The History of Halloween
A Secular Holiday that Blends Pagan and Early Christian Traditions
Oct 22, 2009
Halloween wasn’t always about candy, costume parties and decorating front yards with Jack-o’-lantern carvings. Centuries ago, when, for most Europeans, winter represented a dark, daunting time, the rituals that were later incorporated into Halloween helped people cope with the uncertainty of long winter nights and the intrusion of the world of the dead into the world of the living.
Celtic Origins of Halloween
The story of Halloween begins almost two thousand years ago, in north-western Europe. The oldest ritual that is believed to have been synthesized into what is now Halloween can be traced back to the ancient Celts, a group of tribal societies that inhabited Europe since the Early Iron Age (cca. 1200 BC – 400 AD). By the first millennium AD, the Celts, whose territory was now limited to the British Isles and northern France, had developed a distinct culture, rich in rituals, beliefs and superstitions.
The Celts celebrated their New Year on November 1st, the day that marked the end of summer and prepared people for the winter ahead. On the night before the New Year, the Celtic tribes engaged in the celebration of Samhain (pronounced sow-in), an annual harvest festival. In his book Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, Nicholas Rogers describes Samhain as “an old pastoral and agricultural festival”, a pagan holiday that marked the passage to winter, a season often associated with death. The Celts believed that, on Samhain night, the ghosts of the dead roamed the earth, damaging crops and haunting the houses of the living. Samhain was loaded with superstitions. On this night, young women were advised to look in the mirror in a darkened room, so they may catch a glimpse of their future husband – a practice that was called divination.
During the festivities, the Celts built sacred bonfires, where Druids (Celtic priests) sacrificed animals and burnt crops, seeking the favor and the protection of the Celtic deities. To avoid being recognized by the ghosts and evil spirits that wandered around on Samhain, people often wore masks and costumes when they left their homes. The Celts also left bowls of food and wine outside their houses for the ghosts, hoping to appease them and to protect their homes from the spirits.
Halloween Becomes a Church-Sanctioned Holiday
After they conquered the Celtic territories in the first century AD, the Romans started to incorporate their own holidays into the traditional Celtic festivals. Samhain was soon blended with Feralia, the Roman commemoration of the dead, which was also celebrated in late October. The other Roman tradition that was assimilated into the celebration of Samhain was the holiday of Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit, which resonated with the Celtic harvest day. The apple was considered the symbol of Pomona, a symbol that is still featured in today’s Halloween decorations, costumes and rituals.
As Christianity gained ground in the Roman Empire, pagan traditions that had been celebrated for centuries in the conquered territories were gradually replaced with Christian holidays. In the seventh century, November 1st became a church-sanctioned holiday, the day designated by Pope Boniface IV as All Saints’ Day. The new holiday adopted by the Celts and by other Christianized tribes was meant to commemorate the saints and the martyrs of the new religion. All Saints’ Day, which naturally replaced the Roman commemoration of the dead as well as the Celtic Samhain, was preceded by All-hallows Eve, which eventually became Halloween night.
Halloween in America
Some of the early European colonists that crossed the ocean transplanted their All Saints’ Day and Halloween traditions to America. However, Halloween was not widely celebrated in America until the second half of the nineteenth century. While annual harvest festivals and holidays commemorating the dead were common in the colonies, blending European and Native American traditions, the Protestant faith did not encourage the observance of a holiday that featured witch and ghost stories, pagan dances and fortune telling.
Halloween celebrations remained limited in the United Stated until the influx of Irish immigrants, brought to America by the Irish potato famine of 1846, reinforced Celtic-based Halloween traditions, popularizing this holiday and reshaping American culture. The American version of Halloween revived ancient Celtic traditions such as divination, building bonfires and wearing costumes and masks. Dressed up in costumes, people knocked on their neighbors’ doors, asking for food or money, a ritual that eventually became the trick-or-treating that is synonymous with Halloween today. This tradition synthesized both the ghost appeasing rituals of the ancient Celts and the All Souls’ Day traditions of the British, who gave food and money to the poor, asking them to pray for their benefactors’ dead relatives.
In the twentieth century, Halloween became a secular holiday embraced by most Americans. While some Celtic Christian traditions still preserve the cultural aspects of Samhain, incorporating some of them into their religious services, and other churches observe the Christian holiday of All Saints’ Day, Halloween has lost its religious overtones, as well as the superstitious nuances that used to cast a shadow over this holiday. As mysticism faded, Halloween gradually became a commercial success, generating a multi-billion dollar industry that supplies costumes, Halloween decorations, sweets and haunted houses and attractions.
Today, Halloween is no longer about appeasing ghosts and finding comfort in the supernatural. It is a holiday that brings communities together by engaging them in neighborhood trick-or-treating and town-wide parties, a holiday that gives children and parents the opportunity to unleash their imagination, in search of the perfect Halloween costume.
References:
Nicholas Rogers. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.
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