Mahdis Habibinia | Executive Editor (Online)
Featured Image: Before pumpkins, people would carve faces into turnips on Halloween. | Courtesy of Pexels
Did you know Halloween’s iconic jack-o’-lantern bears its roots in an old Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack?
Jack was out one night drinking with the devil when the former convinced the latter to magically turn himself into a coin, as part of a scheme to obtain free drinks. Then, Jack put the devil-now-coin in his pocket, along with a silver cross that prevented him from transforming back.
‘I promise to free you as long as you won’t bother me for a year,’ bargains Jack. ‘And when I die, you can never claim my soul!’
That was only Jack’s first trick. The second occurred when he carved a cross into a tree while the devil was in the branches picking out a piece of fruit, at Jack’s behest. This bought Jack another 10 devil-free years.
But when Jack died, god rejected him from heaven. Since the devil couldn’t claim his soul either, Jack was sent to roam the darkness of purgatory forever, with only a burning coal for light. He decided to put the coal into a turnip, to act as a lantern to guide his lost soul.
Based on this folktale, the Irish began carving creepy faces into turnips, beets and potatoes to scare away Stingy Jack, or any other spirits of the night on October 31. They also placed candles in these vegetables, and left them on their doorsteps to help guide lost spirits home.
Stingy Jack became ‘Jack of the Lantern’ and the rest is history!
So if you think about it, Halloween is actually more Irish than St. Patrick’s Day, since the latter was invented by Irish-Americans in America. Whereas the spooktacular day originates from the ancient Celtic festival of “Samhain,” meaning “summer’s end” in Gaelic.
Not many know the origins of Halloween, and yet a whopping number of people and money are invested in the day.
Nicholas Rogers, distinguished research professor and professor of history at York, wrote a book titled Halloween: from pagan ritual to party night. According to Rogers, About 65 per cent of American adults participate in Halloween beyond handing out candy. “Roughly $1.5 billion is spent every year on costumes, and a further $3 billion on party accessories.” So shoppers, wouldn’t a little historical context behind this year’s Halloween-related VISA payments be intriguing?
Two thousand years ago, the Celts, who lived in what is currently Ireland, celebrated their new year on November 1. As previously mentioned, Halloween originates from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. Its significance centres around the end of harvest season, and the beginning of winter, or the ‘darker half’ of the year—now often associated with human death.
“Paired with the feast of Beltane, which celebrated the life-generating powers of the sun,“ Rogers wrote, “Samhain beckoned to winter and the dark nights ahead. It was quintessentially ‘an old pastoral and agricultural festival.’”
Although not all historians can reach a consensus on what went on during the Samhain feast, there is one agreed-upon element renowned in Halloween’s legacy: its omens, propitiations, and links to the otherworld.
It is said that the Celts believed that on the eve of their new year which ended summer, the door dividing the worlds of the living and the dead opened.
As a result, people felt close to deceased relatives and friends. For the ‘friendly’ spirits, they left treats on doorsteps, and candles along the side of the road to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world. (Thank you Stingy Jack!)
To further commemorate the event, Celtic priests built massive bonfires where people burned crops and animals as sacrifices to deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes made of animal heads and skins. They also partook in fortune-telling activities.
Sir James Frazer popularized the notion that Samhain was a festival of the dead and a night where souls would visit their old homes. However, Rogers adds that we should be wary of this description of Halloween “for it seems probable Frazer confused the rites associated with All Souls’ Day with those that preceded it.”
In fact, there is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically and primarily devoted to the dead.
Most of the conjecture that Halloween involves supernatural events and rites developed in conjunction with the medieval holy days of All Souls’ and All Saints’ Day in the Roman imperialization of Celtic lands.
During the 400 hundred years the Roman Empire conquered and ruled over the Celts, two Roman festivals were combined with Samhain. First was “Feralia” which commemorated the passing of the dead. Second was a day to honour the Roman goddess of fruit, Pomona.
According to Rogers: “Some folklorists have detected Halloween’s origins in the Roman feast of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and seeds, or in the festival of the dead called Parentalia.” But, nonetheless, it will always typically be linked to Samhain.
Eventually, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to all Christian martyrs, and chose a day in February to commemorate them. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III added saints to that list and moved the date to November 1. According to Rogers, this was because “saints could be important intercessors for departed souls facing divine judgment.”
So, November 1 became known as “All Saints Day,” which incorporated some Samhain traditions. The Day was also called “All-hallows” or “All-hallowmas” from the Middle English term Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day. So it follows that the night before, October 31, became known as All Hallows Eve (Samhain).
What’s more, due to Christianity’s expansion into Celtic lands, Celtic rites were supplanted by their influence. The church then established November 2 as All Souls Day to honour the dead, which was very similar to Samhain/All Hallows Eve—a decision believed to be motivated by an attempt to establish a church-sanctioned holiday.
“Halloween is, quite literally, the popular derivative of All Hallows Even, or the eve of All Saints’ Day (1 November). Taken together with All Souls’ Day, which falls on November 2, it is a time assigned in the Christian calendar for honouring the newly departed,” explained Rogers.
It’s also safe to dismiss Halloween as anything to do with ‘satanic rituals’ or ‘satan’ himself, considering those were never elements of Samhain. “Satanism is essentially a Christian creation, a travesty of Christian forms centered on the fallen rebel angel, Lucifer,” wrote Rogers. “Certainly, Satanism was incompatible with the polytheism of the ancient Celts.”
Then, Halloween came to America!
In the second half of the 19th century, millions of Irish immigrants came to America fleeing the infamous Irish Potato Famine. According to Rogers, at the turn of the century, the Irish were the majority immigrant minority in the U.S. and Canada.They helped popularize the celebration of Halloween on a national scale.
For example, since turnips were hard to come by in the States at the time, pumpkins were used as an alternative to fend off ol’ Stingy Jack and help guide lost spirits.
Predictably and predominantly, however, Halloween started being celebrated in more commercial ways. Before, believe it or not, there was a time where Halloween in North America lost its spooky suave.
According to Rogers, this was likely an attempt to turn every Irish immigrant into a “putative middle-class citizen.” The Montreal Gazette blamed this on the “civilizing” influence of North American cities, noting the spooky suave was declining in favour of more “literary or more rational enjoyments.”
Clearly, this didn’t completely stop us from adopting some fun traditions and making it our own.
One famous adopted tradition, which was revived between 1920 and 1950, is putting on costumes and knocking on houses asking for food or money, also known today as ‘trick-or-treating’. Celtic myth actually states that visiting ghosts would disguise themselves in human form and knock on the doors of the living during Samhain asking for money or food. The myth also stated that humans could dress up to fool evil spirits into thinking they were one of them.
By the 1920s and 1930s, vandalism began to plague some celebrations in many communities. By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism, and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high number of young children during the 50’s baby boom, parties moved into the classroom or home.
Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighbourhood children with small treats.
So, a new tradition was born out of yet another Irish-based custom, continued to grow, and is now one of the most commercialized.
Along with Stingy Jack, there is another iconic Halloween figure with surprising origins: the green witch with a pointy hat and warty nose stirring her ominous cauldron.
The ‘old hag’ originates from a pagan goddess known as “the crone” or “Earth mother” who was honoured during Samhain—Google it, there’s nothing appalling or green about her!
She originally symbolized wisdom, change, and the turning of the seasons. The pagan Celts also believed that all souls went into the crone’s cauldron. It symbolized the Earth mother’s womb. They awaited reincarnation where stirring the cauldron allowed new souls to enter and old souls to be reborn.
It’s shocking and interesting to learn how the traditions and symbols of the day have evolved so much when it was essentially a day for celebrating the end of the harvest season, honouring saints, and, as seen with ol’ Stingy Jack, the spooktacular day was also an occasion for praying for souls in purgatory.
What’s more interesting is the lengths entrepreneurs have gone in replicating and demorphing some of the narratives of Samhain to cash in on the ‘scariest’ night of the year.
“The amount of money spent on Halloween has more than doubled in the last decade,” Rogers said. “Making it the second-largest retail bonanza after Christmas.”
