History of Halloween, Part Two: Samhain

Dear Reader,

I find this subject fascinating in my quest of the History of Halloween. Samhain is one of the Sabbats (holiday) celebrated by the pagans and witches of today and yesterday. As the sun sets on the world October thirty-first, this most important of days, a new beginning comes forth.

Scholars haven’t come to a unified opinion if Samhain means the end or the beginning of summer, because when summer ends on this plane, it has just begun in the Underworld. But the word is thought to refer to the daylight portion of November first.

The Celts believed summer came to an end on Samhain and the New Year began on November first. They followed a lunar calendar, and the celebration began the night before.

The veil between the worlds is lowered at this time, weakened to allow the spirits passage from one realm to the next. It was the perfect opportunity to communicate with lost loved ones, to ask advice and receive solace from them.

As tradition, it’s a time to clean their homes and lives. The crops and cattle have been taken care of, and any loose ends left unfinished would be tied. They would shed everything to face the coming winter, to enter the start of the rebirth fresh from the past year.

The formal celebrations would include a large bon-fire that fit in with the cleansing of the past and looking forward to the future. In sacrifice, they would give crops and animals to their Gods and Goddesses. The Celts would adorn their bodies in costume to honour both the dead, and the Deities they asked favour from in the coming seasons.

Tying in a little with my last post, it was said that once the community celebration was over, each family would take a torch or a burning ember from the sacred fire to take home with them. These fires would be kept lit twenty-four hours a day throughout the dark, endless winter. It was said that if a home lost its fire during this time, misfortune would soon follow.

To appease the roaming spirits, food and drink would be placed outside their door. If not, the spirits would commit trickery for the slight.

Random thoughts:

Trick or Treating: It was said that fairies would dress as beggars, going door to door asking for food. Those who didn’t show them hospitality would be dealt with by trickery. As well, in later times when the holiday was christianized on All Souls Day, ‘soul cakes’ would be given to beggars in exchange for them praying for other’s dead loved ones. Food, ale and money were also given. In the UK, children would go door to door asking for pennies on ‘Guy Fawkes Day’.

Apple Bobbing: The Apple is the symbol of the Roman goddess Pomona. It was thought that Apple Bobbing and peeling might foretell the future on this night of Samhain.

Happy Reading!

Kayden McLeod

History of Halloween, Part One: Jack o’lanterns

Dear Readers,

I’ve found many different perspectives on Halloween, All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day, Samhain, and All Souls Day. Having said that, I know somewhere along the line in this series of ‘History of Halloween’ posts, I won’t be accurate to every perspective and belief, so I’ve taken some liberty.

Out of the zillions of pages sitting in front of me right now, there was one particular story that stuck with me through the research. How many of you have ever seen a Jack o’lantern sitting on a porch Halloween night? Did you ever wonder why or how we’d ever come up with such an idea?

There are two roots to this practice I’ve found. In the first, the early Pagan Celtics hallowed out turnips, gourds or rutabagas to hold an ember from the sacred bonfire (actually it was called a bone-fire, but that’s a whole other story entirely). Then they would take these precious flickers of the grander flame to their own homes, and light their own fires.

The second was about an Irishman named ‘Stingy Jack’, who was said to be a swindler and a drunk. The devil himself stalked Jack for his soul, but the Irishman would have none of it. The first year of this predicament, Jack asked his tormentor to share a drink, but tricked him into becoming a coin to pay for it. Slipping the unassuming coin into his pocket right next to a cross, the nuisance was effectively trapped. He forced a promise from Lucifer. Either agree to leave him alone for another year, or in his pocket he would stay.

When the time came for the devil to return, Jack talks him into going up a tree to retrieve a piece of fruit. While up there, the clever Irishman carves a cross on the trunk to trap the devil, again. To get down, he must make yet another promise. But this time it isn’t just a year. Lucifer must agree not to seek his soul for ten years. What other choice was there, if an eternity in a tree didn’t appeal to him?

No matter the witty tricks he’d played, when Jack died before the deal had ended, none of it did a lick of good. Because of the same attributes that attracted Lucifer to him in the first place, the Irishman couldn’t get into heaven, and because of the promise, he couldn't get into hell either.

For whatever his reasons were, the devil sympathized with Jack and gave him an ember held within a hallowed out turnip to light his way through his forever-roamings on earth. He was just as trapped like devil had been in his pocket and in the tree. (I also read the devil sent him out into the world with nothing more than a piece of burning coal, that Jack placed in a carved turnip.)

In fear of him and the other wandering ghosts, the Irish and Scottish made Jack o’lanterns during the season to scare them away. In the mid 1800’s, when the potato famine struck Ireland and the people came to the North America, they brought such Halloween traditions with them.

Turnips were phased out in America, when it was found pumpkins were plentiful in the New World. They became the new face of the custom.

Until Next Time…

Kayden McLeod