Ancient
Origins of Halloween
Halloween's
origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced
sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland,
the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November
1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the
dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death.
Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the
worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31
they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead
returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts
thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the
Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people
entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an
important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.
To
commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people
gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During
the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads
and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration
was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier
that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming
winter.
By 43 A.D.,
the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course
of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of
Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain.
The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally
commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the
Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the
incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition
of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.
On May
13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all
Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in
the Western church. Pope Gregory III (731–741) later expanded the festival to
include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13
to November 1. By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into
Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted the older Celtic
rites. In 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to
honor the dead. It is widely believed today that the church was attempting to
replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned
holiday. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires,
parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All
Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from
Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it,
the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called
All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
Halloween
Comes to America
Celebration
of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid
Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern
colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups as
well as the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween
began to emerge. The first celebrations included "play parties,"
public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share
stories of the dead, tell each other's fortunes, dance and sing. Colonial
Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and
mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual
autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere
in the country.
In the
second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants.
These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato
famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.
Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in
costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that
eventually became today's "trick-or-treat" tradition. Young women
believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their
future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.
In the
late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more
about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and
witchcraft. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and
adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on
games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Parents were encouraged by
newspapers and community leaders to take anything "frightening" or
"grotesque" out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts,
Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the
beginning of the twentieth century.
By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had
become a secular, but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide
parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools
and communities, vandalism began to plague Halloween celebrations in many
communities during this time. By the 1950s, town leaders had
successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday
directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during
the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom
or home, where they could be more easily accommodated. Between 1920 and 1950,
the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived.
Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to
share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks
being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats.
A new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today,
Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the
country's second largest commercial holiday.
Today's
Halloween Traditions
The
American Halloween tradition of "trick-or-treating" probably dates
back to the early All Souls' Day parades in England. During the festivities,
poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called
"soul cakes" in return for their promise to pray for the family's
dead relatives. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as
a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming
spirits. The practice, which was referred to as "going a-souling" was
eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their
neighborhood and be given ale, food, and money.
The
tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic
roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time.
Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the
short days of winter were full of constant worry. On Halloween, when it was
believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they
would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by
these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so
that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. On Halloween, to keep
ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their
homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.
Halloween
Superstitions
Halloween
has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began
as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to
deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at
the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and
lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world. Today's
Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our
customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black
cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many
people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into cats.
We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may
have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred;
it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning
ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And around Halloween, especially, we try to
avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.
But
what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today's trick-or-treaters
have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future
instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had
to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring
them that they would someday—with luck, by next Halloween—be married. In
18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed
potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found
it. In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name
a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace.
The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went,
represented the girl's future husband. (In some versions of this legend,
confusingly, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love
that would not last.) Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary
concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween
night she would dream about her future husband. Young women tossed apple-peels
over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the
shape of their future husbands' initials; tried to learn about their futures by
peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water; and stood in front of mirrors
in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their
husbands' faces. Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween
parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first
to marry; at others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first down
the aisle.
Of course,
whether we're asking for romantic advice or trying to avoid seven years of bad
luck, each one of these Halloween superstitions relies on the good will of the
very same "spirits" whose presence the early Celts felt so keenly.
