Halloween–for many people the best holiday of all. Slinky cats, flittery bats, kids on the loose in the dark in costumes that would do a Goth proud, ghosts and magic and just a hint of mayhem held at bay…for a lot of us any other holiday looks a bit drab in comparison. But where did it all start? Is there a beginning to Halloween?
Halloween is a holiday created by the blending of traditions. A mix of old northern European pagan rites and celebrations, Christian beliefs, and modern imagination Halloween has many roots.
The pagan traditions are largely Irish, tied to celebrations of Samhain. A celebration of the end of harvest it was also a time of recognizing the presence of the spirits of the dead. Some scholars think this connection has to do with the nature of the harvest, with the killing of livestock and the cutting of produce. Some think it may indicate that Samhain was the start of the Celtic pagan year.
The ancient celebrations included the burning of the bones of slaughtered livestock in a “bone fire” (now reduced to being a common, wood based bonfire). The village would extinguish all household fires and relight them fresh from the bone fire, marking a new beginning in preparation for the coming winter. As a time marking the presence of the dead and the power of the supernatural Samhain included many of the fortune telling rituals, ghostly themes, and spooky-shivery atmosphere we now associate with Halloween.
The holiday was tied to Christian All Saints’ and All Souls’ celebrations. This created a stronger tie with the elements of the dead, and set up a still-present conflict between Christian theology, pagan rituals, and people’s ideas of good and evil. For many traditional Christians the pagan elements that remain in Halloween make it an unholy celebration. For many neo-pagans structuring a faith on the old pagan traditions it is an especially holy time. Both groups tend to get deeply distressed by the average American’s happy involvement with Halloween as a purely secular holiday: a time of fun, play, just a touch of imaginary horror, and lots of costume play.
The purely secular holiday grew out of the already playful Irish mingling of both All Saints/All Souls celebrations and the remaining elements of bonfires, magic, mischievous haunts (in costume, of course), jack-o-lanterns made of turnips rather than American pumpkins, and door to door begging.
On coming to the States during the Great Potato Famine the Irish immigrants kept their old customs, which quickly spread to communities beyond. Who could resist the costumes, the trick-or-treats, the fun hiding behind the masks and shadows? But the traditional celebration was adopted without the entire religious and cultural framework. As a result American Halloween is, for most people, a joyful child’s holiday that adults are allowed to enjoy too…and nothing more.