A Most Bewitching Night
The History of Halloween
by Random History
Known variously as Samhain, Summer’s End, All
Hallow’s Eve, Witches Night, Lamswool, and SnapApple night, Halloween is among the world’s oldest
holidays. Rooted in ancient pagan and Christian
festivals that celebrated the inextricable link
between seasonal and life cycles, Halloween has
transcended its cultural roots and is currently
celebrated in various forms all over the modern world. Halloween as it exists today is an exciting
array of dichotomies as it delights both children and adults, prompts private religious
observance as well as public exhibitionism, and blends personal imagination with mass
marketing. A day full of magic and mystery, Halloween has not only survived, but it has thrived
during epic cultural, religious, economic, and industrial changes throughout its long history.
Roots in Ancient Celtic Festivals
The essential elements of Halloween, such as costuming,
trick-or-treating, lighting bonfires, telling ghost stories, and
attending community parties can be traced back 2000 years
ago to the ancient Celtic festival called Samhain (SOW-in or
SOW-an), which means “summer’s end.” As the second major
seasonal festival of the year (the first was called Beltain,
celebrated around May 1st), Samhain marked the death of
summer and the beginning of the Celtic New Year (Rogers
2002). As a moment of change, Samhain was viewed as a
night of magic and power. In a time where there was little
distinction between the diminishing sun and the possible
extinction of life, Samhain was an intensely sacred festival
that marked the boundaries between summer and winter and
life and death (Skal 2002).
The Celts (which included people from northern France,
Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany) believed that on October 31st the Lord of
Death, Saman, would call together all the souls that had died the previous year to travel to
afterlife during the Vigil of Samhain. Ancestral ghosts and demons emerged from sidh (ancient
mounds or barrows of the countryside) and were free to roam the earth, harm crops, and cause
trouble (Bannatyne 1990). The living would often disguise themselves in ghoulish costumes so
the spirits of the dead would think they were one of their own and pass by without incident. The
masked villagers would also form parades to lead the spirits out to the town limits. In addition to
masks and costumes and, arguably, as a precursor to modern-day trick-or-treating, the Celts
would also offer food to Saman to persuade him to more be temperate as he judged their
ancestors. Additionally, the Celts would lay out food for their weary ancestors traveling to the
other world or to appease spirits who were looking for trouble (Rogers 2002).
Because these roaming spirits were thought to hold the secrets of the afterlife and the future,
Celtic priests, or Druids, thought that divinations could be read with more clarity on this
particular day. The priests would light large fires to both strengthen the Sun god and to make
divinations by throwing a horse or cat (sometimes in a wicker cage) into the fire and watch the
burning entrails. At midnight, they would begin to worship Saman, who would be the ruler of the
earth for the next six months (Thompson 2003). Because the Celts were an oral culture, some
speculation remains whether the Druids actually practiced human sacrifice and the Roman
accounts (like Julius Caesar’s reports) are accurate or just instances of Roman propaganda
(Skal 2002).
Roman Festival of Pomona
When the Romans conquered the Celtic lands just before the birth of Christ, they both
assimilated and added to ancient Celtic Samhain symbols and rituals. For example, the festival
of Pomona, which celebrated the Roman Goddess of the harvest Pomona (or Pomorum) on
November 1st, contributed the feast of nuts and fruits to Samhain’s own autumn celebrations.
Apples, in particular, were associated with Pomona and were, for the Romans, a symbol of love
and fertility. The Druid belief that the eve of Samhain was the most potent night for
prognostication seems to have merged with aspects of the festival of Pomona in that dozens of
Halloween divinations began to use apples (and nuts) to predict one’s spouse (Thompson
2003). The Celtic and Roman traditions not created a night devoted to the dead, but also a night
for divination and romance. With the dawn of the first
century A.D., these pagan traditions would encounter a
new, powerful religion: Christianity.
All Saints and All Souls Days
After Constantine officially declared Christianity legal in
the Edict of Milan in A.D. 313, Christianity spread
throughout the Roman Empire. Realizing they would
have more success in converting others by assimilating
existing powerful pagan rites and symbols into Christian
rituals rather than obliterating them altogether, shrewd Church leaders gradually appropriated
Samhain and Panoma celebrations into the Catholic rituals of All Saints and All Souls Days. In
fact, Pope Gregory III moved All Saints Day (or All Hallow’s Day, in England) from May 1st to
November 1st to coincide with the pagan festivals. The eve of All Saints Day, October 31st,
became All Hallow Even, then Hallowe’en, and then Halloween. In addition, a French monastic
order called the Cluniacs created All Soul’s Day to commemorate all departed Christian souls
(not just the saints') on November 2nd (Rogers 2002). Taken together, the three days were
called Hallowmas, (“hallow” meaning “sanctified” or “holy”) (Thompson 2003).
In many respects, these Christian rituals remained the same as their pagan counterparts with a
few important derivations. For example, like the ancient pagans, the Church encouraged their
congregation to remember the dead--but with prayers instead of sacrifice. In addition, instead of
appeasing spirits through food and wine, members of the congregation would go house to
house carrying a hollowed out turnip lantern whose candle symbolized a soul trapped in
purgatory and offering prayers for the dead in exchange for “Soul Cakes.” Poor churches could
not afford genuine relics of the saints and instead held processions where parishioners dressed
as saints, angels, and devils, resembling the pagan custom of parading ghosts to the town limits
(Bannatyne 1990). Bonfires were also lit, not in homage to the sun, but to keep the mortal
enemy of the new religion away: Satan, a concept arguably incompatible with the polytheism of
the ancient Celts. The Druids were seen as witches (wiccas or “wise ones”), and a fourteenthcentury text called Malleus Maleficarium (The Witches Hammer) created a link between
witchcraft and the devil that produced a mythology so powerful it lasts even today (Rogers
2002). By the end of the Middle Ages, Hallowmas was among the most important liturgical
movements in the Christian year.
The Reformation and Halloween
It was on Halloween in 1517 when Martin Luther began a refo rmation that would radically limit
celebrations of Halloween in Europe. As
subsequent Protestant sects began forming
throughout Western Europe, many Catholic
rituals--including Hallowmas--were banned
(Skal 2002). Yet, just as the Celtic Samhain was
assimilated with the Roman festival of Ponoma
and merged again with Catholic custom, the
English Protestants appropriated several
elements of Halloween in an autumn festival
known as Guy Fawkes Day. This day celebrated
the Protestant triumph of a Catholic plot led by
Guy Fawkes to blow up the Protestantsympathetic House of Lords when Parliament
met on Nov 5, 1605 (Rogers 2002). Guy
Fawkes was publically hanged and then drawn and quartered for his role in the plot, and it
became popular to re-enact his punishment through the festive parading of a scarecrow figure
through the streets (Rogers 2002). The eve of Guy Fawkes Day became “mischief night” and,
instead of begging for “soul cakes” in commemoration of All Saints Day, boys dressed up in
costumes to beg for coal to burn their effigies of Guy Fawkes, the Pope, or other unpopular
political figures. But in countries that maintained a strong Catholic tradition, such as Ireland and
Scotland, Halloween rituals flourished largely untouched by the Protestant Reformation (Skal
2002).
Halloween in the New World
The existence of Hallowmas in the early American colonies depended on the religious fabric of
each emerging colony. Whereas Maryland and Virginia were settled by Catholic and Church of
England followers who imported Hallowmas symbols and feasts of the Old World, the
Massachusetts Bay Colony, New Hampshire, and Connecticut were populated by rigid Puritans
who viewed the Catholic and pagan overtones of Hallowmas as anathema to Puritan philosophy
(Bannatyne 1990). Ironically, while the Puritans felt praying for the souls of the already
predestined dead was redundant, they held a fascination of witchcraft and divination, and their
witch-hunting zeal forever established one of Halloween’s most enduring symbols. In addition,
Puritan New England practiced other remnants of Hallowmas such as fortune-telling games
(predicting future spouses) and the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day (Rogers 2002).
The American Revolution created a society more tolerant of religious diversity and,
consequently, Halloween celebrations became increasingly secular and centered in the
community rather than churches (Bannatyne 1990). While Halloween maintained its association
with the harvest and changing seasons, it was also becoming more gendered. For example,
while young males were creating mischief such as blocking chimneys, ruining cabbage patches,
unhinging gates, and unstable-ing horses, young women typically stayed close to home on
“San-Apple Night” to divine a future mate by bobbing for apples or divining from apple peels
(Thompson 2003). Still, both genders enjoyed telling ghost stories, which likely derived from
both the Druid belief that the ancestral dead arise on this night and the Christian directive to
honor the souls of the departed at Hallowmas (Rogers 2002).
Immigration in the Early Nineteenth Century
Fledging Halloween festivities after the Revolutionary War in
America were given new life by an unprecedented number of
immigrants between 1820 and 1870, particularly the Irish. Indeed,
wherever the Irish went, their rich Halloween folk beliefs were
eagerly embraced by Americans. The Irish reinvigorated embryonic
American Halloween traditions and added a renewed emphasis on
masquerades, house-to-house visits, and the symbol of Halloween
itself, the Jack O'Lantern. Though there are many renderings of its
origin, the Jack O’ Lantern is most often said to have been named
after a man named Jack who trapped the devil in a tree. Jack
agreed to let the devil go if the devil guaranteed that Jack would
not go Hell after Jack died. When Jack died, he was not allowed
into heaven since he was a cruel and sinful man in life, but Jack
was also denied entrance into Hell because of the pact he had
made with the devil. However, the devil gave Jack a burning ember
from the fires of Hell which Jack placed in a turnip or carrot to
navigate the dark places of the earth. When the Irish came to America, they found pumpkins
plentiful and better suited as lanterns (Thompson 2003). Other immigrant groups added their
unique traditions as well. For example, the Germans and Scots enriched American witchcraft
mythology , and African Americans contributed elements of Voudon (sometimes called voodoo)
to American Halloween traditions.
Victorian Era Romanticization
The emergence of both the Victorian periodical and postcard at the end of the nineteenth
century helped create homogeneity among the disparate ethnic Halloween traditions--at least
among the educated middle and upper classes. However, while Victorian periodicals created a
synthesis of sorts, they also tended to romanticize Halloween as a genteel holiday and as a
night of romantic divinations and parlor games (Rogers 2002). In addition, Victorian ghost
stories became less concerned with actual ghosts and more concerned with romance and
passion. As Victorians attempted to throw better parties than their neighbors, they added pomp
to their celebrations that had little to do with Halloween (Bannatyne 1990). Ancient Halloween
rites were all but lost as the focus became more and more the province of children,
matchmaking, and kissing games.
Halloween in the Twentieth Century
As mass-marketed periodicals (such as The Ladies’ Home Journal) and other various mass
media continued to advertise the “perfect Halloween party,” Halloween became a bona fide
North American holiday in the 1920s that was an economic boon for businesses and candy
manufacturers alike. As commercialization continued in the early twentieth century, civic groups
such as high schools and rotary clubs began taking over some of the domestic rituals of
Halloween and promoted it as an event for everyone. As cases of mischief increased,
particularly during the Depression, more Halloween tricksters were being “bought off” with
candy. For example, packaging for Ze Jumbo Jelly Beans contained the message: “Stop
Halloween Pranksters.” In 1939, the magazine American Homes was the first mass-marketed
periodical in the U.S. to use the term “trick or treat” as a distinct property-protection strategy
(Skal 2002).
During WWII, some Halloween celebrations
were canceled due to sugar rationing, but soon
trick-or-treating would reach its commercial
heyday. Like the consumer post-war economy,
Halloween in the 1950s grew by leaps and
bounds. Candy companies, with plenty of sugar
available again, launched national advertising
campaigns directly at Halloween, and soon
trick-or-treating became a national practice
(Skal 2002). Americans continued to add a
distinctly commercial slant to Halloween with
Hollywood scary movies, greeting cards, and decorations. During the 1960s, however, rumors
of tainted treats and razor blades in candy, as well as a cyanide-laced Tylenol scare in 1982,
frightened both parents and children. Though actual tampering of Halloween candy has been
extremely rare, fear still lingers today (Rogers 2002). Yet, Halloween, as it tends to do,
recovered, and today is the second largest national holiday behind Christmas.
Halloween is no stranger to controversy even in the twenty-first century, but the energy of
Halloween has always been targeted by those who wish to control it, from the early Catholic
church to the various political and religious groups of today. Yet, Halloween has managed to
achieve national status without federal sanction (such as July 4th and Christmas) because it’s a
celebration of the potential of what humans want to be--and, if only for one night, what they
would not otherwise be (Rogers 2002). Historically Halloween endures because it allows its
participants to both embrace and defuse their fears (Thompson 2003). From the ancient Celts
who worshipped the Lord of the Dead to help them visualize the afterlife to the little vampires
and fairies trick-or-treating at your door, Halloween’s adaptability is the reason it remains—after
nearly 2000 years—the most bewitching night of the year.
References
Bannatyne, Lesley Pratt. 1990. Halloween: An American Holiday, An American History. New
York, New York: Facts on File, Inc.
Rogers, Nicholas. 2002. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. New York, New York:
Oxford University Press.
Skal, David J. 2002. Death Makes a Holiday: A Cultural History of Halloween. New York, New
York: Bloomsbury.
Thompson, Sue Ellen. 2003. Holiday Symbols and Customs. 3rd Ed. Detroit, Michigan:
Omnigraphics, Inc.