Holiday History: This Is Hallowe’en!

Happy Halloween everybody! Or, as the ancient Celts would have said, Meighach Samhain (according to Bess)! In honor of this lovely day, we (meaning Brenna) are providing a brief description of the lineage of this spooky holiday and its companion days, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day.

Hallowe’en, or All Hallows’ Eve, is the night before All Saints' Day in the Christian calendar. However, the basis of our actual Halloween practices date back to the pagan holiday of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). Samhain is the second of the Druidic fire holidays, the other one being Beltane (May Day). Beltane was all about fertility, with the coming of spring. Samhain was a preparation for the coming of winter.

It was also believed that this was a time in the year when the veil separating this world and the beyond was at its thinnest. This meant that magics would be more powerful, and that the sidhe (faeries) and other such creatures would be seen more in this realm; it also meant a unique closeness to the dead. One Samhain tradition was to set a place at the table for every member of your family who had died so that you could eat with them.

However, superstitions about the Druidic beliefs about the presence of spirits beside those of the dead led the Christians who adopted the holiday to create their own rituals. The idea of carving the Jack O’ Lantern was designed to frighten away evil spirits and to ward off witches. If we were to go back to, say, America in the 1700’s, we might recognize quite a few of the practices which they engaged in, though I believe that they might be a bit put off by our practice of Trick or Treating.

This belief about the connection to the dead carried into the Christian tradition, leading to All Hallows’ Eve and the following day of All Saints’ Day. Whether to the druids or the Christians, this day was always about remembering the dead and the fact that, in some way, they are still with us.

Tomorrow, All Saint’s Day, and the following day of All Souls’ Day, are highly celebrated in Mexico and are known as Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). It is a combination of Catholic and Aztec tradition. Their traditional practices include decorating skeletons and setting up alters for those who have died. They also make Pan de los Muertos, which is bread with sugar in it. They put it out on the stoop for the dead to eat. Once it’s gone stale, that means that the dead have eaten it. We get the tradition of dressing up from Dia de los Muertos and, like the Jack O’ Lantern, it was designed to scare away the spirits.

All Saints’ Day is celebrated in France, more so than Halloween. It’s called Toussaint. They have a practice where they put chrysanthemums, the traditional funeral flower in France, on the graves of those who have died.

This entry certainly ended up being a collaborative effort, with help from both Gillian and Bess, so thanks guys! I hope that we will all have a wonderful Halloween. For those who care, we watched It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown! last night and we’re watching Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride tonight.

Even if you don’t go Trick or Treating or anything like that, take the time out for a ghost story. And set an extra place or two tonight. After all, you never know who will show up…