Halloween

HALLOWEEN, or Allhallows Eve, is a festival celebrated on October 31, the evening prior to the Christian Feast of All Saints (All Saints' Day). Halloween is the name for the eve of Samhain, a celebration marking the beginning of winter as well as the first day of the New Year within the ancient Celtic culture of the British Isles. The time of Samhain consisted of the eve of the feast and the day itself (October 31 and November 1). This event was a crucial seam in the social and religious fabric of the Celtic year, and the eve of Samhain set the tone for the annual celebration as a threatening, fantastic, mysterious rite of passage to a new year.

The religious beliefs of the Celts emphasized pastoral deities, and Celtic festivals stressed seasonal transitions. Beltene, the beginning of summer, was celebrated at the end of April and the beginning of May. Samhain signaled the commencement of winter and, together with Beltene, divided the year into cold and hot seasons. Samhain marked the end of preparations for winter, when flocks and herds had been secured and harvested crops had been stored.

The eve of this festival brought with it another kind of harvest. On this occasion, it was believed that a gathering of supernatural forces occurred as during no other period of the year. The eve and day of Samhain were characterized as a time when the barriers between the human and supernatural worlds were broken. Otherworldly entities, such as the souls of the dead, were able to visit earthly inhabitants, and humans could take the opportunity to penetrate the domains of the gods and supernatural creatures. Fiery tributes and sacrifices of animals, crops, and possibly human beings were made to appease supernatural powers who controlled the fertility of the land. Not a festival honoring any particular Celtic deity, Samhain acknowledged the entire spectrum of nonhuman forces that roamed the earth during that period.

Given the upheaval of normal human activities and expectations on the eve and day of Samhain, it was also thought to be an especially propitious time for ascertaining information about the future course of one's life. Various methods of divination were used by individuals attempting to discover their fortunes, good or ill, and to foretell events such as marriage, sickness, or death.

Samhain remained a popular festival among the Celtic people throughout the Christianization of Great Britain. The British church attempted to divert this interest in pagan customs by adding a Christian celebration to the calendar on the same date as Samhain. The Christian festival, the Feast of All Saints, commemorates the known and unknown saints of the Christian religion just as Samhain had acknowledged and paid tribute to the Celtic deities. The eve of the Celtic festival was also Christianized, becoming the Vigil of All Saints or Allhallows Eve (with special offices existing in both the Anglican and Roman churches). The medieval British commemoration of All Saints' Day may have prompted the universal celebration of this feast throughout the Christian church.

The customs of Samhain survived independently of the Christian holy day. Gradually, the eve of Allhallows (Halloween) lost much of its Celtic religious significance for the masses, and it became a secular observance, although many traditionally Celtic ideas continued to be associated with the evening. Divination activities remained a popular practice. Adults, dressed in fantastic disguises and masks, imitated supernatural beings and visited homes where occupants would offer tributes of food and drink to them. A fear of nocturnal creatures, such as bats and owls, persisted, because these animals were believed to communicate with the spirits of the dead.

Halloween was celebrated only in the Celtic areas of Great Britain: Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and northern rural England. In non-Celtic England, many of the customs of Halloween were assimilated into a commemorative festival that arose in the seventeenth century as the celebration of Guy Fawkes Day (November 5). English Protestant settlers in the New World did not bring the custom of Halloween with them. Irish and Scottish immigrants introduced scattered Allhallows Eve observances to America, but it was only in the years after the massive immigration of the Irish to the United States during the potato famine (1845–1846) that Halloween became a national event.

Modern Halloween activities have centered on mischief making and masquerading in costumes, often resembling otherworldly characters. Folk customs, now treated as games (such as bobbing for apples), have continued from the various divination practices of the ancient celebrants of this occasion. Supernatural figures (such as the ghost, the witch, the vampire, the devil) play a key role in supplying an aura of the mysterious to the evening, whether or not they originally had an association with the festival. Children are particularly susceptible to the imagery of Halloween, as can be seen in their fascination with the demonic likeness of a carved and illuminated pumpkin, known as the jack-o'-lantern. In recent times, children have taken up the practice of dressing in Halloween costumes and visiting homes in search of edible and monetary treats, lightly threatening to play a trick on the owner if a treat is not produced. There also has been renewed interest in Halloween as a time when adults can also cross cultural boundaries and shed their identities by indulging in an uninhibited evening of frivolity. Thus, the basic Celtic quality of the festival as an evening of annual escape from normal realities and expectations has remained into the present.

The definitive scholarly work on Halloween has yet to be written. Ralph Linton and Adelin Linton's Halloween through Twenty Centuries (New York, 1950) is an adequate introduction, though dated. Lacking substantial citations, it should be read along with other texts to ensure its accuracy. An excellent volume on Celtic belief systems, and especially the feast of Samhain, is Marie-Louise Sjoestedt-Jonval's Dieux et héros des Celtes (Paris, 1940), translated by Myles Dillon as Gods and Heroes of the Celts (London, 1949). A useful ethnographic approach to the study of Halloween was taken by Helen Sewell Johnson in her article on "November Eve Beliefs and Customs in Irish Life and Literature," Journal of American Folklore 81 (1968): 133–142. A contemporary look at Halloween customs in the United States can be found in folklorist Jack Santino's "Halloween in America: Contemporary Customs and Performances," Western Folklore 42 (1983): 1–20.

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