In any case, given the responses provided, it will be easier to go in next week and ask for documentation on their assertion.

Thanks to all and I’ll post their response next week.

Thank you and Godspeed!
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Not one Catholic in 500 would make any connection between “hokey pokey”/“hocus pocus” and the Latin words of consecration Hoc est enim corpus meum in the Latin Mass. They wouldn’t even have made that connection back in the days when the TLM was the only Mass.

This is about the last hill in the world I would choose to die on.
 
The Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life”.

If this charge is true, maybe the Hokey-Pokey really is what it’s all about?

💃 🕺
 
It is just a children’s song to develop motor skills, practice listening and following instructions, and to learn and practice right and left. Making fun of the church would require intent and knowledge on the part of those doing the dance and if that is absent, no mocking is occuring .
 
Maybe they were making it up so they wouldn’t be seen with a grown man doing the Hokey Pokey😎
 
It was played and danced at every Catholic wedding in my mother’s huge Catholic family all through the 60s and 70s, and we used to always be doing it as Catholic primary school children too.

I agree that “Hokey Pokey” sounds a bit like “Hocus Pocus”, but “hokey” is also an old slang word for what we would today call “hinky”, meaning a tad strange or suspicious. It is also the nickname associated with a regional university in the Mid Atlantic. So you would really have to reach to associate it with Catholics.

Now if it were Tom Lehrer’s “The Vatican Rag” which my husband used to sing to tease me, then maybe I could understand your friends’ concern a bit better. But it’s not.
 
I could not get the link to the page to load properly.
It kept jumping up and down so I only got to read the
first 2-3 paragraphs.

Hokey-Pokey could be from Hocus-Pocus which they thin could be from a misinterpretation they heard of
the Latin Mass.

The Hokey-Pokey song certainly doesn’t have anything
to do with Mass. I am not sure why you would be
admonished to sing or dance among the other men.
I am sure you were not going to perform a 15 minute
rendition.
 
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A number of years ago on Mission Sunday we had a visiting priest actually attempt to engage the whole congregation in a rendition of the hokey pokey during Mass😡

He began with “put your right leg out…” and ended by standing in front of the altar and saying “shake your body all about,” while doing some type of horrible dance😱

This is a very conservative parish and we were all horrified. Our poor pastor who had taken the weekend off later assured us we would never see that priest again!
 
kenmon99 said:
After Mass this week, the hokey-pokey came up and I was (rather sternly) admonished not to sing the song or dance since it was based on a mockery of the Mass.
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It is up to whoever made that assertion to prove it, and in the absence of proof, you are within your rights not only to ignore it, but to tell the person that you are going to ignore it.

D
 
I would put the hokey pokey right next to the macerena, both of which I abhor - and not for anything that may or may not have occurred 350+/- years ago. Must be that stiff, formal Dutch heritage. :crazy_face:
 
One of the funniest moments in the Babylon 5 sci-fi TV series was hearing Ambassador Londo Mollari, an alien from the Centauri Republic, try to figure the hokey-pokey out:


D
 
Anne1964 said:
A number of years ago on Mission Sunday we had a visiting priest actually attempt to engage the whole congregation in a rendition of the hokey pokey during Mass😡

He began with “put your right leg out…” and ended by standing in front of the altar and saying “shake your body all about,” while doing some type of horrible dance😱

This is a very conservative parish and we were all horrified. Our poor pastor who had taken the weekend off later assured us we would never see that priest again!
Click to expand...
During Mass? That seems hard to believe.
 
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