Oct 31, 2023
The Surprising Origins of Halloween Transcript
From the creation of the name ‘Halloween’, to spooky spirits that started as loving ancestors, to the devilish story of where Jack-o-Lanterns came from, the origins of Halloween might just be somewhat surprising. Read the transcript here.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Love it or hate it, October is the time of year when ghosts, ghouls and tricks of all kinds come out to play. Halloween is a firm tradition in many cultures, but where did it all come from? When did people decide to start dressing as spooks and go looking for sweets and candy in their neighbor’s houses? The origins might be very surprising.
(00:25)
Halloween starts life in Celtic Europe and Britain as the Gaelic Festival of Samhain. Nothing was written down about it until the 9th century, but as most Celtic societies had spoken traditions, it is thought to be far, far older. Samhain was one of the main four festivals of the Gaelic calendar, marking the beginning of the cold winter months and the end of the harvest.
(00:51)
According to the 17th century Irish historian Geoffrey Keating, a huge bonfire would be lit within the community. The hath fires in people’s houses would be put out for the evening and re-lit using flames from the huge communal bonfire, perhaps to bring good luck for the coming year. In some places, two bonfires were lit and animals and people would walk between them for good luck as well. There is some suggestion that the fire mimic the sun in the darkness, bringing warmth and light into the darkness of winter.
(01:28)
Samhain was also seen as a time of year when the passageways between the world of humans and the other world, realm of spirits and fey, opened and allowed the souls of the dead to come through. Entrances to the other world were thought to exist in caves and bogs, a natural reaction to dark and scary places where danger may have lurked.
(01:51)
Some medieval sources, written hundreds of years after the events by Christian monks wishing to spread the word of their new religion, stated that at Samhain some communities would worship a being by offering up human sacrifices. Whether or not this may have really happened is a matter for debate, but its thought this may at least have been a reference to the loss of food growing over the winter months and the need to sacrifice grain stores over this time to feed everyone.
(02:21)
Certainly there was a connection between the dead, dark, unknown places and the festival. Food was a big part of the festival and the sacrifice of grain and food became a sacrifice to the spirits and fey in order to appease them. In later centuries, this became part of Samhain or All Hallows’ Eve celebrations in Gaelic cultures in the form of food offered to the spirits of loved ones who might come visit.
(02:50)
Often this food would be left outside and a candle left at an open west facing window in order to help guide loved ones home. It was thought their spirits might then leave a blessing of good luck on the household.
(03:04)
In Ireland, a feast would be laid out for a household or community to share, and places would be set for loved ones who had recently passed within the last year to ensure they would join them on that night. This offering of food also tied into Samhain being a celebration of the end of harvest and the beginning of winter. The natural follow on from this was guising or mumming, otherwise known as the forerunner of trick-or-treating.
(03:32)
First recorded in the 16th century in Scotland followed shortly afterwards by Ireland and Wales, people would dress as one of the souls from the afterlife, going from house to house and demanding an offering to appease them. But in exchange, the would-be spirits would perform a song or recite a poem. There’s some suggestion this custom may have come from an earlier pagan one in which people impersonated specific spirits or gods and received offerings on their behalf.
(04:05)
It wasn’t a fast stretch from pretending to be a ghost or ghoul to creating mischief and Samhain came to be known as mischief night in some parts of Scotland and Ireland. Pranks were played alongside the guising and with it came a new form of illumination for the nighttime merrymaking. Turnips and beetroots would be hollowed out and carved with grotesque faces, then lit from within with a candle. These were thought to be representations of the souls of the departed themselves or perhaps even to ward off evil spirits. In Somerset, England, the custom was localized, becoming known as Punkie Night, punkie being an old English word for a lantern. Children would carry their Jack-o’-lanterns before them asking for candles.
(04:56)
When Scottish, Irish and Welsh people immigrated to America, they took the various customs with them, including this one. The only difference was that pumpkins were more plentiful in the Americas, easier to carve, and so the modern Jack-o’-lantern was born. But there is more to the story of the famous Jack-o’-lantern than simply being the right vegetable at the right time.
(05:20)
An Irish Christian folklore tale explains the origins of a carved vegetable lantern with a candle as a sole denied entry into both heaven and hell. The story goes that a man called Jack was walking home from drinking one night when he happened across the devil. No one knows what their conversation was about, but somehow Jack managed to convince the devil to climb a nearby tree.
(05:47)
Thinking quickly, Jack etched the sign of the cross into the trunk’s bark, preventing the devil from climbing back down again. Apparently unable to simply jump down the other side, the devil was forced to agree to a bargain with his unlikely captor; that when Jack died, he would not enter hell.
(06:08)
Jack went on with his life drinking, gambling, and genuinely doing all the sinful things until one day he died. Obviously, he isn’t allowed into heaven after a lifetime of sin, but when he decides to trot across the hall where it feels a bit warmer, the devil keeps his promise and refuses Jack entry to hell.
(06:29)
Rather mockingly, the devil throws a hot coal from the fires have hell at him, and as it’s a cold night, Jack snatches the coal up and places it inside a hollowed out turnip to keep warm. From that day onwards, he was forced to wander the earth with nothing but his lit turnip for warmth and company.
(06:50)
But what about the name Halloween? Turns out the early Christian Church wasn’t too keen on the overtly pagan ways of Samhain, and at some point, two [inaudible 00:07:02] Christian feast days were merged in with Northern European festivals for the dead. In 609, Pope Boniface IV made the 13th of May a holy day to commemorate Christian martyrs, establishing this as a feast of All Martyrs Day within the Catholic Church.
(07:20)
This date may have been chosen as it was close to an earlier Roman festival known as Lemuria, in which Romans would perform certain rituals to exercise unwanted restless spirits from their homes. There’s evidence to show that from around 800 AD, churches in Northumbria, Ireland and Bavaria have begun to hold a feast to all saints on the 1st of November, moving the festival from May. As this feast day spread throughout other parts of Europe, such as in Frankia, it grew to become All Saints’ Day.
(07:56)
The next day, the 2nd of November, became All Souls’ Day, a day within the Catholic Church to remember all loved ones who were recently deceased. There’s a suggestion that the reason the festival was moved from the 13th of May to the 1st of November and the 2nd for All Souls’ Day, in order to replace Samhain with a church sanctioned version of a day to commemorate those who had passed into the next life. By the 12th century, 13th of May had been scrubbed from the liturgical calendars in favor of the new autumn date.
(08:33)
Over time, the name for All Saints’ Day became All Hallow Mass, which eventually led to the day before being known as All Hallows’ Eve, which would eventually become Halloween. There was even dressing up as angels, demons, or saints alongside huge parades, both of which may have been to do with convincing more people that the new festival was just as good as Samhain. To this day, some churches now celebrate All Saints’ Day On the 31st of October.
(09:07)
All Hallows’ Eve may also have some roots in trick-or-treating along with pagan customs. With the baking of soul cakes, groups of children would go door to door within their communities to ask those within for the cakes which were small cakes made with spices, fruit, and marked with a cross on the top. They represented the souls of loved ones and the children who collected them would pray in return, especially for the souls of the giver’s relatives.
(09:37)
In many places, candles were also lit to guide soul’s home, a practice that still continues in many places, and libations of milk were poured on graves with an offering of food left in Britain and parts of Italy. These customs showed that there was a lot of intertwining between ancient pagan customs and Christian customs, as the two festivals meshed together into one.
(10:02)
This can also be seen in the wearing of costumes. For Samhain, it may have been imitating ancestors, but within the Christian tradition, there is a suggestion it may have been to avoid detection from a vengeful ghost. There were some beliefs that All Hallows’ Eve was the final night of the year in which a restless spirit was able to exact revenge on their enemies and people would dress up either to avoid becoming a victim of the ghost or perhaps to avoid being noticed at all. This came to be known in European Christianity as the dance macabre. And often, people would gather for a communal feast in their corpse costumes, perhaps a forerunner of the Halloween costume party.
(10:47)
In Wales and Ireland, those dressed up as spirits would often carry with them a white hobbyhorse, a white mare often seen as a symbol of death. In Wales, people would often dress up as fearsome creatures known as jacquard, roughly translated in English as witches. In Orkney and Glamorgan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, youngsters would often cross-dress in a twist on the normal day-to-day existence of their distant communities.
(11:15)
But how did an understanding of the dead traveling the earth become a belief in evil spirits? The answer lies in the change from Catholicism to Protestantism for much of Europe. When Protestant beliefs took hold, the new church held that there was no purgatory for soul’s journeying to heaven as there was in Catholic belief. Therefore, if there really were souls restlessly wandering on All Hallows’ Eve, these were, in fact, evil spirits and were often accompanied by witches.
(11:48)
Witches themselves were born from a mixture of pagan beliefs in a crone figure who represented winter and healers and herbalists who often lived on the fringes of society. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, there was also a move, especially within the US, to move the Halloween celebrations from its scary Celtic traditions of communication with the dead and attempt to move it into a more family-centered community celebration.
(12:16)
This was partly because until the latter half of the 19th century, the US didn’t have much to do with Halloween due to its obviously pagan roots, which early puritans rejected, and so it was the influx of Scottish and Irish immigrants who brought it with them. There was a move to creating parties for youngsters rather than encouraging the scary nature of frightening neighbors. And so the Halloween costume party was born and costumes began to take on other forms, such as book characters or generic costumes such as princesses or pirates.
(12:52)
Halloween also gained a lot of rituals that centered around scrying or attempting to use magic to predict the future. Apple’s featured heavily in this, especially in rituals that help young women find their perspective partner in life from the 17th century onwards. Teenage girls would attempt to cut as long a piece of peel as possible from an apple before tossing it over their shoulder. The shape it fell in would supposedly show the initial of their future husband.
(13:23)
The use of apples may have spread from Celtic connections to the other world, but as apples themselves were brought over to Britain by the Romans, their suggestion they were a connection to the Roman goddess, Pomona. She was a goddess of watching over fruit-bearing trees, and perhaps this tied into the harvest time of year in Britain. Her symbol was the apple, and it’s possible Romans assimilated this into the harvest celebration festivals they found.
(13:52)
Other apple-based activities included the infamous apple bobbing or dunking, where apples were floated in a large tub of water and participants had to try and retrieve an apple without their hands, using only their teeth. This is still an activity that might appear at children’s Halloween parties, but in the medieval period it was used as a method of matching up with a possible spouse. If someone caught an apple that already had someone else’s bite taken out of it, it was said they would be married within the year. To this day, apples are still a part of modern Halloween celebrations in the form of toffee apples, also known as candy apples.
(14:34)
Other rituals were involved in discovering a future spouse. In the 19th century, a popular way of finding out this information was to sit alone in a darkened room with a candle held up to a mirror. It was said that if she looked for long enough, the ghostly visage of a girl’s husband-to-be would appear over her shoulder. Over the decade since, this idea became twisted into something more terrifying, such as the infamous dare on Halloween night to stare into a mirror and whisper a name such as Bloody Mary three times to see if she appears over your shoulder.
(15:14)
Mirrors were also used to divine the fortune of whether someone would live or die, get married, or become rich or poor, along with other fun games such as pouring egg whites into water and the separated parts for telling how many children someone might have.
(15:32)
The many traditions of Halloween have a varied and sometimes ancient history. The origins of its connection to dead souls and food go all the way back to Celtic rituals of honoring the dead and giving thanks for the harvest; to its Christian formed name and remembering the souls who had passed as well as keeping away spirits that meant harm; great bonfires to bring good luck evolved into lighting candles for loved ones who had passed; costumes and treats came from keeping someone safe from spooks, but also allowed a community pantomime, gently mocking the things that scare us the most; famous Jack-o’-lanterns came from carved turnips and beetroots held by children looking for treats. And even mirrors and apples played their part.
(16:24)
Although the history of Halloween goes back for thousands of years, it’s clear its enduring popularity and the ability to assimilate new traditions means it will be around for many more.
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