Issue 158

Did you know? A Halloween history...

22nd October 2007

Daemon worship? Pagan ritual? Another excuse to watch some video nasties? Halloween is Christmas for the Goths, but where did such a macabre holiday find root? We've all seen the Simpson's Halloween special where Lisa tells us all that it was the pagan new year, and she wasn't far off....

The holiday can roughly be dated back 2000 years ago by the Celts. Halloween (or Samhain as it was known) fell on November 1st in our calendar, and was a day to herald the coming winter. It was traditionally seen as a time of great foreboding, as mortality rates when the cold hit were frighteningly high. Subsequently, the Celts saw this day as a weak point between the two worlds as the living joined the dead and the dead walked more freely among the living. Ordinary people were believed to gain a measure of foresight, but any fool can look up in the sky and predict it may be rainy if there are clouds above. The Shamans were the weather men of the day, forecasting into the year ahead by communing with spirits.

It is thanks to the Celts that we wear costumes every year. However, where we would go to a shop and buy a bunny outfit, the Celts would go hunting, kill something, gut it, and dance around in its carcass around a great big fire. Can't help but feel that the 21 century is missing out on all the fun eh? They wore the outfits to frighten away any malignant spirits, noisily parading around the neighbourhood to underline their point.

The Roman Empire's power trip across Europe and Briton put an end to this type of worship, and meshed the cultures together. The good news was that there were two festivals instead of one. Feralia bore the closest relation to the Celtic festival. It was a day in late October which mourned the passing of the dead. The second, Pomona, was a day to honour the deity of fruit and trees. Not very macabre I know, but thanks to this idol we can go bobbing for apples!

After the Roman's came Christianities turn to change the holiday further, relocating it back to November 1st and re-labelling it as a day for Martyrs and saints. This is widely believed to be an attempt to replace the pagan holiday of the dead with a church sanctioned version of the dead. A shrewd move that didn't confuse the natives, and added the gothic overtones we normally associate with Halloween today. It also added the practice of 'trick or treating'. Early Christians would walk from door to door collecting 'soul cakes'. Each cake collected would be a prayer said on the behalf of the benefactor. This holiday of the dead saints was called 'Alholowmesse', an old English term for All saints day - or more accurately translated: All-Hallowmas. The night before All Saints day later became known as All Hallows eve, later abbreviated as Halloween.

Today, Halloween has lost many of its darker or more gruesome aspects, and owes more to its imagery and general feel to Hollywood. Recalling classic vampire movies such as "Nostferatu" to contemporary cult hits like "A Nightmare before Christmas", Halloween is informed by the morbid fascination of death, and what lies beyond that.

Although it has become more of an excuse to throw a fancy dress party, and go trick or treating, Halloween still remains a cultural Holiday that we can identify with in sobriety...or by acting like kids again and playing hooligan for a night in a white sheet. With the help of this article on the history of Halloween you can at least now know why you dress up like an idiot and do strange things with pumpkins!

Andrew Miles