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The
Real Origins of Halloween discusses the history of Halloween,
the origins of trick-or-treating, reasons behind some of the
symbols of the season, and why the holiday is well worth keeping
and celebrating. Previous versions of this essay specifically
contrasted the historical evidence with the absurd claims and
urban legends used in most anti-Halloween propaganda. I have
now put those latter materials into their own essay, Halloween
Errors and Lies, since it seems that many people have never
seen or heard those fearmongering tales and could not understand
why I would spend so much space discussing them within an historical
essay.
This is a work of amateur scholarship.
If you wish to quote me in an academic environment, you may wish
to first verify my statements by consulting the books linked
within my text. A more formal Bibliography will appear in a future
book, Some Truths About Halloween.
If you prefer more colorful
text and lots of spooky graphics, you can click here.
For a Spanish translation with graphics, go to Los
Verdaderos Orígenes de Halloween or here for the easy
printing/reading Spanish text without most of the graphics.
For information about the specific
topic of Witchcraft, consider obtaining my book, Bonewits's
Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca.
The Ancient Celtic Fire Festivals
There appear to have been four
major holy days celebrated by the Paleopagan
Druids, possibly throughout the Celtic territories: Samhain,
Oimelc, Beltane & Lughnasadh (in one set of Irish-based
modern spellings). Four additional holy (or “High”)
days (Winter Solstice or “Midwinter,” Spring Equinox,
Summer Solstice or “Midsummer,” and Fall Equinox),
which are based on Germanic or other Indo-European cultures,
are also celebrated in the Neopagan
Druid calendar, along with others based on mainstream holidays
(visit the linked essay for details).
The most common practice for the
calculation of Samhain, Oimelc, Beltane and Lughnasadh
has been, for the last several centuries, to use the civil calendar
days or eves of November 1st, February 1st, May 1st and August
1st, respectively. Since we have conflicting evidence on how
the Paleopagan Druids calculated these dates, modern Neopagans
just use whichever method is most convenient. This means, of
course, that we aren’t all doing anything
uniformly on any given night, which fits perfectly with the Neopagan
saying that, “organizing Pagans is like herding cats.”
It doesn’t match the Evil Conspiracy theories — which
have us all marching to a strict drumbeat in perfect Satanic
unison — at all.
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These four major holy days have been referred
to as “fire festivals” for at least the last hundred
years or so, because (1) to the ancient Celts, as with all the
Indo-European Paleopagans, fire was a physical symbol of divinity,
holiness, truth, and beauty; (2) fires play important roles in
the traditional customs associated with these festivals; and
(3) several early Celtic scholars called them that. Whether in
Ireland or India, among the Germans or the Hittites, sacred fires
were apparently kindled by the Indo-European Paleopagans on every
important religious occasion. To this very day, among Eastern
Orthodox and Western Catholics, you can’t have a satisfying
ritual without a few candles being lit — of course, the
Fundamentalists consider them Heathen too!
Samhain
or “Samhuinn” is pronounced “sow-” (as in
female pig) “-en” (with the neutral vowel sound) —
not “Sam Hain” — because “mh” in the
middle of an Irish word is a “w” sound (don’t
ask me why, it’s just Irish). Known in Modern Irish as Lá
Samhna, in Welsh as Nos Galen-Gaeaf (that is, the
“Night of the Winter Calends”), and in Manx as Laa
Houney (Hollantide Day), Sauin or Souney, Samhain
is often said to have been the most important of the fire festivals,
because (according to most Celtic scholars) it may have marked
the Celtic New Year. At the least, Samhain was equal in
importance to Beltane and shared many symbolic characteristics.
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Samhain
was the original festival that the Western Christian calendar
moved its “All Saints’ Day” to (Eastern Christians
continue to celebrate All Saints’ Day in the spring, as
the Roman Christians had originally). Since the Celts, like many
cultures, started every day at sunset of the night before, Samhain
became the “evening” of “All Hallows” (“hallowed”
= “holy” = “saint”) which was eventually
contracted into “Hallow-e’en” or the modern “Halloween.”
Whether it was the Celtic New Year
or not, Samhain was the beginning of the Winter or Dark
Half of the Year (the seasons of Geimredh=Winter and
Earrach=Spring) as Beltane was the beginning of the
Summer or Light Half of the Year (the seasons of Samradh=Summer
and Foghamhar=Fall). The day before Samhain is
the last day of summer (or the old year) and the day after Samhain
is the first day of winter (or of the new year). Being “between”
seasons or years, Samhain was (and is) considered a very magical
time, when the dead walk among the living and the veils between
past, present and future may be lifted in prophecy and divination.
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Many important mythological events
are said to have occured on that day. It was on a Samhain
that the Nemedians captured the terrible Tower of Glass built
by the evil Formorians; that the Tuatha De Danann later defeated
the Formors once and for all; and that many other events of a
dramatic or prophetic nature in Celtic myth happened. Many of
these events had to do with the temporary victory of the forces
of darkness over those of light, signaling the beginning of the
cold and dark half of the year. |
There is some evidence to indicate
that three days were spent celebrating this festival. Philip
Carr-Gomm, Chosen Chief of the Order
of Bards, Ovates and Druids, speaking of both Paleopagan
and Mesopagan Druids in England, had this to say about it
in his Elements
of the Druid Tradition:
Samhuinn, from 31 October to 2
November was a time of no-time. Celtic society, like all early
societies, was highly structured and organised, everyone knew
their place. But to allow that order to be psychologically comfortable,
the Celts knew that there had to be a time when order and structure
were abolished, when chaos could reign. And Samhuinn, was such
a time. Time was abolished for the three days of this festival
and people did crazy things, men dressed as women and women as
men. [This happened at Beltane too — IB] Farmers’
gates were unhinged and left in ditches, peoples’ horses
were moved to different fields, and children would knock on neighbours’
doors for food and treats in a way that we still find today,
in a watered-down way, in the custom of trick-or-treating on
Hallowe’en.
But behind this apparent lunacy,
lay a deeper meaning. The Druids knew that these three days had
a special quality about them. The veil between this world and
the World of the Ancestors was drawn aside on these nights, and
for those who were prepared, journeys could be made in safety
to the ’other side’. The Druid rites, therefore, were
concerned with making contact with the spirits of the departed,
who were seen as sources of guidance and inspiration rather than
as sources of dread. The dark moon, the time when no moon can
be seen in the sky, was the phase of the moon which ruled this
time, because it represents a time in which our mortal sight
needs to be obscured in order for us to see into the other worlds.
The dead are honoured and feasted,
not as the dead, but as the living spirits of loved ones and
of guardians who hold the root-wisdom of the tribe. With the
coming of Christianity, this festival was turned into Hallowe’en
(31 October), All Hallows [All Saints Day] (1 November), and
All Souls Day (2 November). Here we can see most clearly the
way in which Christianity built on the Pagan foundations it found
rooted in these isles. Not only does the purpose of the festival
match with the earlier one, but even the unusual length of the
festival is the same.
The Christian Church was unable
to get the people to stop celebrating this holiday, so they simply
sprinkled a little holy water on it and gave it new names, as
they did with other Paleopagan holidays and customs. This was
a form of calendrical imperialism, co-opting Paleopagan sacred
times, as they had Paleopagan sacred places (most if not all
of the great cathedrals of Europe were built on top of earlier
Paleopagan shrines and sacred groves). So when Fundamentalists
come to your local school board and try to get Halloween removed
from the public schools because “it’s a Pagan holiday,”
they are perfectly correct. Of course, Valentine’s Day/Lupercalia,
Easter/Eostre, and Christmas/Yule also have many Paleopagan elements
associated with their dating and/or symbols, as the Jehovah’s
Witnesses and others have pointed out for decades. So if we decide
to rid the public schools of all holidays that have Pagan aspects
to them, there won’t be many left for the kids to enjoy.
I find it amusing that American
teens and pre-teens seem to have instinctively expanded their
seasonal celebrations to add another night before Halloween,
one on which they commit various acts of harmless (or unfortunately
not) vandalism, including pranks on neighbors. If we assume that
All Saints Day was moved to co-opt the central day of Samhain
which was associated originally with the Gods and Goddesses of
the Celts, and All Souls Day was supposed to co-opt the worship
of the Ancestors, then the modern “Cabbage Night,”
“Hell Night” (boy does that push the Fundamentalists’
buttons!), or simply “Mischief Night” (which used to
be April 30th — the night before May Day — in Germany
— there’s that Beltane/Samhain connection again)
would correspond to a celebration of the often mischievous Nature
Spirits. This then nicely covers the Indo-European pattern of
the “Three Kindreds” of Deities, Ancestors, and Nature
Spirits.
Trick or Treat
Where does the custom of “trick
or treating” come from? Is it really ancient, a few centuries
old, or relatively modern? Let’s look at the evidence:
Kevin Danaher, in his remarkable
book The
Year in Ireland, has a long discussion of the traditional
Irish celebrations of this festival. In one section on “Hallow-E’en
Guisers,” he says:
A familiar sight in Dublin city
on and about October 31 is that of small groups of children,
arrayed in grotesque garments and with faces masked or painted,
accosting the passers-by or knocking on house doors with the
request: “Help the Hallow E’en party! Any apples or
nuts?” in the expectation of being given small presents;
this, incidentally, is all the more remarkable as it is the only
folk custom of the kind which has survived in the metropolis.
A couple of generations ago, in
parts of Dublin and in other areas of Ireland, the groups would
have consisted of young men and grown boys, who often travelled
considerable distances in their quest, with consequently greater
reward. The proceeds were usually expended on a “Hallow
E’en party,” with music, dancing, feasting and so on,
at some chosen house, and not merely consumed on the spot as
with the children nowadays…
Irisleabhar na Gaedhilge, ii, 370, states that in parts of Count Waterford,
Hallow E’en is called oidhche na h-aimléise,
“The night of mischief or con.” It was a custom in
the county — it survives still in places — for the
“boys” to assemble in gangs, and, headed by a few horn-blowers
who were always selected for their strength of lungs, to visit
all the farmers’ houses in the district and levy a sort
of blackmail, good humouredly asked for, and as cheerfully given.
They afterward met at some rendezvous, and in merry revelry celebrated
the festival of Samhain in their own way. When the distant winding
of the horns was heard, the bean a’ tigh [woman of
the house] prepared for their reception, and got ready the money
or builín (white bread) to be handed to them through
the half-opened door. Whoever heard the wild scurry of their
rush through a farm-yard to the kitchen-door — there was
always a race amongst them to get possession of the latch —
will not question the propriety of the word aimiléis
[mischief] applied to their proceedings. The leader of the band
chaunted a sort of recitative in Gaelic, intoning it with a strong
nasal twang to conceal his identity, in which the good-wife was
called upon to do honour to Samhain… “A contributor
to An Claidheamh Soluis, 15 Dec. 1906, 5, gives a example
of these verses, from Ring, County Waterford:
‘Anocht Oidhche Shamhna, a Mhongo Mango. Sop is na fuinneogaibh;
dúntar na díirse. Eirigh id’ shuidhe, a bhean
an tighe. Téirigh siar go banamhail, tar aniar go flaitheamhail.
Tabhair leat ceapaire aráin agus ime ar dhath do leacain
fhéin; a mbeidh léim ghirrfiadh dhe aoirde ann
ages ciscéim choiligh dhe im air. Tabhair chugham peigín
de bhainne righin, mín, milis a mbeidh leawhnach ’n-a
chosa agus uachtar ’n-a mhullaigh; go mbeidh sé ag
imtheacht ’n-a chnocaibh agus ag teacht Ôn-a shléibhtibh,
agus badh ó leat go dtachtfadh sé mé, agus
mo chreach fhada níor bhaoghal dom.’
‘(“Oh Mongo Mango, Hallow
E’en tonight. Straw in the windows and close the doors.
Rise up housewife, go inside womanly, return hospitably, bring
with you a slice of bread and butter the colour of your own cheek,
as high as a hare’s jump with a cock’s step of butter
on it. Bring us a measure of thick fine sweet milk, with new
milk below and cream above, coming in hills and going in mountains;
you may think it would choke me, but, alas! I am in no danger.”)’
Wow, that chant sure sounds scary,
doesn’t it?
As I mentioned before, because
it was an “in-between” kind of holiday, spirits (nice
or nasty), ancestors (ditto), or mortals (ditto?) were thought
to be more easily able to pass from This
World to the Other World and vice versa. It was also a perfect
time for divination or “fortune telling” (Danaher talks
about all of this at great length). While some monotheists may
consider these activities to be “evil,” most religions
in human history have considered them perfectly normal.
Before and after the arrival of
Christianity, early November was when people in Western and Northern
Europe finished the last of their harvesting, butchered their
excess stock (so the surviving animals would have enough food
to make it through the winter), and held great feasts. They invited
their ancestors to join them, decorated family graves, and told
ghost stories — all of which may strike some monotheists
today as spiritually erroneous, but which hardly seems “evil”
— and many modern polytheists do much the same (though few
of us have herds to thin). So where does “trick or treating”
come in?
According to Tad Tuleja’s
essay, “Trick or Treat: Pre-Texts and Contexts,” in
Santino’s previously mentioned anthology, Halloween,
modern trick or treating (primarily children going door-to-door,
begging for candy) began fairly recently, as a
blend of several ancient and modern influences. I’m mixing
Tuleja’s material here with my own insights, see his essay
for details of his opinions, which I’ll mark with italics
to separate from mine:
- At various times and places in
the Middle Ages, customs developed of beggers, then children,
asking for “soul cakes”
on All Souls Day.
- At some other Medieval times and
places, costumed holiday parading, singing and dancing at
May Day, Halloween, and Yule (with different themes,
of course, though sometimes with similar characters, such as
the “Hobby Horse”) became popular in Ireland and
the British Isles. Originally these costumed celebrants were
adults and older teens, who would go from house to house (as
Danaher describes above) demanding beer and munchies in exchange
for their performances, which mixed Pagan and Christian symbols
and themes. While many Neopagans may think these folk customs
go all the way back to Paleopagan times, they are actually fairly
modern (see Stations
of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in England,
by Ronald Hutton).
- To the medieval householders, of
course, being thought stingy (especially in front of the visiting
ancestors and faery folk at Halloween) would be very bad luck,
as it would violate the ancient laws of hospitality. Perhaps
there were some inebriated paraders who might have decided to
come back later in the night and play tricks upon those who hadn’t
rewarded them properly, but any references to such are fairly
modern.
- In 1605 c.e., Guy Fawkes’
abortive effort to blow up the British Parliament on November
5th, led to the creation of “Guy
Fawkes Day,” celebrated by the burning of effigies
of Fawkes in bonfires and children dressing in rags to beg for
money for fireworks. As the decades rolled by, this became thoroughly
entwined with Halloween celebrations and customs. This is
not surprising, considering that bonfires were a central part
of the old Samhain/Halloween tradition, and that Nov. 5th was
actually closer to the astrological date for Samhain (thought
by some Neopagans to be the original dating method) than Nov.
1st was! In the year 2006, the movie V for Vendetta introduced
the image of Guy Fawkes to millions of Americans.
- In 19th Century America, rural
immigrants from Ireland and Scotland kept gender-specific Halloween
customs from their homelands: girls stayed indoors and did divination
games, while the boys roamed outdoors engaging in almost equally
ritualized pranks, which their elders
“blamed” on the spirits being abroad that
night.
- Also in mid-19th Century New York,
children called “ragamuffins”
would dress in costumes and beg for pennies from adults
on Thanksgiving Day.
- Things got nastier with increased
urbanization and poverty in the 1930’s. Adults began casting
about for ways to control the previously harmless but now increasingly
expensive and dangerous vandalism of the
“boys.” Towns and cities began organizing
“safe” Halloween events and householders
began giving out bribes to the neighborhood kids as a way to
distract them away from their previous anarchy. The ragamuffins
disappeared or switched their date to Halloween. The term
“trick or treat,” finally appears
in print around 1939!
Pranks became even nastier in the
1980’s, with widespread poverty existing side-by-side with
obscene greed. Unfortunately, as criminologists, military recruiters
and historians know, the most dangerous animals on our planet
are unemployed teenaged males. Bored kids in a violence-saturated
culture slip all too easily from harmless “decoration”
of their neighbors’ houses with shaving cream and toilet
paper to serious vandalism and assaults. Blaming Halloween for
this is rather like blaming the Fourth of July for the many firecracker
injuries that happen every year (and which are also combatted
by publicly sponsored events).
By the mid- 20th century in Ireland
and Britain, it seems only the smaller children would dress up
and parade to the neighbors’ houses, do little performances,
then ask for a reward. American kids seem to remember this with
their chants of “Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid
an egg,” and other classic tunes done for no reason other
than because “it’s traditional.”
To a great extent, the costumes
worn by modern trick-or-treaters represent, as they might have
in older times, an effort to entertain, amuse and/or scare the
neighbors, and to compete a bit with others in beauty, ugliness,
humor, scariness, and costuming skill.
What was Halloween in America like
forty years ago? Read Lady Phae’s Halloween
and Me essay on my website for some heartwarming memories.
Why Bother to save Halloween?
is an essay by Richard Seltzer, which has yet more reasons why
it’s important to keep the custom of trick or treating alive:
Halloween is a time that reconfirms
the social bond of a neighborhood (particularly the bond between
strangers of different generations) by a ritual act of trade.
Children go to lengths to dress up and overcome their fear of
strangers in exchange for candy. And adults buy the candy and
overcome their distrust of strange children in exchange for the
pleasure of seeing their wild outfits and vicariously reliving
their own adventures as children.
In other words, the true value
and importance of Halloween comes not from parading in costumes
in front of close friends and family, but from this interchange
with strangers, exorcising our fears of strangers, reaffirming
our social bond with the people of the neighborhood who we rarely,
if ever, see the rest of the year.
What about Those Evil Symbols?
Several correspondents have said,
“If the holiday isn’t evil why are there so many evil
images associated with it” such as ghosts, skeletons, black
cats, ugly witches, demons, monsters, and Jack O’Lanterns?
The answer, of course, is that most of these images aren’t
evil, and the ones that are negative were added by people opposed
to the holiday.
Ghosts
have always made perfect sense, for Samhain was the festival
where the Gates Between the Worlds were open wide and departed
friends and family could cross over in either direction. As I
mentioned earlier, people invited their ancestors to join them
in celebration. The only ones who would cower in fear would be
people who had wronged someone dead and who therefore feared
retribution of some sort. The often repeated tale that the dead
roamed the earth after dying until the next Samhain, when they
could then pass over to the afterlife, makes no sense in either
Celtic Paleopagan or Medieval Christian beliefs, so is probably
fairly modern. It is possible that any “earth-bound”
spirits needing assistance to pass over might have received it
at this time, but this wouldn’t have been considered necessary
for most of the dead.
Samhain was the time of year when
the herds were culled. That means that farmers and herders killed
the old, sick or weak animals, as well as others they didn’t
think would make it through the winter with that year’s
available food. Prior to the last few centuries in the West,
most people lived with death as a common part of life, especially
since most of them lived on farms. Samhain became imbued with
symbolism of these annual deaths. So skeletons and skulls
joined the ghosts as symbols of the holiday. Again, there’s
nothing evil here, at least to the innocent in heart. Indeed,
in Mexico, where the holiday is known as Los
dias de los Muertos, or “Days of the Dead,”
(combining All Saints Day with All Souls Day) skeleton and skull
toys and even candies are made and enjoyed by the millions, many
by and for devout Roman Catholics.
Medieval Christians feared cats,
for reasons as yet unclear, and especially feared black cats
who could sneak “invisibly” around at night. It’s
ironic that they feared cats so much that they killed tens of
thousands of them, leaving their granaries open to rats and mice,
no doubt causing much food to be wasted, and leaving Europe as
a whole wide open to the Black Plague, which was carried by the
fleas on those rats and mice. Unfortunately, the millions of
human deaths caused by the Black Plague were later blamed on
the Diabolic
Witches the Church invented, then murdered. Cats, as “evil”
animals, then became associated with the “evil” witches.
Witches
as figures of pure evil were invented by the medieval Church
and inflated by the Catholic and Protestant Churches during the
Reformation period. Paleopagan witches were people suspected
by their neighbors of using magic or poison to harm others, though
the term was sometimes used to insult or accuse the “cunning
folk” (who were herbalists, diviners, and folk magicians)
of committing malpractice. I know of no formal association of
witches with Samhain until the late Middle Ages. For some historical
facts about all the different people — real and imaginary
— who have been called “witches” over the centuries,
see my book, Bonewits's
Essential Guide to Witchcraft and Wicca or the excerpts
from it available on my website.
As the Church tried harder and
harder to make people abandon their Paleopagan customs for the
new Christian ones, Samhain became a prime target. The Church
began to say that demons were abroad with the dead, and
that the fairy folk were all monsters who would kill the unwary.
When Diabolic Witchcraft was invented, the “Evil Devil-Worshipping
Witch” simply became the newest monster to add to the others.
The green skin was a twentieth century touch the Wizard of
Oz movie added to the “evil old hag” version of
the Diabolic Witch.
Halloween became a holiday in modern
times for which half the fun was being scared out of one’s
wits. Modern fiction added new monsters to the American
mix, including vampires (previously known mostly in Eastern Europe),
werewolves, mummies (after modern Egyptology started), and various
psychopathic killers and ghouls. These are not images anyone
actually needs to perpetuate, but the teens certainly enjoy them.
Jack O’Lanterns, as mentioned earlier, became popular as house decorations
in the USA after immigrant Irish people discovered how much easier
pumpkins were to carve than turnips, unleashing what has turned
into quite an art form in the last decade or so. They certainly
add a spooky touch, especially when the glowing faces appear
from the darkness.
Most psychiatrists and psychologists
seem to agree that Halloween’s emphatic celebration of
death serves to bring out our culture’s suppressed feelings
about the topic, which can be a healthy experience for both children
and adults. I strongly suspect that the primary reason for American
culture’s aversion to thinking about death and dying is
that most modern Westerners don’t actually believe the mainstream
monotheistic religions’ doctrines on the topic, or if they
do, they fear eternal punishment more than they expect an eternal
reward. The Paleopagan/Neopagan views that death is a transition
to a new state of being where things go on much as they have
here, at least until one reincarnates, is much less frightening
(at least for those having a relatively happy life now), and
makes most spirits of the dead unthreatening to us.
Certainly, Halloween gives parents
an opportunity to discuss their beliefs and attitudes about death
with their children, one hopes with no recent close death to
cloud the issues, and to soothe whatever fears their children
may have.
How Neopagans will Celebrate
Reporters are always asking us
what we Neopagans “do” for Halloween. Well, usually
we take our kids around our neighborhoods trick or treating,
as carefully as any other parents. Those who stay at home may
hand out commercially packaged candy to those who visit our houses
(we might prefer to give out homemade goodies, but paranoia has
made such treats unwelcome). Over the weekend, our circles of
friends will have rituals that might include “dumb suppers”
(silent, saltless meals) for the Ancestors, or separate “kid
circles” and costume parties for our children — and
we always wind up with at least as many kids as we started out
with! Most of us will do some divination, give honor to those
who have died in the past year, play traditional games, and meditate
on our own mortality.
That’s what American Neopagans
will do on Samhain. No blood drinking, no baby sacrifices, no
crimes — just good, clean, all-American festivity with some
ceremonial additions appropriate to the season and current events.
A student sent me an email asking
me to sum up in more personal terms what Halloween means to me
and other Neopagans. Here is what I told her:
- Halloween is the modern name for
Samhain, an ancient Celtic holy day which many Neopagans —
especially Wiccans, Druids and Celtic Reconstructionists —
celebrate as a spiritual beginning of a new year.
- Halloween is a time to confront our
personal and cultural attitudes towards death and those who have
passed on before us.
- Halloween is a time to lift the veil
between the many material and spiritual worlds in divination,
so as to gain spiritual insight about our pasts and futures.
- Halloween is a time to deepen our
connection to the cycles of the seasons, to the generations that
have come before us and those that will follow, and to the Gods
and Goddesses we worship.
- Halloween is a time to let our inner
children out to play, to pass on our childhood traditions to
our children, and to share the fun with our friends and neighbors
of many other faiths. So…
Happy Halloween Everyone!
Visit the
Halloween Safety
Guide
for tips on keeping you, your kids, and your pets safe and sound
this Halloween!
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