A Brief History of Halloween

Ah, Halloween! The Spooky Costume Holiday, the Candy Christmas, the Freeloaders Favorite Celebration! But just what is it actually a celebration of? And how did this peculiar custom originate? Is it, as some claim, a kind of demon worship? Or is it just a harmless vestige of some ancient pagan ritual? Despite the fears of a small minority of religious extremists and deeply superstitious small town characters in Stephen King novels, scientists, folklorists and historians all agree; Halloween is indeed Demon Worship. The Fun Kind!

The word itself, “Halloween,” like many terrifying words and practices, has its origins in the Catholic Church. It comes from a contracted corruption of “All Hallows Eve”. November 1, “All Hollows Day” (or “All Saints Day”), is a Catholic day of observance in honor of saints, all of whom died in ways that make hideous car accidents look like a Sunday school Picnic. Unless there was a hideous car accident at or on the way to your Sunday school picnic, in which case, Sorry.

In the 5th century BCE, (‘Before The Common Era’ as opposed to BC, or ‘Before Christ’ because it’s less offensive to believe it’s ‘common’ to believe in ‘Jesus’) in Celtic Ireland, summer officially ended on October 31. The holiday was called Samhain (sow-en), a Celtic word meaning “New Year” or “Last Day Before the Season in Which You’ll Probably Die of Starvation if you Don’t Freeze to Death First.”

‘Reenactments are a very sad thing’

One story says that on Samhain (Sam-Raimi), the disembodied spirits of all those who had died throughout the preceding year would come back in search of living bodies to possess for the next year. It was believed to be their only hope for the afterlife. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this period, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living, so it was a shoe-in for a celebration.

Some stubborn 5th Century Celts clung to the idea that their miserable, diseased, frigid, filthy, short lives were preferable to possession. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes, to make them cold and undesirable. (I’m referring to the homes themselves, not the Celts. 5th century Celts were already cold and undesirable, despite the fanciful depictions of fire haired, feisty maidens, strapping warriors and mysterious Druids often found in your finer Dungeons and Dragons related publications.) They would then dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily paraded around the neighborhood, being as destructive as possible in order to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess. Today, archaeologists believe there is strong evidence suggesting that this professed belief in spirit possession during Samhain (Skowhegan) was merely an excuse to get rip roaring drunk and vandalize the property of irritating neighbors.

Probably a better explanation of why the Celts extinguished their fires was not to discourage spirit possession, but so that all the Celtic tribes could renew a sense of community by relighting their fires from a common source, the Druidic fire that was kept burning in the Middle of Ireland, at Usinach (Samhain). Unfortunately, the science of orienteering was poorly developed at best in the 5th Century, and so there was a great deal of argument amongst Druid Priests as to where the exact middle of Ireland was. Many fire-seeking Celts succumbed to hypothermia and died still searching for the Druidic fire, ironically increasing the population of disembodied spirits that would plague the souls of the living on the next Samhain (ham-salad).

‘These lucky Celts found the centrally located Druid Fire in what is now modern day Portugal’

By some accounts, Celts would burn people at the stake who were thought to be possessed, as sort of a lesson to the spirits. Other accounts regard these stories as myth. Still other accounts hold that while people were indeed burned at the stake, it was more to relieve the constant boredom of 5th century Celthood, and that the ancient precursors of S’mores were made around the pyre.

The Romans, who knew a good boredom-relieving human sacrifice when they saw one, adopted the Celtic practices as their own, minus the part about freezing to death while wandering around Ireland looking for the Druid Fire. Try wearing a Roman steel chest plate in Ireland at the end of October and see if you walk even three feet from a fire, let alone voluntarily putting out a perfectly good fire you already had to go traipsing off looking for some central fire. So with some tailoring in the first century AD, Samhain (Shania-twain) was assimilated into the Roman festival day honoring Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit, trees, and Pagan Torchin’ Tuesdays.

‘Pomona, in addition to her other duties was also Goddess of staring at soap dishes.’

The thrust of many other Celtic practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role, and roasting someone alive was replaced by the more ritualistic practice of maiming folks with hot pokers. Various versions of Halloween were practiced throughout Europe and Russia for the next several years, but never really took off, perhaps owing to the scarcity of affordable spooky costumes and because the only “treats” on offer were liquor and wheat spoiled by hallucinogenic molds and fungi.

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840’s by Irish immigrants fleeing their country’s potato famine. At that time, the favorite pranks in New England included tipping over outhouses, unhinging fence gates and terrifying children by dressing up as huge, starving potatoes hungry for child flesh. The custom of trick-or-treating for candy is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Christians would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants and the minced brains (believed to be the seat of the “soul”) of debtors, convicted criminals and Huguenots.

‘This ceramic is titled ‘begging for soul cakes’, although it could just as well be called ‘cheap ass hummel knock-off from grandma’s estate sale that turns out to be worthless’.

The more soul cakes the beggars collected, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the brain donors. At the time, it was believed that torment of hell for debrained undesirables (particularly Huguenots) could be increased through prayer. In 1892, Pope Cletus the Fifth would declare debraining a heresy and replace “soul cakes” with the more acceptable but less fun “Soul and Broken Glass Sacks You May Strike Huguenots With at Will.”

The Jack-o-lantern custom probably comes from Irish folklore. As the tale is told, a man named Jack, a notorious drunkard, trickster, and part-time Huguenot, tricked Satan into climbing a tree. Jack then carved an image of a cross in the tree’s trunk, trapping the devil. Jack made a deal with the devil that, if he would never tempt him again, he would promise to let him down. According to the folk tale, after Jack died, he was denied entrance to Heaven because he was a Huguenot, but he was also denied access to Hell because he had tricked the devil. Instead, the devil gave him a single ember to light his way through the frigid darkness. The ember was placed inside a hollowed-out turnip to keep it glowing longer. Then, while Jack was entranced by the glowing Turnip, Satan bashed his head in, which is where the custom of smashing Jack-O-Lanterns comes from. The Irish used turnips as their “Jack’s lanterns” originally. But when the immigrants came to America, they were ridiculed by other immigrants for their “tiny, red pumpkins”. Soon the Irish caught on that if they were ever to get by in the new world, they would have to make their Jack-o-lanterns out of pumpkins. And stop drinking so much. And brawl less. And dye their hair and bleach their skin of the hideous freckles rightly feared as “carrier’s smallpox”, and swear up and down they were Norwegian, yah, Norwegian, you betcha, a practice generally known as “assimilation.”

Halloween really took off in America in the late thirties when the Garment industry discovered that synthetic Polymers could be easily molded into cheap costumes and masks, and it’s popularity only increased with the introduction more advanced textiles that were slightly less flammable.

The Golden Age of Halloween took place in the early 1970’s when affordable masks and plastic tunics bearing the name of popular icons could be purchased at the now extinct “Five and Dime” (fie-ven-diame). Sadly, the Golden Age ended abruptly in 1976 with the invention of the “fun size” candy bar.

‘A great costume, if you are dressing up as Planet of the Apes’. If, however, your intention was to be a character from the Planet of the Apes movie franchise, like every other child of the seventies, you were shit out of luck.’

Today, Halloween is once more endangered on multiple fronts. Fundamentalist Christian groups seek to portray Halloween as a recruiting tool for the Satanist Lobby. In fact, apart from royalties paid on Devil costumes and accessories (plastic pitchforks, horns, army surplus flamethrowers) Satanists see little commercial return on their investment.

Suburban soccer moms seek to drain the fun out of Halloween by suggesting “costume parties”, “school parades without weapons or gore” and worst of all, “daylight trick-or-treating.” Some social theorists believe that once this demographic has drained a significant number of “fun units” from the holiday, they will use them to power their hyper-drives and death rays directly prior to the enslavement of the human race.

Perhaps most insidiously, modern day Pagans, or “Wiccans” (wih-cahns) insist Halloween is still Samhain (Soduku) and that all non-religious Halloween festivities constitute religious harassment. While this approach offers certain scholarly and legal interest, it completely ignores that modern Wiccans have as much as much actual historical connection with 5th century Celts ( Pro-to-hue-gen-awts) as I do with the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene, which is to say a tiny, tiny bit so when I tell you I have anything to do with their award winning current production of “fiddler” entirely in Yiddish, you should consider the possibility that I am lying.

So we see that despite the adoption of Halloween as the favorite “holiday,” of certain fringe groups and despite it’s vilification by others, the day itself did not grow out of evil practices. Unless you call burning a very small number of possible Huguenots to death “evil”. The modern holiday evolved from Celtic new year’s rituals, the Medieval prayer practices of Europeans, and the thriving synthetic garment trade and it’s laudable goal of making children’s fabrics slightly that are a little less likely to catch fire. Today, many churches have Halloween parties or pumpkin carving events for the kids, which may well be listed in the community activities section of your local paper. Why not check them out and if you like, burn them down. After all, any so called “church” celebrating Halloween is probably Huguenot, and if not, have no one but themselves to blame for a case of mistaken arson. I’m sorry, identity.