As we approach this most curious of festivals, I thought it might be interesting to examine the origins of Halloween, this strange and ghoulish event.
Halloween, a contraction of All Hallows’ Eve, is a holiday observed on October 31, the evening before All Saints’ Day in the Christian church. A day commemorating all the saints of the church, both known and unknown, who have attained heaven. It’s celebrated on November 1 in the Western churches and on the first Sunday after Pentecost in the Eastern churches.
In in the Roman Catholic Church, it used to be a feast carried that carried with it a ‘holy days of obligation’. This was a day with Catholics would attend Mass and the sacrament.
The celebration marks the day before the Western Christian feast of All Saints and initiates the season of Allhallowtide, which lasts three days and concludes with All Souls Day. In much of Europe and most of, North America observance of Halloween is largely nonreligious. Halloween is celebrated on Monday, October 31, 2022.
Halloween had its origins in the festival of Samhain among the Celts of ancient Britain and Ireland. On the day corresponding to November 1 on contemporary calendars, the new year was believed to begin. That date was considered the beginning of the Winter period, the date on which the herds were returned from pasture and land tenures were renewed.
During the Samhain festival the souls of those who had died were believed to return to visit their homes, and those who had died during the year were believed to journey to the otherworld.
People set bonfires on hilltops for relighting their hearth fires for the winter and to frighten away evil spirits, and they sometimes wore masks and other disguises to avoid being recognised by the ghosts thought to be present.
It was in those ways that beings such as witches, hobgoblins, fairies, and demons came to be associated with the day. The period was also thought to be favourable for divination on matters such as marriage, health, and death.
When the Romans conquered the Celts in the 1st century CE, they added their own festivals of Feralia, commemorating the passing of the dead, and of Pomona, the goddess of the harvest.
In the 7th century CE Pope Boniface IV established All Saints Day, originally on May 13, and in the following century, perhaps in an effort to supplant the pagan holiday with a Christian observance, it was moved to November 1. The evening before All Saints’ Day became a holy, or hallowed, eve and thus Halloween. By the end of the Middle Ages, the secular and the sacred days had merged.
The Reformation essentially put an end to the religious holiday among Protestants, although in Britain especially Halloween continued to be celebrated as a secular holiday. Along with other festivities, the celebration of Halloween was largely forbidden among the early American colonists, although in the 1800s there developed festivals that marked the harvest and incorporated elements of Halloween.
When large numbers of immigrants, including the Irish, went to the United States beginning in the mid 19th century, they took their Halloween customs with them, and in the 20th century Halloween became one of the principal U.S. holidays, particularly among children.
As a secular holiday, Halloween has come to be associated with a number of activities. One is the practice of pulling usually harmless practical jokes, or childish pranks. Although the Hollywood has taken it to a whole new daemonic level with a collection of B,C and D grade horror movies. Celebrants wear masks and costumes for parties and for trick-or-treating, thought to have derived from the British practice of allowing the poor to beg for food, called “soul cakes.”
Trick-or-treaters go from house to house with the threat that they will pull a trick if they do not receive a treat, usually candy. Halloween parties often include games such as bobbing for apples, perhaps derived from the Roman celebration of Pomona. Along with skeletons and black cats, the holiday has incorporated scary beings such as ghosts, witches, and vampires into the celebration.
Another symbol is the jack-o’-lantern, in American holiday custom, a hollowed-out- pumpkin lantern that is displayed on Halloween. The surface of the pumpkin is carved to resemble a face Light from a candle inserted inside can be seen flickering through the jack-o’-lantern’s cut-out eyes, nose, and usually grotesquely grinning mouth. The custom originated in the British Isles, with a large turnip or other vegetable rather than a pumpkin.
