Christian Heresy
Halloween and All Hallows (Saints) Day, History and Folk Traditions
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, 10 March 2003
Origins of Halloween
Hallowe’en or All Hallow’s Eve is a festival observed on 31 October, the eve of All Hallows’ Day. All Hallows is a Christian festival devoted to the Christians saints, but it owes more to the Celtic festival Samhain (pronounced as “sow en”), Summer’s End and the start of a new year. The end of summer was the onset of winter, a fearful time of old, when the sun seemed to be dying, food was getting scarcer as the stored harvest slowly was consumed, and, in northern climes, the cold and darkness progressed alarmingly until midwinter.
In the north, the bright summer sun was the good sun, and the dark winter sun was bad. So, the progress towards midwinter when the sun reached its nadir in the sky was a time of evil spirits, the wicked sun being dominant. The Celts accordingly divided the year into summer and winter at Beltane (1 May) and Samhain (1 November), but the middle of each half year were also celebrated—1 February, 1 August. So, the the Celtic year was divided into four principle segments, then each of them was halved, making four main festivals each year, and four lesser ones.
Imbolc on 1 February was dedicated to the goddess, Brigit, when all things were purified and refreshed. Lughnasa on 1 August was dedicated to the god, Lugh, (Lleu). Beltane was devoted to the god, Belenos, and Samhain on 1 November was devoted to all the gods, and the spirits of the dead.
Samhain is 1 November, a quarter day, representing the onset of winter and the end of the Celtic year and beginning of a new one. It was the third or animal harvest, a celebration of the summer harvest, and a preparation for the coming blight of winter, when grain was stored and beasts were slaughtered and salted in preparation for it. A sacrifice will have been offered to the sun god at this time, as the Irish tradition of offering an animal to S Martin indicates. S Martin’s Day is just six weeks after the feast of S Michael, the Christian representation of Mithras, the sun god, and Martin might have been mistaken for Michael in the early middle ages. It seems that when the Christian calendar was introduced, some of the traditions of Samhain were transferred to S Martin’s Day, the others remaining on All Saint’s Eve, the Celtic first day of winter.
Fires were burnt at Beltane and Samhain as the two beginnings, that of summer and winter, when the sun and therefore the seasons were urged to be true and therefore fruitful. A bonfire (bonefire) was a festive or triumphant fire. In particular, it was a common fire, one to which everyone in the community contributed, and attended. Thus, Ashton’s Translation of Aubanus refers to “common fires (or as we call them here in England bonefires)”. In the English north east, contributed ploughing days were “bonedaags”, and “booner” and “boonharow” referred to donated ploughing and harrowing.
Originally the spring bonfires had been to celebrate and encourage the growing strength of the summer sun, autumnal bonfires had been associated with attempts to revive the declining sun by imitative magic, and sacrifices were offered to propitiate demonic spirits, and engage the assistance of good ones. The Celts extinguished their hearth fires, and lit a bonfire to ritually stand for the sun and magically remind it to return to full strength. They jumped through the bonfire in a purification ritual that will have replaced human sacrifice at an earlier time, and brands were taken from the sun fire to relight the hearths. This seems to have been an occasion when the wicker man will have been burnt. Victims were offered to Cromm Cruaich and to the Fomorians at Samhain.
Borlase says:
Of the fires we kindle in many parts of England, at some stated times of the year, we know not certainly the rise, reason, or occasion, but they may probably be reckoned among the relics of the Druid superstitious fires. In Cornwall, the festival fires called bonfires, are kindled on the eve of S John Baptist and S Peter’s Day; and midsummer is thence, in the Cornish tongue, called “Goluan”, which signifies both light and rejoicing. At these fires the Cornish attend with lighted torches, tarred and pitched at the end and make their perambulations round their fires, and go from village to village carrying their torches before them, and this is certainly the remains of the Druid superstition, for “faces praeferre”, to carry lighted torches, was reckoned a kind of Gentilism,and as such particularly prohibited by the Gallick Councils. They were in the eye of the law “accensores facularum”, and thought to sacrifice to the devil, and to deserve capital punishment.
Over and about this fire they frequently leap, and play at various games, such as running, wrestling, dancing, and so on. This, however, is generally confined to the young, for the old ones, for the most part, sit by as spectators only and enjoy themselves over their bottle which they do not quit till midnight, and sometimes till cock crow the next morning.
Christianization, Souls and Spirits
Realising the popularity of these festivals and the superstition associated with them, the Christians decided to adopt them into the Christian calendar, all except Beltane which corresponded in significance to the Christian Easter, and so was always tainted with the label of Pagan. It required the power of organized labour to have it recognized as Labor Day, a public holiday.
Samhain has been Christianised to All Saints Day and its eve is All Hallows Eve. In Buchan and other Scottish counties, Halloween fires were kindled on rising ground. Its associations remain Pagan despite it being a Christian festival. Its symbol is a nine squared maze, rather like a nine men’s morris and evidently representing the nine aspects of the Goddess at the year end.
Spirits were still considered to roam the skies, and it remained an important festival to the ancient Pagan Celts of Northern Europe as the day when dead relatives and friends were remembered. The Iranians of the ancient east believed in spirit doubles called Fravashis (“faravahars”). The Iranians were tribes that long ago migrated west and south from somewhere near the Volga delta on the Caspian sea. The word “fravashi” is probably cognate with the word “fairy” in the western tradition, brought by the migrating Iranians. They were venerated at their own festival held at the New Year, or rather on the last night of the old year, that, in the old calendar, being in the autumn, corresponding with Halloween. The ritual ended with the lighting of fires before dawn to assist the fravashis to return to their abode before the sun rose.
At first, fravashis were intermediate spirits, spirits of the air rather than earth or heaven, with a capricious and unpredictable nature—creatures of the night—but came to be seen as guardian angels. Night time, from sunset to sunrise in Persian tradition was always dedicated to them. Their association with night, the creation of the Evil Spirit, and the fact that worship otherwise was not to be done at night shows that the fravashis were not thought of as fully benign. They are the relic of the worship of dead spirits, and originally might have been good or bad.
Christians had to make up lurid and frightening stories about the Pagan traditions of Samhain to scare off the those remaining faithful to them. They tried to persuade the people that because the dead were returning to their homes, they were having to light bonfires to drive them away, whence the ghostly and ghoulish modern connotations. Those brave or indifferent enough to the Christian scare tactic would use the level of supernatural activity at Halloween, mainly for divination by calling upon spirits to guide them. In Britain the connexion with the dead persists in Remembrance Day on 11 November, a result of the Gregorian calendrical adjustment.
Despite the Christianizing of the festival, the old traditions have persisted into modern times, and Halloween is still more strongly associated with supposedly evil spirits, witches, ghosts, ghouls and demons than with the Christian saints. Oddly enough, it has even revived, especially in the USA, where it retains its attraction. American cultural imperialism, the exportation of American culture to its dependencies and colonies like Britain, has seen the spread of an Americanized Halloween elsewhere too.
Bonfires
In the North of England, it was the custom chiefly in country villages, for old and young people to meet together and be merry over a large fire, which was made for that purpose in the open street. This, of whatever materials it consisted, was called a bonefire. In Newton’s Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of S John, the author observes, that:
The heathens were delighted with the festivals of their gods, and unwilling to part with those ceremonies. Therefore Gregory, Bishop of Neo Caesarea in Pontus, to facilitate their conversion, instituted annual festivals to the saints and martyrs. Hence the keeping of Christmas with ivy, feasting, plays, and sports came in the room of the Bacchanalia and Saturnalia, the celebrating May Day with flowers in the room of the Floralia, and the festivals to the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, and divers of the Apostles in the room of the solemnities at the entrance of the Sun into the Signs of the Zodiac in the old Julian Calendar.
Leaping over the fires is mentioned among the superstitious rites used at the Palilia in Ovid’s Fasti. The Palilia were feasts instituted in honour of Pales, the goddess of shepherds (though Varro makes Pales masculine), on the calends of May. To drive away wolves from the folds, and distempers frum the cattle, the shepherds on this day kindled several heaps of straw in their fields, which they leaped over. “Leaping o’er a midsummer bonefire” is mentioned amongst other games in Tompson’s Garden of Delight, 1658. Torreplanca, in his Demonology, tells us how the ancients passed their children of both sexes through the fire for the sake of securing them a prosperous and fortunate lot, and the Germans did the same in their midsummer pyres in honour of the anniversary of S John’s Day.
The third Council of Constantinople, 680 AD, by its 65th canon, has the following interdiction:
Those bonfires that are kindled by certain people on new moons before their shops and houses, over which also they use ridiculously and foolishly to leap, by a certain ancient custom, we command them from henceforth to cease. Whoever therefore shall do any such thing, if he be a clergyman, let him be deposed, if a layman let him be excommunicated. For, in the fourth Book of the Kings, it is thus written: “And Manasseh built an altar to all the host of heaven, in the two courts of the Lord’s house, and made his children to pass through the fire.”
Therefore Christians took it that bonfires had been originated in an idolatrous custom. So, they were to be avoided. They evidently were not, for the Synodus Francica of Pope Zachary, in 742 AD, again inhibited “those sacrilegious fires which they call Nedfri (bonefires), and all other observations of the Pagans whatsoever”. Yet bonfires remained popular.
Other Customs
Popular customs survive still from this ancient tradition. Naturally bonfires were always popular at this time of year. In the UK, the purpose of the November fire was changed from a celebration of Halloween to a celebration of the failure of the Gunpowder Plot, and its date changed to 5—November, the anniversary of the plot.
The great autumnal fire called Coel Coeth was still kindled in North Wales, on the eve of the 1 November. Every family about an hour in the night makes a great bonfire in the most conspicuous place near the house, and when the embers were cooling, everyone marked a white stone and threw it into the ashes. Having turned around the fire, they went to bed. As soon as they were up, they searched the ashes for the marked stones, and if any was missing or unrecognizable that person would die before the next Halloween.
Regarding a similar tradition in Scotland, the minister of Callander said:
On All Saints E’en they set up bonfires in every village. When the bonfire is consumed, the ashes were carefully collected into the form of a circle. There is a stone put in near the circumference, for every person of the several families interested in the bonfire. Whatever stone is moved out of its place, or injured next morning, the person represented by that stone is supposed not to live twelve months from that day.
It was attended by many other ceremonies besides that of casting a stone into the fire, such as jumping through the fire and smoke, and everyone running off at the end to escape the black short tailed sow. Then they ate parsnips or neeps in Scotland (turnips), nuts, and apples. They had to catch, by mouth alone, an apple suspended on a string, and an apple floating in a tub of water. This habit of “ducking” for apples—biting apples floating in a tub of water, or suspended from a string—without the aid of hands survives to this day in Britain and North America. Then, in the old tradition, each had to throw a nut into the fire. Those that burnt bright denoted prosperity through the following year, but those that burnt black and crackled, denoted misfortune. Many games traditionally played at this festival were types of divination, to determine the marriages that would take place in the coming year or the fortunes of the family. In the West of Scotland, according to Robert Burns, young women made divinations by pulling stalks of corn.
Elsewhere, young Scottish women determined the figure and size of their husbands by drawing cabbages blind fold on All Hallows Even. The first ceremony of Hallowe’en is pulling each a stock or plant of kale. They must go out, hand in hand, with eyes shut, and pull the first they meet with. Its being big or little, straight or crooked, is prophetic of the size and shape of the grand object of all their spells, the husband or wife. If any earth sticks to the root, it indicates fortune, and the taste of the heart of the stem shows the future spouse’s temper and disposition.
In medieval times, at Halloween, All Hallows and All Hallows Night a continuous vigil was held, and church bells were sounded all the night long. It was abolished by Henry VIII, the English king who was father of Queen Elizabeth I, but was most famous for his six wives and for dissolving the monasteries. Even so, it was being recorded still in Elizabeth’s time, and was abolished again.
One ceremony seen on the evening of the 31 October was that heath, broom, and dressings of flax were tied to a pole, and kindled. Someone took it upon his shoulders, and, running, carried it round the village, the villagers looking on. When the first faggot was burnt out, a second was bound to the pole, and kindled in the same manner as before. Several such blazing faggots were then carried about together, and when the night was particularly dark they splendidly illuminated the village.
The people received the consecrated fire from the Druid priests next morning, the virtues of which were supposed to continue for a year. The minister of Kirkmichael, in Perthshire, says the practice of lighting bonfires on the first night of winter, accompanied with various ceremonies, still prevailed in this and the neighbouring highland parishes. Formerly the Hallow Even fire, a relic of Druidism, was kindled in Buchan. Various magic ceremonies were then celebrated to counteract the influeuce of witches and demons, and to prognosticate to the young their success or disappointment in the matrimonial lottery. These being devoutly finished, the hallow fire was kindled, and guarded by the male part of the family. Societies were formed, either by pique or humour, to scatter certain fires, and the attack and defence were often conducted with art and fury… But now the hallow fire, when kindled, is attended by children only, and the country girl, renouncing the rites of magic, endeavours to enchant her swain by the charms of dress and of industry.
Queen Victoria when residing at Balmoral Castle used to look upon about 200 locals carrying torches in procession, at the Queen’s Halloween, around 1870. The Dundee Advertiser reported it as having “a picturesque and imposing appearance” which she and her retinue viewed with “evident pleasure and satisfaction”. After the torch bearers had promenaded for some time, the torches were heaped in a pile on the roadway a little to the west, and in full view from the windows of the Castle. Empty boxes and other materials were soon added, and in a short time a splendid bonfire blazed famously, a gentle breeze helping to fan the flames. Her Majesty, the Prince and Princess Louise, the Princess Beatrice, and the ladies and gentlemen of the suite, then retired indoors, and took up positions at the windows to see the rest of the merry making. Dancing was begun with great vigour round the bonfire. The demonstration culminated in a vehicle containing a well got up effigy of the Hallowe’en witch being drawn to the fire by a band of sturdy Highlanders. The witch had a number of boys for a guard of honour, headed by the piper. The fire was kept up for a long time with fresh fuel, and when all had danced till they could almost dance no longer, the health of her Majesty was proposed and responded to with the utmost enthusiasm, accompanied by three times three rounds of vociferous cheering. Later in the evening the servants and others about the Castle enjoyed a dance in the ghillie hall. The ball broke up at an early hour the next morning.
Souling and Soul Cakes
Another custom was distributing Soul Cakes on All Souls’ Day. In old times good people would, on All Hallows day, bake bread and deal it for all christian souls. When they received one, poor people prayed for God to bless the next wheat crop. The inhabitants of St Kilda, on the festival of All Saints, baked a large triangularly shaped cake, furrowed round, to be entirely eaten that night.
On All Hallows Day, or Hallowmass, it was an ancient English custom for poor persons and beggars to go “a souling”, which meant to go round asking for money, to fast for the souls of the donors of alms or their kinsfolk. In the Two Gentlemen of Verona, Shakespeare has Speed speaking of someone pulling, “like a beggar at Hallowmass.” The usage is referred to by Scot in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584. Children still went souling in the nineteenth century, as they did in Aubrey’s day, on Hallowmass, singing:
Soul! soul! for a soul-cake,
Pray, good mistress, for a soul-cake.
One for Peter, two for Paul, Three for them that made us all.
Soul! soul! for an apple or two.
If you’ve got no apples, pears will do.
Up with your kettle, and down with your pan,
Give me a good big one, and I’ll be gone.
Soul! soul! for a soul-cake,
Pray, good mistress, for a soul-cake.
An apple or pear, a plum or a cherry,
Is a very good thing to make us merry.
Soul! soul! for a soul-cake,
Pray, good mistress, for a soul-cake.
Those who could afford it would give farthing cakes of oat bread, which resembled Good Friday bread and crossed buns, to the poor, and would say in response:
God have your Saul (soul),
Beens and all.
In the Isle of Lewis, the locals had the custom of going by night on Hallow-tide to the Church of S Mulvay, from which one of their number went into the sea up to his waist with a cup of ale brewed for the occasion of malt contributed by the inhabitants—each family giving a peck—and pouring the liquid into the water, addressed a propitiatory appeal to a sea-god called Shony, whom they believed influenced the crops. They then returned to church, observed a moment’s dead silence, then extinguished at a given signal the candle on the altar, and proceeded to the fields, where the rest of the night was spent in revelry.
Trick or Treat
Another popular tradition, especially in the United States, is “trick or treat”, when children go from house to house usually disguised in an appropriate costume such as a witch, ghost or black cat, and demand from the occupants a treat. If this, usually a candy or chocolate bar or a piece of fruit, is not given, a trick is threatened. Such tricks were often cruel in the nineteenth century, the trick hurting people or their property, today they are usually more modest, but not always!
It stems from the very ancient New Year tradition that each year mimics creation, the old dying year being the primeval chaos to be replaced by the new creation, the new year. The origin of mischievous or “Trick and Treat” night is that it mimics the chaos of the old being replaced by the bounty of the new and orderly. The chaos was also represented once, in the Roman Saturnalia, for example, by servants and master changing places, the masters serving the servants at a feast. At All Hallows, servants would demand apples, ale, and nuts, and left the master alone when he complied and they went off to enjoy themselves.
Jack O’ Lantern
For kids, Hallowe’en means the Jack o’ Lantern, a hollowed out pumpkin, squash or turnip carved with a fearsome face illuminated from inside by a candle. Ghastly masks might have been meant to scare off demons, or have represented demons in ancient times, but now they are a children’s entertainment. The name Jack o’ Lantern means the Will o’ the Wisp, the lights which appear over marshland and wet fields or heaths caused by methane. It seems to have been attached to the pumpkin demons because they are in the form of lanterns. The Will o’ the Wisp, though, was for long thought of as a spirit, but although seen by night, it does not seem to be associated with Halloween particularly.
