All Hallows Eve

The eve of All Saints Day is the 31st October, also marks the beginning of Allhallowtide which is the time of year where many customs around the world encourage us to remember and honour our dead, including saints (or Hallows).

The word Halloween - originates from a combination of Scottish and other languages but in basic terms, the evening before All Saints Day was known as All Hallows (saints) Eve.  

Over many years the term All Hallows Eve become abbreviated and the “All” was largely  dropped so it became Hallows Eve. 

Then again, over time, the eve/evening was shortened to become “een” and so      Hallow-een became the term that  we still use today.

The Gaelic festival Samhain is mentioned in some of the earliest Irish literature and many Halloween traditions are influenced by this festival. 

For the Celts, a day ended and began at sunset; so the Samhain festival began on the evening before 1st November. 

The festival marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the 'darker half' of the year. It may be because there is less daylight in this period, but it is seen as a time when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld is thinned and subsequently most Halloween traditions are influenced by this festival.

It was believed the Otherworld “thinning” meant “spirits/fairies” could more easily come into this world and were particularly active. 

To ensure people and livestock survived the winter, these spirits would be appeased with offerings of food and drink, or portions of the crops, which were left outside homes for them. The souls of the dead were also said to revisit their homes seeking connection with families setting a place at the table and by the fire to welcome them.

The belief that the souls of the dead could return home on this night of the year and must be appeased is found in many cultures and in the 12th century it was customary for town criers (we could see them as he “social media” of the time!) to be dressed in black and parade the streets, ringing a bell of mournful sound and calling on all good Christians to remember the poor departed souls.

It was believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving on. In order to avoid being recognised by any such vengeful deceased soul people would wear masks or costumes.

In the 15th century Guising and Souling (trick and treating) was prevalent in parts of England, Wales and Europe where groups of poor people, often children, would go     door-to-door during this celebration collecting soul cakes, in exchange for praying for the dead and especially the souls of the givers' friends and relatives. This was called "souling".

While souling, these people would carry "lanterns made of hollowed-out turnips" often carved with grotesque faces. The lanterns were said to represent the spirits of those who have been denied entry into heaven and were used to ward off evil. They were common in parts of Ireland and the Scottish Highlands in the 19th century and in the region of Somerset, South West England.

From the 16th century we have records of mumming (amateur dramatics) and guising (children in disguises) in Ireland, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Wales, which involved people going house-to-house in costume (or in disguise), reciting verses or songs in exchange for food. 

The guising tradition was to impersonate the souls of the dead and receive offerings on their behalf. Impersonating the departed, or wearing a disguise, was also believed to protect the impersonator from them….after all impersonation is the kindest form of flattery isn't it? 

In Scotland, children would also go house-to-house with masked, painted or blackened faces (representing the ashes from the sacred bonfire), often threatening to do mischief if they were not welcomed……beginning the “trick or treat” custom?

In 18th–19th century Lancashire, we have records of Catholic families gathering on hills on the night of All Hallows' Eve to burn a bunch of burning straw on a pitchfork while others knelt around, praying for the souls of relatives and friends until the flames went out. This was known as teen'lay.

Customs extended to bonfires being lit for various rituals, with the flames, smoke, and ashes deemed to have protective and cleansing powers. Torches were lit from the bonfire were carried around homes and fields to protect them. They were also used for divination and to ward off evil spirits. Bonfires were also lit to "prevent the souls of the dead from falling to earth".

In parts of Wales, men went about dressed as fearsome beings and in the late 19th and early 20th century, young people in Glamorgan and Orkney would dress as the opposite sex during the festival but it wasn’t until the 20th century that guising and playing jokes really reached England. 

Apples and nuts were often used for games (as they were relatively easy to obtain) and customs included apple bobbing nut roasting, mirror-gazing, pouring eggs whites into water and dream interpretation.

We can only assume that as time went on, this harmless pagan celebration of the dead started to unsettle many Christians in Europe and rumours were fanned to suggest that "once a year, on Hallowe'en, the dead in churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival", known as the Danse Macabre and which is often depicted with people dressing up as corpses - perhaps the first depiction of a Zombies? 

In the 19th century Celtic immigrants took many of their customs to North America and it was after this that Halloween became a major holiday in America. 

Most American Halloween traditions were inherited from the Celts although in certain areas, a nocturnal Mass was already being said in cemeteries on Halloween night and candles that had been blessed were placed on graves, with families sometimes spending  the entire night at the graveside. 

It should be remembered that throughout these past centuries, the Halloween festival was never to praise the devil or used to encourage or spread black magic. It has always been a festival to celebrate those departed and ensure they can travel to the “other side”.

It can be suggested that the church largely feared the festival because it took away the divinity and awe of saints and church leaders and so they encouraged the connection between Halloween and the occult or devil worship, to scare people with the unknown.

It is somewhat ironic considering the church encouraged communion, where you drink the blood (wine) of the dead and eat part of his body (bread) which sounds more like a Halloween tale! 

But the church have used many pagan festivals over time to make their own - after all, it would not be as effective to eliminate the old customs and try to introduce new ones as it would be to just  “modify” existing ones and make them yours.

So, we can see where the guising and souling came from but what about all the other symbols we associate with Halloween?

We can see from the above that skeletons, ghosts, cobwebs, headstones, zombies etc are all easy to connect to the recently departed, we understand where the Jack-o-Lanterns (hollowed out turnips) came from and the church introduced the idea of witches being able to fly on broomsticks and looking grotesque, which was then adopted into the Halloween festival. 

Open graves and souls rising, hell fire and damnation are seen in church imagery across the world so that was easy to adopt too. The vision of a scarecrow, which was redundant after the harvest season and would “die” itself over the coming months can also be understood. The devil can be entwined with lost souls but devil imagery at Halloween tends to poke fun of the devil rather than as a form of worship.

Turnip carving was traditionally the item to use for lanterns but following immigration to America, the pumpkin was appropriated as the preferred carving item as it was much softer and larger and that custom then spread across the world.

Skulls are found across the world in a multitude of ceremonies and beliefs and it is almost always associated with death as such, it is no wonder that they are a central part of the Halloween symbology. 

Black and orange are Halloween's traditional colours, which can be attributed to the bonfires lit and the smoke and ash that were used to guise in and to ward off spirits.

Telling ghost stories, designed to scare definitely happened but less so than in the modern era. Of course, the abundance of music, imagery, movies and tv shows now make it easy to conjure up truly scary Halloween decorations that would actually strike fear into the Celts of old.