Halloween

Whether you like it or not, Halloween is big business. After Christmas and Easter, it’s the biggest event of the retail year and for most children too; decorations and dressing up, stories and sweets: it’s got ‘children’ written all over it! America often gets the blame for sending their exaggerated customs over here, and whilst it’s true it seemed to have embraced the culture wholeheartedly, consumed all its quirks and breathed new life – or death – into it, the ancient tradition did not begin there.

Jump back some 10,000 years, and the Celts lived and worked the land across much of Britain, Ireland and Northern France. Being farmers, their year revolved around the crop season, and they celebrated four festivals that coincided with the changing seasons. October/November marked the end of the harvest, the beginning of winter and the beginning of the Celtic new year, so there was a lot to celebrate; that period was known as Samhain. Pronounced Sow-wen-ye (Sow- as in female pig, not, ironically, planting seeds!) by the Irish Celts and Sau-vin by the Scottish Celts, it means ‘summer’s end’, and it was a three day festival marking the dying of the land. In Wales they called it  Calan Gaeaf (winter’s eve), the Cornish referred to it as Kalan Gwav  (the first day of winter) or Nos Calan Gwaf (the night of the first day of winter), and it is still celebrated today on the Isle of Man but known as Hop-tu-Naa. November 1st is the date we now associate with the festival, but dates would not have been so rigid back then, and the celebrations were governed more by the earth, and, indeed, the sky. When the last harvests were collected and Pleiades could be observed directly overhead at midnight, that was when Samhain would begin, and back then, it was around the end of October; now, that time would be November. On the night before the festival, the Celts believed the veil between their world and the Otherworld was at its thinnest, allowing Aos Si (pronounced Ees Shee) or souls of the dead to cross over. Sacrifices and offerings were made out of respect for the visiting spirits, and the celebration had far more significance than the fun it is today. There was genuine belief that if the gods were not appeased, the coming year would not be fruitful, and so the festival was compulsory. Food and drink was left outside by many, whilst others laid tables with the dead in mind, praying to the spirits and eating in silence to honour the ghosts dining with them. In the following days, those less fortunate would knock on doors, asking for food remnants from these ‘Dumb Suppers’, and it’s believed this is the origin of ‘Trick-or-Treating’. 

It was general practice to dress up too during Samhain to honour the departed, and masks were used to represent spirits, but if there was any chance an unsavoury soul could come back, the masks were also worn to ensure participants could not be recognised. Others felt dressing as the dead would help them blend in and confuse any malicious spirits wishing to do harm. Stories and legends may have come later, but they soon became part of the tradition and would be told about scary otherworldly creatures: Púca, who appeared in many guises – including cats –  kidnapped children, and to keep their own children safe, families would place their offerings outside of their villages to lure Púca away; Lady Gwen was known as Y Ladi Wen (White Lady) and was a headless woman, dressed in white, who, along with her black pig, would chase anyone if they were unlucky enough to be found wandering at night; and then there was the Dullahan, another headless figure, carrying his own head as he rode around on his sometimes headless horse – sometimes with head intact – with a whip made from a human spine, pulling a wagon made from other human bones… what’s not to like?

The bonfire – generally associated with November 5th in the UK – originated from Samhain. Fires in houses would be extinguished for the celebrations, and huge bonfires would be lit as part of efforts to welcome spirits; as the festival neared its culmination, the embers of these sacred fires would be distributed to homes of the villagers to ignite their fires again for the coming winter. Walking from one bonfire to another, often with cattle, was customary, and it was thought to cleanse those taking part. Some would jump over the fires – one must assume they would have been smaller bonfires – whilst others lay close to them, became consumed by smoke and allowed their fellow partygoers to jump over them. Many would throw cattle bones into the flames, and it was believed that bonfires were built from bones, and that’s where the name originated.

Pumpkins are a more recent tradition that came from the mass migration from Britain and Ireland to the USA. The Celts would carve out turnips for their children to carry as lanterns when begging for food, and the scary faces were, again, designed to protect those children from evil spirits. In the nineteenth century, when many Europeans set sail for the New World, many were Celts, and they took their traditions with them. Halloween continued as it had back home, but turnips were not as freely available; pumpkins, however, were, and they became the perfect replacement for these jack-o’-lanterns. The celebrations became as popular as they had in Britain, particularly trick-or-treating, and where songs had been sung or poetry recited in exchange for leftover food, the practice became more about acquiring treats and less about the exchange.

When Catholicism took hold in the UK, many pagan celebrations were given specific dates and assimilated into Christian ones, and Samhain was one of them. All Saints’ Day – also known as All Hallows’ Day – was originally celebrated in May, but in the 8th century, Pope Gregory moved it to November 1st to coincide with the Celtic festival; November 2nd became All Souls’ Day, a day to commemorate the dead, and in some areas of the UK, this was the day to knock on doors, and beg for leftover food – the practice became known as ‘souling’; dressing up as the dead was known as ‘guising’. The night before Samhain – or All Hallows’ Day – became known as All Hallows’ Eve and eventually shortened to Halloween. Much of the history of Samhain, however, comes from stories passed down through generations: there’s little written about pagan traditions before the 15th century, and by then they’d been consumed by Christianity, formalised and lost in their original guises. It was also the Catholic influence that changed the format from welcoming the dead to fearing them, and the wearing of masks became solely to hide from unwelcome spirits, bonfires built to ward them off and witches – once seen as mysterious curiosities – were persecuted for their practices. 

In the 17th century, however, Halloween celebrations ceased as they were steeped in Catholicism, and all Catholic practices were banned by government. When they eventually returned, the industrial revolution offered the opportunity for mass-production, and retail never looked back! Today, around £775million is spent on Halloween in the UK – potentially as much as £1billion! – and that’s unlikely to change. What has changed, though, is the concept: what started as a festival to mark the changing of the seasons and to honour the dead transformed into a time to fear them, and now, it’s a parody that’s more humorous than anything else, and maybe that’s just as well when children are the target of most celebrations. Begging for food was a necessity in neolithic times; begging for sweets now, not so much! And, of course, homemade masks have mostly been replaced by rather elaborate and convincing facepainting, and those that are bought tend to be modelled on more modern characters – particularly those from horror movies – so we have, indeed, come a long way from the origins of Samhain.

Whether you participate in Hallowwen or not, there’s no denying the buzz October 31st creates, so is it just the anticipation of millions of people looking to revel in a whirlwind of mass-produced costumes and sugar or were the Celts on to something…?