Halloween: Ever wonder why?

Written by Kimberly Donnelly
Friday, 30 October 2009 23:00

Most of the time, people try to avoid frightening situations. But as the leaves turn and fall from the trees and temperatures start to drop, most Westonites join the rest of the country in celebrating the spooky.

Children dress in costumes and go “trick-or-treating” door-to-door; we carve pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns; and witches and goblins and ghosts and ghouls appear everywhere.

Ever wonder why?

Halloween has been a tradition in the United States since the mid-1800s. Its roots may be traced to the 5th Century B.C. in Ireland.

In Celtic Ireland, when summer changed into the cooler winter months (at the end of what we now call October), life changed drastically for the largely agrarian society. The Celtic New Year, called Samhain (pronounced sow-wen), was celebrated then because it marked the beginning of a new cycle in the Celts’ lives.

The Celts believed the spirits of the dead returned to earth on the night of Samhain — the night of change — to possess living bodies for the next year. This was the spirits’ only hope of an afterlife.

The living, of course, did not want to be possessed, and so, on Samhain, they made their hearth fires go cold, they dressed up in disguises, and they paraded through town causing destruction in order to frighten away the spirits.

The Church

The Catholic Church eventually assimilated many “pagan” rituals and holidays with its own. Nov. 1 is a Catholic day of observance in honor of all the saints, known as All Saints Day, or, using the Olde English word for “holy person,” All Hallows Day.

The Church, drawing on Judaic tradition, celebrates holidays from sunset to sunset. The evening portion of the holiday — the night before All Hallows Day — became known as All Hallows Eve, which was eventually shortened to Halloween.

The customs of Samhain were assimilated into the Catholic holiday, though they became much more ritualized and ceremonial.

In addition to dressing in costume, another ritual we now associate with Halloween — trick-or-treating — may be traced back to a 9th Century European custom called “souling.”

The day after All Saints Day — Nov. 2 — was known as All Souls Day. On that day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” a sweet bread with currants.

A person promised that the more cakes he was given, the more prayers he would say for the dead loved ones of the givers. People believed that after death, souls remained in limbo until enough prayers were said, and so even the prayers of strangers could expedite a soul’s passage into heaven.

Jack-o-lanterns

The tradition of carving of pumpkins into jack-o-lanterns also has its roots in Irish folklore. There is a tale of a devious trickster named Jack, who was known for his bad behavior.

He was said to have once tricked the devil himself up a tree. Jack then carved a cross into the tree trunk and said he would only let the devil down if the devil promised not to tempt Jack any longer.

When he died, it was said that Jack could not enter heaven because of all of the bad deeds he had done, and he could not enter hell because of the trick he had played on the devil.

Instead, the devil gave Jack a single ember to light his way through the darkness of limbo. Jack put the ember into a carved out turnip in order to make it last longer.

In Ireland, Jack’s lanterns (jack-o-lanterns) were carved from turnips.

In the 1840s, the potato famine in Ireland brought hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants to America, and with them came some of the traditions of Halloween.

In time, the customs evolved into the uniquely American tradition of Halloween: Pumpkins (far more plentiful, and bigger, too, than turnips) became the jack-o-lantern of choice; the request for soul cakes in return for prayers became a request for sweet treats, with an understanding that refusal would bring tricks or mischief (early American Halloween pranks included tipping over outhouses and unhinging gates); and dressing up to frighten away the spirits became dressing up to frighten — and delight — ourselves.