So today is Halloween. Apparently the USA will spend nearly $8bn to celebrate. My neighbors certainly seem to have a skeleton obsession. It is also interesting to hear people wish each other a happy Halloween without really understanding the meaning behind it. So I thought I would use today’s reflection to look at the history of Halloween and what it meant to the people who celebrated it.
Halloween is the residual race memory of the Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow – win).
The festival was celebrated to mark the transition between the end of the harvest, the mellow days of summer, and the onset of the dark and cold of winter. In the last week it has certainly felt much darker as the day length shortens. It was the most important festival of the Celtic tribes who stretched over most of northern Europe from Ireland to Turkey from about 1500 BC to 300 AD ish. During the summer months, the people were out in the fields and pastures working to secure enough supplies to last “the dark half of the year” as the Celtic people called it. Samhain marked the end of the harvest and was the midpoint between the Autumn equinox and the Winter solstice.
The end of the period of gathering in was marked by the lighting of a communal fire. The fire was started by rotating a wheel very quickly so that friction generated sparks, and of course that wheel represented the sun and the changing of the seasons. Everyone would take a flame from that fire to relight their own hearth fire which would not be extinguished until the spring. It was of course a time of great celebration with lots of feasting and drinking. The feast could last for up to six days. It was also from this festival that we got jack-o-lanterns. It was believed that mischievous spirits and monsters could be warned off by the carved face lit from within..The original ones were not made from pumpkins, but instead carved from turnips which I can assure you are much tougher to hollow out than soft centered pumpkins. For the Celtic people it was also a time to remember ancestors and even visit with them.
The Celtic peoples did not believe in heaven or hell. Instead they believed in the Otherworld. This was the place you went to after you died. Interestingly at times you could also go there when still alive and return and the spirits of the dead could visit the normal world. The Otherworld was located in various different places close to the living world but separated somehow. It could be accessed by visiting certain islands or caves or groves of trees. The idea of King Arthur being taken to the Isle of Avalon is a romanticized version of this belief..
The festival of Samhain was a time where the boundary between the Otherworld and the normal world was thinner than at other times so it was easier for people to pass in both directions, hence the need to ward off spirits that were not welcome with the Jack o lanterns. As Europe became Christian, as so often with other festivals and feast days, the original pagan belief was overcome by a Christian idea. The same happened with Samhain. In the ninth century, the church declared November 1 to be All Saints Day to recognize martyrs killed for their Christian faith.and November 2 became All Souls Day. This did not do away with the feasting and drinking of Samhain despite the best efforts of the Church.It seems that you can never do away with a good party.
The tradition of trick or treating came from the practice of “mumming” where people would dress up in costumes and go from door to door to sing for the dead. Cakes were given in payment for this service.
I think it is important to remember why we celebrate the way we do. This was an important time of year for our ancestors. A time to be grateful for the harvest safely gathered and a time to remember and celebrate family and ancestors. It was a time to ponder the past, present and future and consider our human place in the universe. So as we spend our $8 bn on candy costumes and plastic skeletons I think it is good maybe to take a breath and remember the purpose of this ancient celebration as well as the two days of commemoration that follow in the church year. Perhaps it is appropriate that as our minds turn towards the expectation of new birth we celebrate at Christmas, we should take a little bit of time to remember those who have gone before and on whose shoulders we stand.