Halloween is celebrated annually. But just how and when did this peculiar
custom originate? Is it, as some claim, a kind of demon worship? Or is it
just a harmless vestige of some ancient pagan ritual?
The word itself, "Halloween,"
actually has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a
contracted corruption of All Hallows Eve. November 1, "All Hollows
Day" (or "All Saints Day"), is a Catholic day of observance
in honor of saints. But, in the 5th century BC, in Celtic Ireland, summer
officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en),
the Celtic New year.
One story says that, on that day, the
disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding
year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next
year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife, (Panati).
The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this
time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living, (Gahagan).
Naturally, the still-living did not want
to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish
the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. They would
then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded
around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to
frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess, (Panati).
Probably a better explanation of why the
Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession,
but so that all the Celtic tribes could relight their fires from a common
source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland,
at Usinach, (Gahagan).
Some accounts tell of how the Celts would
burn someone at the stake who was thought to have already been possessed,
as sort of a lesson to the spirits, (Panati). Other accounts of
Celtic history debunk these stories as myth, (Gahagan).
The Romans adopted the Celtic practices
as their own. But in the first century AD, they abandoned any practice of
sacrificing of humans in favor of burning effigies.
The thrust of the practices also changed
over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned,
the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a
more ceremonial role.
The custom of Halloween was brought to
America in the 1840's by Irish immigrants fleeing their country's potato
famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping
over outhouses and unhinging fence gates, (Panati).
The custom of trick-or-treating is
thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a
ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls
Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for
"soul cakes," made out of square pieces of bread with currants.
The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would
promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time,
it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death,
and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul's passage to
heaven.
The Jack-o-lantern custom probably
comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, who was
notorious as a drunkard and trickster, tricked Satan into climbing a tree.
Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree's trunk, trapping the
devil up the tree. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never
tempt him again, he would promise to let him down the tree.
According to the folk tale, after Jack
died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because of his evil ways, but he
was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead,
the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid
darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it
glowing longer.
The Irish used turnips as their
"Jack's lanterns" originally. But when the immigrants came to
America, they found that pumpkins were far more plentiful than turnips. So
the Jack-O-Lantern in America was a hollowed-out pumpkin, lit with an
ember.
So, although some cults may have adopted
Halloween as their favorite "holiday," the day itself did not
grow out of evil practices. It grew out of the rituals of Celts
celebrating a new year, and out of Medieval prayer rituals of Europeans.
And today, it is only as evil as one cares to make it.
© 1995-2002 by Jerry Wilson
References: Charles Panati, Extraordinary
Origins of Everyday Things, 1987; and Dr. Joseph Gahagan, University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Personal letter, 1997 |