Halloween is a fun and unique holiday, no doubt about it. But have you ever stopped to consider where these customs come from?
The word “Halloween” actually means “All Hallows Eve.” It’s the day before Saints Day, which is a Christian holiday held on the first of Nov. Many of the customs and traditions we practice on Halloween predate this Chirstian holiday.
The traditions of dressing up, carving pumpkins, and trick-or-treating are all customs that are based off of an ancient Gaelic festival
called “Samhain.”
According to the book “Samhain in Your Pocket” by I.E Kneverday, Samhain was a festival held to mark the end of summer. It was held at a time when the veil that separated the living from the dead was at its thinnest, and when the forces of light and dark were in battle. The festivities included dressing up as creatures, leaving food outside your front door, and making lanterns out of turnips or beets. We can see the parallels between this festival and our own modern Halloween, but why did they do these things, and how have these traditions changed in modern times?
You may still find the occasional ghost, demon, or ghoul, but it seems that the majority of the costumes worn on Halloween are derived from whatever is currently in the cultural zeitgeist, be that a Marvel superhero or a Disney princess.
According to Florence McNeill in her book “A Calendar of Scottish National Festivals Halloween to Yule,” those originally involved in the festival of Samhain would dawn the guise of otherworldly creatures, not to look cute, but to disguise themselves from any hostile spirits who might cross over to our world during Samhain. Dressing up wasn’t a matter of looking cool, it was a matter of personal safety!
Another custom observed during Samhain was leaving out sweet treats to appease any spirits or fairies passing by. What do you get when
you have people leaving out sweets as offerings to any passing ghouls and a bunch of mischievous, potentially unsupervised children disguised as those same spirits? Eventually, some hungry child is going to swipe something!
This is where the author of “Samhain in your pocket” proposes that the tradition we now know as “trick-or-treating” got its start.
Homemade lanterns were another important part of Samhain. According to “Samhain in Your Pocket,” people would carve faces into beets or turnips and place hot coals inside them.
The reason they carved faces into their lanterns was to commemorate a man from Irish folklore called Stingy Jack. According to the myth, Stingy Jack was a blacksmith who played a trick on the Devil. Naturally, the Devil was not happy about this and cursed Jack to wander the bogs until the end of time, with nothing save a carved turnip lamp to light his way. This is where the term jack-olantern comes from, it literally means “Jack of the lantern.”
These customs would eventually make their way to America, brought here by Irish and Scottish immigrants, and over time they would evolve into modern Halloween!
So, the next time you’re carving a face into a pumpkin, getting ready to go trick-or-treating, or handing out candy to children disguised as ghosts or superheroes, remember where these traditions come from.
It’s important to keep these facts in mind so that we can better respect and understand the customs we’re observing, and the culture that
surrounds them.