Halloween
-Chrissie

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            Halloween as we celebrate it in the modern world is a combination of the harvest traditions of pre-Christian Europe and the Christian traditions around the intervention of saints and prayers for the dead.

            The main pre-Christian holiday that is associated with Halloween is Samhain (pronounced sah-wain), which was celebrated primarily in Ireland and Scotland. This was a holiday that celebrated the harvest and acknowledged the beginning of winter. A central part of the celebration was a bonfire around which the community gathered for sharing a meal and drink as well as storytelling. Divination rituals may also have been practiced at this time, in hopes of learning what the next year would bring. When people returned to their homes, they carried some of the fire with them to reignite the hearth fire which had been doused before the ceremonies. This connected the community through use of the common fire.

            Samhain was also the time at which the barrier between the living and the spirit worlds was perceived to be at its weakest, meaning the spirits of the dead could mingle with the living. People created space for the visiting spirits in their homes, often setting an extra place at the table for them. Happy spirits could bestow gifts and blessings upon their kin; unhappy spirits could cause misery.

            Halloween also has roots in the Roman festival of Lemuria, in which Roman homes would be exorcized of any ill-intended spirits or ghosts. This had been traditionally held in the middle of May and when Christianity was Romanized, Lemuria became the Feast of All Saints, or All Hallows Day, a holy day of obligation on which one prayed for the souls of those who had died in the previous year and venerated the saints. All Hallows was moved to 1 November by Pope Gregory III, likely with the intent to Christianize the harvest festivals, like Samhain, and use them to bring people into the Church.

            In Medieval Europe, the eve of the Feast of All Hallows was a time at which people would give alms to the poor as a means of offering prayers for their dead loved ones. In some places, the poor would be made to go to each house and request the donation, which was often given in the form of “soul cakes” on which a cross was decorated (similar to the hot cross buns associated with Lent). There might also be pageants in which children dressed as various saints and then requested the soul cakes from people around the community. These cakes were also left at graves for the souls to collect. It certainly doesn’t take a great leap to connect these traditions to costuming and trick-or-treating.

            A number of the sects which separated from Roman Catholicism during the Reformation did not acknowledge the holiday or the rituals around it. There was too much of Catholicism in them and Halloween, in particular, had too many elements of paganism associated with it. In a time when people perceived witchcraft as a real thing that could do harm to individuals and the community, the idea of treating it playfully was inappropriate. Instead, they celebrated Reformation Day, commemorating the day that Martin Luther had posted his 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. The Puritans, an offshoot of the Anglicans, made a point of not celebrating any Catholic holy days, including the Feast of All Saints. Instead, they, like many of their contemporaries in England, celebrated Guy Fawkes night on 5 November, to remind everyone just how much they hated Catholics.

            In the British colonies that would become the United States, mostly populated by Protestants, Halloween was not much celebrated. Maryland was the exception that proved the rule, as it was a Catholic colony. That did not mean, however, that the harvest was not celebrated, or the oncoming winter was not acknowledged. People gathered to share a banquet of the recently harvested fresh food before most of it was preserved for the winter ahead.

            The Jack-o-lantern, a Halloween necessity, is connected directly to the Irish who immigrated to the US in the nineteenth century. They had a tradition making lanterns of turnips with scary faces carved into them, which would ward off ill-intentioned spirits. This practice was easily transitioned to the pumpkin, with the scary faces, of course, but also all sorts of intricate carvings and decorations.

The modern Halloween is very much associated with how it is celebrated in the United States. Many Halloween traditions that came to the Americas with immigrants have been reworked and then exported back to their home countries. The costuming and begging traditions of Medieval Christendom became Trick or Treating; jack-o-lanterns are still made, but from pumpkins instead of turnips; scary stories are still told, but they are now also acted out in increasingly elaborate haunted houses. Halloween gatherings for children and adults alike often still involve the sharing of a meal, a bonfire, and playing games. And, while we may not actively invite the spirits of the dead to visit, they are inevitably included in our reminiscences about Halloweens past.