Halloween may be a secular affair today, dominated by candy, costume, and candy, but the holiday is rooted in an annual Celtic pagan festival called Samhain (pronounced “SAHwane”) which was later appropriated by the Early Catholic Church about 1,200 years ago.
The ancient Celts were an assortment of tribes and small kingdoms once scattered across western and central Europe with distinct languages and culture, says Frederick Suppe, a historian specializing in Celtic and medieval history at Ball State University in the Indiana.
Even after the Romans conquered their kingdom, the Celts continued to survive and prosper in places such as Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland, and Wales.
Halloween inspired by Samhain
The origins of Halloween can be traced back to the Celtic festival of Samhain, a Druidic festival held on October 31.
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Samhain, the Celtic festival which is the ancestor of Halloween, was linked to the way the Celts viewed the world. “All Celtic people designed a fundamental dichotomy between light and dark, with the former representing positive, lucky and fruitful values and the latter representing negative, threatening and destructive values,” Suppe explains.
The Celtic year began at sunset at the end of the fall harvest, continued into the darkness of winter and into early spring in the brightness of the summer growing season, and s’ is completed by the harvest. Two major festivals have divided their year: Beltane, which took place from April 30 to May 1 of our calendar, and Samhain, which took place from October 31 to November 1.
Samhain was the time when the spirit world became visible to humans, and the gods loved to play tricks on mortals. It was also a time when the spirits of the dead mingled with the living.
The Celts believed in collecting all of their crops by Samhain, “so that it would not be damaged by evil or malicious spirits who might return on the first evening of the dark half of the year,” Suppe says. “Symbolic offerings of the harvested food should be offered to the spirits to appease them.”
READ MORE: Samhain Traditions
The Pope adopts Celtic traditions
Pope Gregory I, the Great.
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The importance of pre-Christian customs in the lives of people apparently was not lost on the early Catholic Church. Pope Gregory I, also known as Saint Gregory the Great, who ruled the Church from 590 to 604 AD, advised a missionary visiting England that instead of trying to get rid of religious customs non-Christian peoples, they should simply convert. for a Christian religious purpose. For example, “the site of a pagan temple could be converted to become a Christian church,” Suppe says.
In this way, Samhain, the dark supernatural festival of the Celts, was finally converted and given a Christian context.
“The ancient Celts believed that all kinds of threatening spirits were to be found in Samhain,” Suppe says. “The early medieval Christian church believed in saints – Christians remarkable for their religious beliefs and their pious lives. But the saints also had a supernatural side, such as their involvement in miraculous events.
The Church therefore mixed up traditions involving Celtic spirits and Catholic saints. In the 800s, the Church designated November 1 as All Saints’ Day.
“The old beliefs associated with Samhain were never completely extinguished,” wrote folklorist Jack Santino in a 1982 article for the American Folklife Center. “The powerful symbolism of the living dead was too strong, and perhaps too fundamental for the human psyche, to be satisfied with the new, more abstract Catholic holiday honoring the saints.
Instead, Samhain’s first night, October 31, became All Hallows Day Evening, the night before the Saints were worshiped. That name eventually turned into Halloween, and it became the time when Christians could turn the supernatural symbolism and rituals of Samhain into spooky fun.
WATCH: The Celts on HISTORY Vault
Jack O’Lantern, Trick-or-Treating Origins
A group of children posed an illuminated Jack O’Lantern on a farm fence post on Halloween night.
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One of the rituals adopted by the Celts was the carving of pumpkins, which had religious significance. “The custom of the jack-o-lantern is to place the fire – which mimics the good magic of the sun – inside a hollowed-out vegetable, representing the harvest,” Suppe says. This was done “in the hope that the good magic will help preserve the food harvested during the dark half of the year, until the next growing season can replenish the food stocks of the community.”
Later, in Ireland and Scotland, people developed the custom of using similarly carved plant lanterns to scare the mythical character of Stingy Jack, who wandered the Earth because the devil would not let him in. hell.
READ MORE: How Jack O’Lanterns Was Born In Irish Myth
Likewise, “the practice of rigging or treatment has its origin in the Celtic custom of giving symbolic pieces of the harvest to spirits wandering outside houses on Samhain’s evening, to appease them and prevent them from doing things. destructive to crops or homes, ”Suppe says. Once Christianity was established in the Celtic regions, young unmarried men paraded on Halloween, going into homes and calling for gifts to the spirits.
“It was a time when the hard work of harvesting was over, so they could indulge in pranks to let off steam,” Suppe says. In Scotland, groups of young men were called “guisers” (pronounced “GEE-zers”) because they wore disguises – the beginning of the custom of wearing Halloween costumes.
Centuries later, Halloween customs were introduced to the United States by immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and other ancient homelands of the Celts. As an 1894 article in Christian work Describes the holiday: Halloween is a night “where witches, evil spirits and all the evil brewing spirits took place at dark and mysterious midnight.”
READ MORE: Why do witches fly on brooms? The story behind the legend
