The Origin of HalloweenAlthough Halloween stems in part from Christian tradition, many Christian groups want nothing to do with the holiday. Images and symbols traditionally linked with Halloween, such as witches and ghouls, carry an uncomfortable satanic connotation to many Christians, and many flatly refuse to participate in what they call �the devil�s holiday.� Some groups are also disturbed by the origins of the holiday, as it is a common belief that the Samhain festival was a celebration of a god of the dead, called Samhain, who looked remarkably similar to popular imagery of the devil. Evidence shows that this is not actually the case -- the main documentation for such a god comes from material produced by the Catholic church hundreds of years ago, as a means of converting people away from Druidism.
Christian groups are also disturbed by rumors that modern day Wiccans and Druids observe Halloween as an occasion to worship Satan or other evil forces. The established organizations of these groups completely disavow all knowledge of such practices, though they do say that Halloween is an important day of the year in their religion.
Many Wiccans, on the other hand, get upset around Halloween because they feel that they are misrepresented by a few Christian spokesmen and the news media. They want to separate their religion from the popular notion of witches as evil figures in league with the devil. They say that modern witchcraft is based on ancient Wiccan and Druid beliefs that had nothing to do with Satan or other figures from Judeo-Christian theology. Wiccans say that their religion is based on a connection to nature and the universe, not to dark forces and evil spells as the popular idea of a witch suggests.
Halloween is a shortened version of �All Hallows� Even,� the eve of All Hallows� Day. �hallow� is an Old English word for �holy person.� So the term �hallowed ground� means simply ground blessed by a holy person�churches and cemeteries. All Hallows� Day then is another name for All Saints� Day, the Catholic holiday for honoring the saints. As the English language evolved towards what it is today, All Hollows� Even became Hallowe�en, and then finally Halloween.
Following the Jewish tradition, Christians observe many of their holy days starting at sundown of one day and going until sundown the next day. This is where we also get the practice of Christmas Eve and New Year�s Eve. The tradition of celebrating Halloween stems from the festivity that began the celebration of All Saints Day, which started at sundown on October 31.
While it takes its name from All Saints Day, Halloween is actually a combination of several different traditions, many of them predating Christianity entirely, tangling up with each other to create the modern version of Halloween as we know it.
Samhain
Most of Halloween�s traditions stem from Samhain (sow-en), the Celtic New Year. Samhain, which translates to �end of summer�, occurred around the end of October, when the weather started to get cold. Samhain was an observance of all the important things that were happening during this change of seasons.
Celtic society was composed of hunter-warriors and shepherd-gatherers. When the weather got colder, the shepherds brought their animals down from the hills to closer pastures. Everyone stayed inside or close to home, which changed their day to day life significantly.
Samhain marked the biggest turning point of the year �a change in the weather, the shift in people�s lives as they acclimated to spending most of their time indoors, and also marked the final harvest. Celtic tradition held that turning points, times when things change from one state to another, had magical properties. When the season�s changed, when the life of summer began turning into the dead of fall and winter, the Celt�s believed that the veil between the realm of the living and the realm of the dead was at its thinnest, and those souls who had passed through the ultimate turning point �-the shift from life to death �-were free to travel again among the living. Many Samhain festival activities were connected to this belief, and many of these activities evolved into modern Halloween tradition, albeit through much twisting and tangling.
The Church
One of those tangles was the Church. Christians have been honoring their virtuous dead from the very beginning of the religion, with followers of Jesus going to his tomb to anoint the body. One practice of the early church, which has continued with Roman Catholicism, was to canonixe the exceedingly virtuous as saints in the afterlife.
Many Saints have their own day to be honored on, but in the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV officially established All Saints� Day in order to honor them all at once. Originally, All Saints� Day was observed on May 13, but in the eighth century, Pope Gregory III moved it to November 1, to correspond with Samhain and other pagan fall festivals.
This was nothing new. The Chruch had a long-standing policy of incorporating non-Christian traditions into its holidays in order to bring people to the faith. One strategy was moving the dates of Christian holidays to coincide with holidays of Non-Christian origin. Look at Christmas and Easter, for instance.
The policies worked. When All Saints� Day moved to November 1, and the Church incorporated Samhain traditions into activities celebrating the holy days, many descendents of the Celts converted. But it did still pose some problems. Much of the Samhain tradition centered on the supernatural world and wandering spirits, which didn�t have much of a place in Christianity. While recognizing saints covered a lot of ground, the Celtic descendants were still fascinated by the idea of the spirits of loved ones returning to the world of the living. At the end of the 10th Century, the Church attempted to direct the traditions much closer to their own beliefs by establishing All Souls� Day, which recognized all Christian dead. To an extent, their effort worked, and many Christians gave up their interest in death and the supernatural. But in some areas, the very unchristian idea of wandering spirits, as well as the festive atmosphere of Samhain, persisted.
Recognizing that they could not completely get rid of the supernatural elements of the celebrations, the Church began to characterize the spirits as evil forces associated with the devil, which is where we now get a lot of the more disturbing Halloween imagery.
All Souls�s Day continues on, mainly in countries that are predominantly Catholic, such as Mexico. All Souls� Day, along with All Hallows� Eve and All Saints� Day, are collectively called The Days of the Dead �Los Dias de los Muertos.
Trick or Treat
In medieval times, one popular All Souls� Day practice was to make �soul cakes,� simple bread desserts topped with raisins. Children would then go door to door begging for the cakes. For every cake the child collected, he or she would say a prayer for the dead relatives of the person who gave them the cake.
The practice, called �souling,� was based off the Samhain tradition of going door to door to collect food to offer to the gods. Dressing up in costume was also a big part of Samhain festivities. Some Celts would dress up as deities during part of the festival. At night, others would dress in ghoulish outfits and parade out of town, hoping to lead the wandering spirits away. Additionally, children would go door to door collecting firewood for a great communal bonfire. Once the bonfire was lit, the people would extinguish all the other fires in the village. Then they would relight them, using the flame from the Samhain bonfire, as a symbol of the people�s connection to each other.
Jack-o�-Lantern
As part of the Samhain celebration, the Celts would bring home an ember from the communal bonfire. They carried the ember in a hollowed-turnip, creating a makeshift lantern.
This tradition adapted into a folk tale about a disreputable miser named Stingy Jack. The tale relates how Jack, desperate to avoid damnation, tricked the devil into climbing a tree for some apples, and then placed crosses all around the tree so the devil couldn�t come down. The devil promised to leave Jack alone forever, if only he would let him out of the tree. When Jack eventually died, he was turned away from heaven, due to his life of sin. Unfortunately, due to his agreement, the devil wouldn�t take him either. He was cursed to become a wandering spirit for all eternity. As Jack left the gates of hell, the devil threw him a hot ember to light the way in the dark. Jack placed the ember in a hollowed-out turnip, and began wandering. According to legend, you can still sometimes see Jack�s spirit on All Hallows� Eve, carrying his turnip lantern through the darkness.
The traditional jack-o-lantern became a popular Halloween decoration in Ireland and Scotland several hundred years ago. Tradition held that it would ward of the spirit of Stingy Jack and other such spirits on that day, and the carved faces served as a representative of the souls of the dead. As Irish and Scottish emigrants came to America, they found that pumpkins were easier to carve and more plentiful than turnips.
I guess in the end, what it boils down to, is that just like in everything else, if you are looking for signs of the devil, you are sure to find them. And if you are looking for signs of God, you are sure to find them as well.
I think the point of all this history, is that maybe we should stop looking so hard.
