I woke up this morning with one primary thought on my mind: Halloween!! Now THAT’s scary!! I’d gone to the store yesterday and picked up some “treats” for the anticipated “trick-or-treaters”. Now in California, I was practically shunned when I handed out those sugary candy bars, etc. The preferred treat was nuts, pretzels or granola bars. So when I arrived home yesterday with these “healthy” goodies I was promptly reminded that children in Kansas prefer Snickers, Milky Ways, etc. I just shook my head because… so do I! I love my candy! This morning I ventured out to snare some of the more delectable goodies. En route I began to ponder what the significance of Halloween really is. I mean I know in its original form it has Pagan overtones, etc. So I thought I’d do some research. Inquiring minds, ya know!!
Thank heavens for “google”, wikipedia and the likes!! I remember as a child being at the mercy of our out-dated World Book Encyclopedias and our barely more current Americana Annuals. A trip to the library rarely happened as that meant inconveniencing some adult or sibling of driving age… good luck with that!! So, I once more give humble thanks to our technological advances that have afforded us the ability to access information with a click of a keystroke.
I wanted to get different perspectives on this night known as “Halloween”, “Samhain” or “All Hallow’s Eve”: the most magical night of the year: Pagan, Christian, other country’s traditions and what I learned was simply fascinating to me. That being said, I’d like to share with you some of my findings.
According to Jack Santino from his article: “The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows”, Halloween had its beginnings in an ancient, pre-Christian Celtic festival of the dead. The Celtic peoples were once found all over Europe, until the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the 5th and 6th centuries AD pushed the native Celts north and westward in Britain to what is present day Wales and Northern England. The Celts divided the year by four major holidays. According to their calendar, the year began on a day corresponding to November 1st on our present calendar. The date marked the beginning of winter. Since they were pastoral people, it was a time when cattle and sheep had to be moved to closer pastures and all livestock had to be secured (and some slaughtered) for the winter months. Crops were harvested and stored. The date marked both an ending and a beginning in an eternal cycle.
Not only did the date mark the end of autumn (the bright half of the year) it also signified the end of the old year and the beginning of the new: Celtic New Year’s Eve, when the new year begins with the onset of the dark phase of the year. The festival observed at this time was called Samhain (pronounced Sah-ween). It was the biggest and most significant holiday of the Celtic year. According to Mike Nichols from his article, All Hallow’s Eve:
There are many representations of Celtic Gods with two faces, and it surely must have been one of them who held sway over Samhain. Like his Roman counterpart Janus, he would straddle the threshold, one face turned toward the past, in commemoration of those who died during the last year, and one face gazing hopefully toward the future, mystic eyes attempting to pierce the veil and divine what the coming year holds. These two themes, celebrating the dead and divining the future, are inexorably intertwined in Samhain, as they are likely to be in any New Year’s celebration.
The Celts believed that at the time of Samhain, more so than any other time of the year, the ghosts of the dead were able to mingle with the living, (the veil separating the two worlds blurred for that one evening). At Samhain the souls of those who had died during the year traveled into the otherworld. They would come to celebrate with their family, tribe or clan. People gathered to sacrifice animals, fruits, and vegetables. The spirit world was accessible through the burial mounds. The great burial mounds of Ireland were opened up twice a year: once at Beltane and again at Samhain, making the beginning and end of Summer highly spiritually resonant. The walls were lined with burning torches to assist the dead in finding their way. They also lit bonfires in honor of the dead, to further aid them on their journey, and to keep them away from the living. Extra places were set at the table and food set out for any who had died that year.
So, you may ask: “How in the world did this Festival of the Dead become our modern day “Halloween? ”
This can be attributed to the spread of Christianity. Think of the Arthurian Legends: the diminishing of the “Old Religion” as personified through Merlin and the Lady of the Lake being banished, sent underground as the “New Religion” takes over. As a result of their efforts to wipe out “pagan” holidays, such as Samhain, the Christians succeeded in effecting major transformations in it. In 601 A.D. Pope Gregory the First issued an edict to his missionaries concerning the native beliefs and customs of the peoples he hoped to convert. Rather than try to obliterate native people’s customs and beliefs, the pope instructed his missionaries to use them: if a group of people worshipped a tree, rather than cut it down, he advised them to consecrate it to Christ and allow it continued worship. Very clever, indeed!
This brilliant strategy became the basic approach used in Catholic missionary work. Church holy days were purposely set to coincide with native (Pagan) holy days. Christmas, for instance, was assigned the arbitrary date of December 25th because it corresponded with the mid-winter celebration of many peoples. Likewise, St. John’s Day was set on the Summer Solstice.
Of course, with its emphasis on the supernatural, Samhain was obviously a Pagan festival. Pagan beliefs, deities, etc. of the “Old Religion” were deemed by the Christians as “evil” and associated with the devil. Thus the Druids, (the priests, poets, scholars and scientists and spiritual leaders of the Celts) were considered evil worshippers of devilish or demonic gods and spirits. And the Celtic underworld inevitably became identified with the Christian Hell.
Although this strategy was successful in diminishing the beliefs in the traditional Pagan gods, it did not completely eradicate them… much to the dismay of the Christians. Thus, belief in magic and the supernatural persisted and when the Church defined them as being not merely dangerous, but malicious, the followers of the Old Religion were forced into hiding and were branded as witches.
The Christian feast of All Saints was assigned to November 1st in 835 A.D. The day honored every Christian saint. This feast day was created to substitute for Samhain, to draw the devotion of the Celtic peoples, and, eventually replace it forever. Complete substitution never happened, however the traditional Celtic deities were diminished in status, becoming faeries and leprechauns of the more recent traditions.
The old beliefs associated with Samhain never died out completely; perhaps the powerful symbolism of the traveling dead was too strong and too basic to the human psyche. Recognizing the depth of the old beliefs, the church tried once more to replace the energies of Samhain by introducing another feast day in 998 A.D. November 2nd was established as All Souls Day – a day when the living prayed for the souls of all the dead in the belief that the souls of those who had recently departed remained in a sort of limbo state and needed the prayers of the living to guide them to heaven. Although the practice of retaining traditional customs of the Old Religion while attempting to redefine them in Christian terms had a sustaining effect, the Old Religion beliefs and customs lived on, just in new guises.
All Saints Day, otherwise known as All Hallows Day (hallowed means sanctified or holy), continued the ancient Celtic traditions. The evening prior to the day (our Halloween) was the time of the most intense activity, both human and supernatural. People continued to celebrate All Hallows Eve as a time of the wandering dead, but the supernatural beings were now thought to be evil. Eventually, the name “All Hallows Eve” was shortened to the current “Hallow’een”.
In effect, Halloween became one vigil for two feasts celebrated by the whole Church. In the 16th century at the time of the Reformation, most Protestant churches discarded both the doctrine of the communion of saints and the practice of praying for the dead. All Hallows Eve became “hollow” for them, the vigil of an empty feast day and thus became “Reformation Day”.
According to wikipedia, Hallowe’en did not become a holiday in America until the 19th century, where lingering Puritan tradition meant even Christmas was scarcely observed before the 1800’s. The transatlantic migration of nearly two million Irish following the Irish Potato Famine (1845-1849) brought the holiday and its customs to America.
Commercial exploitation of the Halloween in America did not begin until the 20th century. Mass produced Halloween costumes did not appear in stores until the 1950’s, when trick-or-treating became a fixture of the holiday. In the United States, Halloween has become one of the most profitable holidays, next to Christmas, for retailers. Get this statistic!!! In 2005, the National Confectioners Association reported that 80% of adults planned to give out candy and that 93% of children planned to go trick-or-treating!!
As you are well aware, the main event of modern US-style Halloween is trick-or-treating, in which children dress up in costumes disguises and go door-to-door in their neighborhood, ringing each doorbell and yelling “trick or treat!” Although resembling the older tradition of “guising” in Ireland and Scotland, ritual begging on Halloween does not appear in English-speaking America until the 20th century. The wearing of costumes, for instance, and roaming from door to door demanding treats can be traced to the Celtic period and the first few centuries of the Christian era, when it was thought that the souls of the dead were out and around, along with fairies, witches, and demons. Offerings of food and drink were left out to placate them. As the centuries wore on, people began dressing like these creatures, performing antics in exchange for food and drink. This practice is called mumming, from which the practice of trick-or-treating evolved. To this day, witches, ghosts, and skeleton figures of the dead are among the favorite disguises. Halloween also retains some features that harken back to the original harvest holiday of Samhain, such as the customs of bobbing for apples and carving vegetables, as well as the fruits, nuts, and spices cider associated with the day.
In Ireland, great bonfires were lit throughout the breadth of the land. Young children in their guises were gladly received by the neighbors with some “fruit, apples and nuts and of course sweets” for the “Halloween Party”, whilst older male siblings played innocent pranks on bewildered victims.
In Scotland, children or “guisers” are more likely to recite: “The sky is blue, the grass is green, may we have our Halloween?” instead of “trick or treat”. They visit neighbors in groups and must impress the members of the houses they visit with a song, poem, trick, joke or dance in order to earn their treats. Traditionally, nuts, oranges, apples and dried fruit were offered, though sometimes children would also earn a small amount of cash, usually a sixpence. Very small children often take part, for whom the experience of performing can be more terrifying than the ghosts outside.
In England, trick or treating does take place, particularly in working class neighborhoods. On the whole, however, it is frowned upon as a form of begging and as a negative part of American global culture. Gotta love ‘em, eh??
So much for the simplicity of “Trick or treat, smell my feet, bring me something good to eat!”. I hope you have found this little journey into the origins of Halloween enlightening. I know I sure have.
I have a deeper appreciation for the magical, mystical qualities that gave birth to Hallowe’en. Perhaps it is a transformative, holy evening when the veil of separateness can be lifted and illusions of trickery can be illuminated. Perhaps this is a magical night that encourages us to respect death as a part of life. A time for looking back and also a time for “divining” our future from the perspective of the present moment. A time for silent prayer not only for those who have left the physical planet, but also for all beings on earth. Prayers of compassion, forgiveness and guidance…
Don’t we all at times feel like we’re just roaming around with only our little candles in a carved out pumpkin to light our way? And yet, we are grateful for that light, no matter how small it is.
Perhaps Halloween is a perfect time to ask yourself what disguises you wear? Or maybe there’s a particular way you’d like to be, a quality you’d like to embrace that you can “try on for size”. Find a costume that symbolizes that quality for you and wear it! The old traditions allowed this to be night when men would dress as women and women as men. For that one evening, they could understand what it was to be like the other… now that’s a very enlightening experience, wouldn’t you say??
Tradition shows us that at it’s root and always, October 31st has been a day of festival, of celebration and togetherness: food, cider, mischief, and of opening our minds to the possibilities of magic and the Spirit world. Traditions and beliefs that are deeper and stronger, almost cellular that will not be eradicated by an external force. Isn’t that what faith, trust and love is all about??
This year as you celebrate the season, I encourage you to embrace those qualities of faith, trust and love… to let your light shine bright and guide the way for others who are wandering… looking for “home”. On this evening, anything is possible!!
Oh yea… and a few treats could be fun, too!!
Remember, even at Hallowe’en: We are Divine Beings having a Human Experience on this planet!!