| Product: |
Halloween 2006 |
| Date: |
29/10/06 (233 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Eating toffee apples
Disadvantages: Children playing tricks
Some years ago, I recall having a conversation with a friend about why we dress up in silly costumes at Halloween. My own thoughts were that – like the practice of trick or treating – it was an Americanism imported into this country, intended solely for the retail industry to commercialise the day and extract yet more money from us. But no, my friend assured me. This was an ancient custom that was practised by the Celts in order to scare away the evil spirits that were believed to be wandering the Earth on this night. I don’t think I hid my disbelief of this explanation very well. Surely if said evil spirits were so easily fooled by mortals dressing up in scary outfits, then they can’t have posed too much of a threat in the first place, can they?
However silly this story is, though, there are some grains of truth in it. Halloween is a contraction of All Hallow Even, as it is the evening before All Hallows’ Day (also known as All Saints’ Day). It coincides with the ancient festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-in), which is often described as being “Celtic” in origin. More specifically it is Irish, from the old Gaelic meaning “summer’s end”, a festival on or around November 1st to mark the passing of the light half of the year before the darkening winter begins. There is no evidence of Samhain, or any word like it being in existence in any other Celtic language (it looks nothing like any word you would find in Welsh, for instance), and was probably brought to Scotland by the Irish at some indeterminate point in the past and spread from there, rather than it being a universal “Celtic” practice to begin with. There is also no real evidence that it was a Druid festival (as is often cited), but was instead a pastoral or agricultural feast day, possibly even the New Year celebration, although this is uncertain. The association of this day with the dead and spirits became attached later on, although it is an interesting point that this time of year marked the time when animals were slaughtered to provide winter stores of food, and that the onset of winter marked signalled an increasing likelihood of humans dieing over the coming months as well, so perhaps there was something of a connotation with death after all.
The point at which the real association with the dead happened can most likely be traced to the 7th century, though, when Pope Boniface IV established All Saints’ Day (a day to celebrate all the Saints who didn’t have their own specific day in the calendar already) in an attempt to replace pagan celebrations of the dead. In 835, Pope Gregory III decided to standardise All Saints Day to November 1st across the Western church; this also cunningly helped to give the old pagan feast of Samhain a new Christian interpretation, and began the association of Samhain with the spirit world. By contrast with the feast of Samhaim, the Catholic holidays of All Saints and All Souls (which falls on November 2nd) were holidays specifically connected with commemorating the dead, which is where many cultures doubtless draw the idea that the veil between the world of the living and the spirits is especially thin during the three days between 31st October and 2nd November.
Medieval Catholics believed that those people who were sin-laden when they died, but were not sufficiently wicked to go to Hell, had to spend time in purgatory. The souls that were trapped in purgatory could be helped on their way to Heaven by their living friends and family, who prayed, collected alms, attended mass and did good deeds on their behalf; the responsibility for getting the dead into Heaven was taken very seriously by communities at this time. One practice that was to develop in England out of the tradition of collecting alms was that of “souling”, when the poor would go door to door to collect money and soul cakes from the wealthier households in their area to say prayers on behalf of the donator’s dead family. This practice was still found in parts of northern England as late as the 1930s, and is very likely to be the origin for trick or treating, so perhaps it is not such an Americanism after all! In Scotland, a not entirely dissimilar custom of “guising” could be found, where children would dress up and perform some kind of entertainment in return for gifts and treats. The “trick” part of the equation could well be linked to the idea of Mischief Night, which was celebrated in some parts of the UK on November 4th, where children were allowed to play tricks on adults; with the close dates of the different customs, they could have become linked together when exported to North America.
As the spread of Protestantism drove the celebration of Halloween away from the church, people became free the attach their own ideas to it, and given the association with Catholic feasts commemorating the dead, it is perhaps not surprising that ideas about spirits and the occult instead became attached to the day. Once the practice of praying for the souls of the dead was lost, more sinister overtones became associated with Halloween, such as witches, hauntings, ghosts and demons.
One of the less well known associations with Halloween is that of divination. As part of the Celtic calendar, Samhain was considered to be one of the most powerful nights in the year for practising certain forms of fortune telling – in connection to marriage in particular. Apples were often used as the feast coincided with the apple harvest, although apples already had many connotations with magic and prophecy in Celtic tradition. One custom was that of bobbing for apples, where apples were floated in a trough of water and the person who managed to bite an apple first would be the first in that group to get married (although I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on this as a good way of divining the future – according to this tradition, I should have been at the altar years ago, LOL). Another practice that I have come across was that unmarried women should peel an apple on Halloween night, letting the peel come off in one long strip before dropping it to the table over her left shoulder. Whatever letter the apple peel appears most like is the first letter of the name of the person you will marry…although if the peel breaks, then you will never marry, so do be careful. If you have already found the one you love, try sharing an apple with them on Halloween to make them love you back! (BTW, all that happened when I tried that was the retort “uurrrgggh, I don’t like apples”). If apples aren’t to hand, you might like to try the Irish version of Halloween divination. In this game, person is seated blindfolded at a table and offered a choice of saucer, with whichever saucer the person picks being an indication of their future over the coming year: one containing a coin denotes wealth, water indicates travel, earth means a person known to the player will die over the coming year, a bean indicates poverty, etc.
Halloween has unfortunately these days been relegated to a horribly commercialised day, more often celebrated by children as an opportunity to get something from free than anything to do with the actual origins of the day – so not that unlike Christmas, really. I personally don’t like the idea of trick or treating; giving someone a treat when they were going to say prayers for your dead is a lot different from giving someone a treat to avoid them tricking you (almost a form of protection racket, isn’t it?). My house has in the past been egged by children regardless of whether I have cooperated or not, so I shall not be buying treats to hand out this year.
Maybe I will be stocking up on apples, though… ;-)
Happy Halloween!
Summary: Halloween: not as Americanised as I first thought
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