The 31st of October is one of my favorite of the year’s celebrations – sweets, pumpkins, black cats and costumes – it has all of the fun and less of the forced religion that lurks around Christmas. Religion was also central to the beginnings of Halloween, it just appears in what, for me, is a far enticing form – one ancient and Pagan.
1. A Day for the Dead
There’s something about this time of year… the lengthening of the dark hours of night, the chill of approaching winter, the earie fingers of bare tree branches. Most pagan religions celebrated a festival for the dead – a time when the veil separating our world from theirs thins, the spirits of loved ones wonder and society is reminded of its impermanence. For Athens, you had the ‘Chyri’, literally a ‘feast of pots’, the third day in the Anthesteria festival. On this day graves were decorated, offerings of food were left for the deceased and temples locked to keep them out. In Egypt, festival was held for the death of Osiris in which a spread of food was left for spirits. The traditions celebrated in what we recognize as Halloween, however, stem from collections of ancient Scottish and Irish rites. The most famous of these rites is a festival for Samhain, Lord of the Dead, that was held on what was New Year in some ancient societies – 1st November. Samhain was supposed to assemble the souls that had died that year on this night and released them from the torment they had endured for the year as animals. This night, they roamed free.
2. Costumes and Parties
To appease and sometimes scare these spirits, a variety of raucous rites were held. Bonfires were lit to ward away evil spirits, sacrifices were held either to gods in the hope of protection or to the spirits themselves in appeasement. Remnants of these sacrifices can still be seen in modern Halloween traditions. For example, in some parts of Ireland a parade, led by a man in a horse skull is held, supposedly this harks back to the sacrifice of horses a sun god. The thinning of the veil, the release of spirits and monsters is also the cause of the various imitations of monsters, well known media characters and random everyday people and items that hold court in the Halloween parties of the 21st century. Revelers would dress in costume to blend in with the monsters, disguised so as not to be recognized for the mortals they were – a safety blanket in the form of some fake vampire fangs. Well, really, traditional costumes were probably much more like the horse headed procession leader – animal skins and skulls. I do think, though, the sentiment of becoming something else, something powerful, to escape the fragility of your own mortal life, still rings true in the spirit of dressing up for Halloween now.
3. Fairies
Speaking of costumes, faeries are often popular in Halloween parties and are perhaps the one most traditional of disguises in a modern sea of vampires and zombies. In ancient mythic tradition, goblins and faeries, powerful warlords far from the winged pixies of Christian patronization, joined the dead in their stalking of villages. Such creatures were supposedly the ghosts of ancient kings from Neolithic burial mounds, the names of the monuments’ true inhabitants lost by locals to the appeal of myth. These fairies road on Samhain’s festival, scornful of those who now ruled once proud lands, ready to instill fear and provide torment.
4. Witches and Black cats
Witches are of course the staple of Halloween finery – iconic with their pointed hats and black cats. Black cats are perhaps a less achievable feature of the costume, no one wants to lug around a stuffed cat, much less a real one, around on a night out. That being said, around Halloween a witch might be expected to be short of a cat, seeing as they were traditionally sacrificed as familiars of witches. Witches who were, I might add, normally far less the evil cackling old women of pop culture and more innocent women with a knowledge of herb lore. Samhain did in fact became a time of gathering for witches and warlocks in ruined churches and Neolithic monuments in less ancient times. These gatherings were held to mock what had become of Samhain – now the Church’s ‘All Hallows Eve’.
5. Christianization
Yes, as you might have guessed, the church got in on the fun being had by the Pagans and decided to handily rename such a festival in a more Christian light. Yes, you can tell your next ‘Halloween-Hating-Karen’ that refusing to give children sweets and instead reprimanding them with scripture because Halloween is ‘a night of the devil’ is not really a sound argument. The Church in fact popularized it (as they did with Saturnalia or its far more boring Christian name – Christmas), transforming the firelit rites of protection into a brightly lit, sterilized ‘Allhallows’ celebration. This feast was held to commemorate the spirits of saints, martyrs (etc.) because there were so many of them, you couldn’t have a whole day’s feast just for one of them. The calenda didn’t allow for it, the year was just too short (what a shame). ‘Allhallows’ slowly transitioned into ‘All Souls Day’ celebrated in the medieval period to remember souls stuck in Purgatory. This was done in a way that reverted back almost to its Pagan origins – processions filled with the loud clanging of bells. As is often the way, such celebrations were stopped by their own, contemporary ‘Karen’ – Queen Elizabeth I, because the bells were just too loud.
If you want to find out more about the fascinating origins of Halloween, I have cited two of the articles I used to research this article below…
- Linton, Ralph. “HALLOWEEN.” Scientific American 185, no. 4 (1951): 62–67. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24945292.
- Mullally, Erin. “SAMHAIN REVIVAL.” Archaeology 69, no. 6 (2016): 34–37. http://www.jstor.org/stable/26348788.