The Real Story of Halloween
If you don’t like Halloween, we can’t be friends. I don’t care if you celebrate with a drunken costume party, pumpkin carving, door-to-door begging for candy, or a more personal ritual like watching horror movies alone, but respect should be given to the most amazing of them all. all holidays. But where did Halloween come from and how did it end up like this – gestures towards everything – like this?
Halloween is slippery. There is no obvious reason to celebrate October 31st. This does not mark the anniversary of anything. This date is adjacent to a religious holiday, but Halloween itself is not a religious holiday. Modern Halloween practices and stereotypes are tied together like a cultural sweater, partly from disparate ancient traditions, religious rites and folk practices (perhaps) and partly from modern sources. There is no clear line between the past holiday and the current Halloween, and anything we think about where Halloween “came from” can be speculation, and any thoughts about what it means are opinions. A true folk holiday, Halloween is a murky, confusing collection of practices that owes much to Peanuts comics as well as medieval Catholicism.
The (Slightly Questionable) Ancient Origins of Halloween
The most commonly repeated origin story for Halloween is that the holiday began with the celebration of Samhain (pronounced sah-win or sow) by the Celts in Ireland, England and Northern France. The date November 1 or October 31 is roughly halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, and ninth-century Irish literature describes gatherings and celebrations marking Samhain, the day on which ancient burial mounds were discovered, and with them portals to the Otherworld, the land of the gods and the dead. Later, the theory goes, these customs were Christianized, renamed “All Hallows’ Day” and “All Hallows’ Eve” by the early church, and that’s where we got Halloween.
Or maybe not. The idea that Halloween originated from pagan rituals usurped by Christians originated with the Welsh scholar Sir John Rhys, and he did not back up his theory with a ton of evidence. Some modern historians argue that there is little connection between Celtic festivals and early Christian customs, with medieval Christian festivals representing the real basis of the holiday. We know that medieval Christians celebrated All Hallows’ and All Souls’ Days during the celebration of Allhallowtide—the time of the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead—by holding public festivals focusing on dead souls, decorating skeletons, and other Halloween-like activities. So why did they need Samhain?
In any case, both All Souls’ Day and Samhain may have primordial roots that are older than history. Harvest festivals were a common occurrence in many places, and if you squint, they resemble Halloween parties. The holiday falls at the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter, the time between life and death when both pagan and Christian minds turn to the inevitable end of things. Even if the details vary, Halloween traditions generally pay homage to the place between life and death.
Historical Halloween
Regardless of where it actually began, in 835 All Saints’ Day (1 November) became an official Catholic day of obligation, and Allhallowtide included traditions such as church bells ringing for souls in purgatory and black-clad heralds , taking to the streets to remind people to think about the dead. Mostly tortured dead.
Another tradition of that time was the baking of “soul cakes” in memory of the dead. This led to ” souling “, where groups of children went from house to house asking for cakes in exchange for prayers for the dead. Later, soulers also carried carved lanterns made from hollowed out turnips. Is this where trick or treat and Jack-o-lanterns come from? Maybe, maybe not. It does not appear that soul children wore costumes, although “cross-dressing” or “mumming” (dressing in costumes and pestering neighbors for treats and/or money) was practiced in various places in Europe during other holidays, especially during Christmas.
Another theory about the origins of Halloween costumes comes from the late medieval French tradition of the Danse Macabre , a dance of death. Perhaps in response to the Black Plague ravaging Europe, 14th-century artists depicted a personification of Death flanked by figures of the pope, emperor, king, child and worker—people from all walks of life—dancing toward the grave. . Live versions of the Danse Macabre were performed at village performances, no doubt to everyone’s delight and horror. The grotesque yet comical performance reminded people that Death will come for everyone, but also that we should have as much fun as possible before the inevitable, and there is nothing more “Halloween” than this – in theory.
Halloween in America
In colonial America, Halloween was not widely celebrated. New England Puritans generally discouraged anything fun like wearing costumes, dancing with Death, or carving pumpkins, although more liberal colonists in New York, Maryland, and further south may have brought some Halloween-like activities with them overseas from their villages. in Germany or other countries. Ireland. In any case, Halloween was not a major event in either the US or Europe until the late 1800s.
The earliest American expression of Halloween-like events, held in late October or early November, were “game parties” or fall festivals celebrating the harvest. These gatherings, immortalized in Washington Irving’s horror tale The Legend of Sleepy Hollow , often included ghost stories, attempts at fortune telling, apple tossing, practical jokes and attempts to scare people – proto-Halloween events, sure, but not Halloween as we know it we know.
It wasn’t until mass Irish immigration in the 19th century that we see Halloween celebrations labeled as such. Beginning around the 1850s, Irish immigrants came to the country to escape the potato famine. These immigrants brought Halloween celebrations to the United States, but they do not appear to have brought Halloween costumes or candy with them.
Trick or Treat and the Mysterious Nature of Halloween
All of our modern ideas about Halloween traditions being derived from some ancient practice or other may be examples of gathering evidence to support the conclusion that our modern Halloween traditions have deep origins in general. But what if they don’t?
“Trick or treat” is the most famous expression of Halloween, but despite historical examples of costumed revelers and/or people going door to door begging for treats during the holidays, there doesn’t seem to be any trick-or-treating here. evidence of a direct connection between these old practices and modern trick-or-treating. Yes, it’s a bit like souling, but no one in America seems to have ever practiced soul. There is no evidence that anyone wore Halloween costumes in the United States, Great Britain, or Ireland before 1900 , leading some Halloween researchers to suggest that American children developed trick-or-treating and costume-wearing independently of any older tradition.
The first printed mention of a collection of Halloween candy in costumes appeared in a newspaper in Kingston, Ontario in 1911. It has remained so obscure that nothing similar is mentioned in Ruth Edna Kelly’s 1919 holiday history, The Book of Halloween. , and none of the many Halloween cards printed in the 1920s feature any pranksters. The practice does not seem to have become widespread until the late 1930s, when the first mentions of it appeared in national publications, and it did not become widespread until the early 50s, when it appeared in a Peanuts comic strip and a Disney cartoon.
Halloween: a national holiday
Ultimately, we know little about the origins of Halloween because its meaning and the way we celebrate it are constantly changing: it used to be a day of parties celebrating the harvest, when people told fortunes to each other; then the day came for the kids to go trick or treating. This day used to be reserved for children only, but now adults dressed in sexy Martha Washington costumes and celebrating with booze are accepted and even expected. Halloween is constantly changing and it seems impossible to pinpoint it.
Other major holidays are religious or intended to commemorate a specific historical event – these are descending holidays, where the Pope or government has decreed that everyone will get a day off on that specific date and will celebrate it in a certain way. But Halloween is a folk holiday, so there is no official volume that tells us how we should celebrate it, or even any reason why we should celebrate it, but every year we do it anyway, just out of collective desire get some candy or do something magical and fun before it gets too cold.