Video and Texts Origins of Halloween Tradition from Stuff They don't Want you To know
How Halloween Works
by Tom Harris
Meaning of Halloween
One obvious question about Halloween is, "What does the word itself mean?" The name is actually a shortened version of "All Hallows' Even," the eve of All Hallows' Day. "Hallow" is an Old English word for "holy person," and All Hallows' Day is simply another name for All Saints' Day, the day Catholics commemorate all the saints. At some point, people began referring to All Hallows' Even as "Hallowe'en" and then simply "Halloween."
Following the Jewish tradition, Christians observe many holy days from sundown on one day until sundown on the following day. This is where we get the practice of celebrating Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, etc. The direct predecessor of modern-day Halloween is the festivity that began All Saints' Day, which started at sundown on October 31.
While it takes its name from All Saints' Day, modern Halloween is actually a combination of several different traditions. In fact, a lot of the things we do on Halloween predate Christianity entirely. In the following sections, we'll look at the chief traditions that feed into today's Halloween and see how they got all tangled up together in one holiday.
People visit the tombs of their relatives during All Saints' Day celebrations.
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Celtic Roots: Samhain
Most of the traditions of Halloween date back to Samhain (sow-en), the ancient Celtic New Year. Samhain, which translates to "end of summer," occurred around the end of October, when the weatherstarted to get cold. At its heart, Samhain was an observance of all the important things that were happening during this change of seasons.
The Celtic people, who came together as a society around 800 B.C., kept sheep and cattle. When the weather got colder, the shepherds brought their animals down from the hills to closer pastures. This shift changed daily life significantly. In the winter months, everybody stayed inside or close to home, working on handcrafts and spending time together. Samhain also marked the final harvest of the year, an event commemorated by festivals in many cultures.
Celtic tradition held that turning points, times when things change from one state to another, had magical properties. Samhain marked the biggest turning point of the year -- a change in the weather as well as a shift in everybody's lives. The Celts believed this magical time opened up a sort of connection to the dead. Those souls that had passed through the ultimate turning point, the shift from life to death. They believed the world of the living was closest to the world of the dead at the time of Samhain, and that the spirits of the dead traveled again among the living. A lot of the activities of the Samhain festival were connected to this belief, and many of those practices evolved into modern-day Halloween traditions.
The Celts recorded their history orally -- they did not write anything down, but passed on beliefs and stories from person to person. For this reason, historians often disagree about the Celts' practices and beliefs. So nobody is really sure what the Samhain festival was like, but there are a number of accounts that provide interesting explanations of modern-day Halloween practices, as we'll see in later sections.
How Halloween Works
by Tom Harris
Some Halloween traditions can be traced back to Celtic practices.
Evelyn Hofer/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images
How Halloween Works
by Tom Harris
Christian Roots: All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day
Christians have been honoring their virtuous dead from the earliest days of the religion. In traditional Roman Catholicism, exceedingly virtuous men and women may becanonized as saints in the afterlife. Since they are endowed with holiness, saints are close to God, and may perform miracles on earth. Roman Catholics, and some other Christians, honor saints and ask them for guidance in daily life. (See How does someone become a saint? to learn more about sainthood.)
Catholics commemorate many saints on their own "saints day," often the anniversary of their death. But with thousands of canonized saints, only a small percentage are recognized regularly. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV officially established All Saints' Day in order to honor all the saints at one time. History records such a sacred day before Boniface's time, but it wasn't widely observed.
Originally, Christians observed All Saints' Day on May 13. But in the eighth century, Pope Gregory III moved it to November 1. Officially, the Church chose this new date to mark the papal dedication of a church honoring the saints. But many historians believe the Church really moved the observance to correspond with Samhain and other pagan fall festivals.
The Catholic Church had a long-standing policy of incorporating non-Christian traditions into its holidays in order to bring people into the Catholic faith. This included moving the dates of Christian holidays to those of established non-Christian occasions. Many historians believe, for example, that the church set Christmas on December 25 so that it would correspond with pagan winter solstice festivals.
In any case, when All Saints' Day moved to November 1, the church did begin to incorporate Samhain traditions into the holy day's activities. This helped bring descendants of the ancient Celts into Christianity, but it posed some problems for the church. Much of the Samhain traditions centered on the supernatural and spirit world, ideas that don't have much of a place in Christianity. Recognizing saints, who were by definition deceased, covered a lot of the same ground, but the converts were still fascinated by the idea of their familiar dead returning to the world of the living.
Despite some unease in the church, many supernatural ideas persisted in All Saints' Day Eve celebrations, making the occasion a remarkable combination of Christian and pagan beliefs. At the end of the 10th century, the church tried to give these traditions a little more direction by establishing All Souls' Day, an occasion to recognize all Christian dead.
All Souls' Day, observed on November 2, is celebrated with Masses and festivities in honor of the dead. The living pray on behalf of Christians who are in purgatory, the state in the afterlife where souls are purified before proceeding to heaven. Souls in purgatory, who are members of the church just like living Christians, must suffer so that they can be purged of their sins. Through prayer and good works, living members of the church may help their departed friends and family.
After its introduction, this holiday did sate many Catholics' interest in death and the supernatural. But the unchristian idea of wandering spirits persisted in some areas, as did the festivity atmosphere of Samhain. Conceding that they could not completely get rid of the supernatural elements of the celebrations, the Catholic Church began characterizing the spirits as evil forces associated with the devil. This is where we get a lot of the more disturbing Halloween imagery, such as evil witches and demons.
All Souls' Day lives on today, particularly in Mexico, where All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day are collectively observed as "Los Dias de los Muertos" (The Days of the Dead). First and foremost, the Days of the Dead is a time when families fondly remember the deceased. But it is also a time marked by festivities, including spectacular parades of skeletons and ghouls. In one notable tradition, revelers lead a mock funeral procession with a live person inside a coffin.
This masquerade is closely connected to the celebration of Halloween, as are other elements of All Souls' Day. In the next section, we'll see how one early All Souls' Day ritual may have led to modern trick-or-treating.
All Saints' Day was established in order to honor all of the saints at one time. It is celebrated on November 1.
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