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THE TRUE ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN |
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Special feature editorial by Druidess |
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For a proper understanding of the modern American celebration on October 31st, we
must look at three early celebrations that have come together to form today's
Halloween. The first of these precursors to Halloween goes all the way back to
pre-Christian Ireland and Scotland to a celebration of the Druids or Celtic priests.
The Celtic year began on November 1st with the festival of Samhain. On the
eve of Samhain, October 31st, laughing bands of young people disguised in grotesque
masks carved lanterns from turnips and carried them through the villages.
It was sort of a harvest festival, and in addition, it was thought of as a festival
of the dead. The druids believed it was on that night when the earth comes
into closest contact with the spiritual world; and consequently ghosts, goblins
and witches supposedly destroyed crops, killed farm animals and wreaked havoc
on the villagers. As these spirits of the dead roamed around, villagers lit
bonfires to either drive them away or to guide the spirits of the dead back to
their homes. The second precursor to Halloween goes back to the Dark Ages in central
Europe. There, the Christian church destroyed many of the temples of various
pagan gods and goddesses, such as Diana and Apollo. However this pagan worship
was never completely eradicated, and eventually it took on the form of witchcraft. |
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One of the most important aspects of witchcraft is a number of celebrations each
year which are called "Witches' Sabbaths." One of the highest of the Witches' Sabbaths
is the High Sabbath, or Black Sabbath, of Witches on October 31st. Much
of the Halloween folklore of today such as black cats, broomsticks, and cauldrons
and spells come from the Black Sabbath. The third precursor to Halloween goes
back to the early Roman Catholic Church. The church had appointed certain days
to honor each saint and basically ran out of days in the years for all their
saints to have a day, so they decided to have one day to remeber all the saints.
They called it All Saints' Day. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory the third
changed All Saints' Day from May 13th to November 1st, and in the year 834 Pope
Gregory the fourth extended this celebration to the entire Roman church. This
event was called Allhallowmass, and as you might suppose, there was a celebration
on the evening before on October 31st, called All Hallow E'en, "all hallow"
meaning all of the hallowed ones. As you might guess, the contraction of hallow
and e'en is where the word Halloween is derived. |
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The modern custom of going door to door begging for candy while dressed in costumes,
called "trick or treating," goes back to the pagan new year's feast in Ireland.
The spirits that were thought to throng about the houses of the living were
greeded with a banquet. At the end of the feast, villagers, disguised as souls
of the dead, paraded to the outskirts of the village leading the spirits away.
This was done to avoid any calamities the dead might bring. Another way the
villagers tried to appease the dead was to set out bowls of fruit and other treats
so the spirits would partake of them and leave them in peace. Later when the
belief in goblins declined, youths dressed up as ghosts and goblins and threatened
to play tricks on those who failed to be generous with treats. The jack-o-lantern,
also known as will-o-the-wisp, fox fire and corpse candle, among other
things, was believed to be a wandering soul which could not find refuge in either
heaven or hell because of a particularly evil deed commited in its lifetime.
The Finns believed that it was the soul of a child buried in the forest. A corpse
candle is said to be a small flame moving through the air in the dark and
is believed by the superstitious to be an omen of the observer's imminent death. |
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According to ancient folklore from many places, a will-o-the-wisp wanders about swamp
areas, enticing victims to follow. These strange fires were also known as
"foolish fire," because only a fool would follow them. Today's pumpkin face is
symbolic of that mocking spirit. |
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Halloween. Sly does it. Tiptoe catspaws. Slide and creep. But why? What for? How? Who? When! Where did it all begin? 'You don't know, do you?' asks Carapace Clavicle Moundshroud climbing out under the pile of leaves under the Halloween Tree. 'You don't REALLY know!' --Ray Bradbury from 'The Halloween Tree' |
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In its modern incarnation, Halloween enjoys a couple of strange ironies. Practitioners
of modern Wicca, a modern spiritual tradition whose predecessor was once
the pariah of Halloween, consider Samhain to be the highest of their holy days.
The reasons for this involve traditional reverence and celebration of archetypal
cycles of the seasons, however, and have little to do with the 'dark' aspects
of Halloween. Still, many modern Christian groups, whose predecessors had a hand
in creating Halloween to begin with, refuse to engage in any sort of Halloween
activities. They cite the early pagan rituals as examples of devil-worshipping
activities and even later practices, created by Christians themselves, as further examples of the 'evil' of the holiday. Most of this fear, however, is
based in Christian, anti-pagan propaganda which arose at the time of imperialist
expansion into Europe, as well as later during the witch-burning hysteria of
the late Middle Ages, and does not reflect a historical, or modern reality of Celtic
pagan religious traditions. Rather, it reflects a distorted folklore created
over a dozen centuries, which attempts to define any and all polytheistic traditions
as inherently evil and thus, 'of the devil'. |
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Considering that a recent news program revealed that next to Christmas, Halloween
has become the biggest moneymaking holiday in the United States in terms of retail
sales, it's probably safe to say that conservative efforts to wipe out the
holiday have failed, and that Hallowe'en - in whatever forms it continues to
take - will be with us for a long, long time. |
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