The Think Tank

Halloween is a huge holiday in the US and Canada.  As a nation we are expected to have spent more then $5 BILLION dollars this year on Halloween decorations, costumes and candies.  That ranks it second for the most retail holiday in North America, falling victim only to Christmas.  According to the nightly news, the average American is expected to spend $60 bucks this year on Halloween stuff.  Now clearly there are fools such as myself who skew the bell curve, but the point is that people here love the holiday.  Strangely, unlike its more Christian counterpart, few people know much about the roots of our traditions surrounding Halloween.  So, read on and we’ll discover why we spend so much effort to honor the ghosts, ghouls and skeletons that walk the streets every October 31st.

Most of our traditions are rooted in ancient Celtic traditions, pagan celebrations and very old Catholic holidays.

By the 9th century the Celts inhabited much of what is now the UK and western Europe, as well as an isolated enclave in Turkey.  Long before then they held an annual celebration called Samhain (pronounce sow-en), which was held near the end of the month we now call October.  It was similar to many summer solstice celebrations common to Pagan peoples the world over, but the Celts felt that the veil between the afterlife and present was at its thinnest during Samhain.  (There is a common myth that Samhain was the name of a Celtic God of Death, but that is not correct.)  It was a celebration similar to Easter or Christmas, except that unlike those two Christian holy days which look forward to the return of the Savier, Samhain was a time when friends and loved-ones would return from the netherworld to spend time with those of us left here on Earth.  (This is a very similar belief held by the Aztec’s and that are still expressed in Mexico today during The Days of the Dead, celebrated between October 31st and November 2nd.)  The Celts believed that often times these spirits would return in the form of animals, most notably as black cats.

While many people felt that these spirits were welcome members of the family returning to celebrate the end of summer, others felt it was an opportunity for evil spirits to return to the earth and again take human form.  In an attempt to ward off these dastardly ghosts, people would dress themselves as scary hob-gobblins to ward off the evil spirits, or to confuse them into thinking the wearer wasn’t human.

Another facet of the Samhain celebration was going door to door collecting food to offer the Gods in asking for a gentle winter, and of collecting firewood to use in a massive bonfire built atop the highest hill in the area.  After the bon fire celebration, the participants would take embers from the bon fires to their home, where they would relight the fires in their hearth – a symbol of extending God’s blessing for a prosperous winter to the home and family that lived there.  These embers would be carried in lanterns, which were more often then not carved from turnips or gourds.  In addition to dressing in costumes to scare off or fool the evil spirits, people would carve ghoulish faces into the ember lanterns to further scare away the evil spirits.

One notorious ember carrier was a very unlikable and mean spirited Celt by the name of Jack.  As the legend goes, Jack somehow managed to trick the Devil into climbing a tree and before the Devil could climb down, carved a crucifix into the trunk.  This trapped the Devil in the tree, and gave Jack a great deal of glee.  Many years later when the old miser died, God refused him admittance to Heaven due to his general level of despicability and the Devil, who has a very long memory, likewise refused to admit him to Hell.  This left Jack’s ghostly spirit wandering the world in eternal darkness.  Eventually the Devil took pity upon him and give him a piece of coal to light his way, which Jack placed in a turnip and carved into a latern.  His legend was, of course, known as Jack of the Lantern, which eventually became Jack ‘O Lantern.

One last tradition may date back to the Celts: Bobbing for apples.  Apples have long since been linked with the Goddess and fertility, dating all the way back to the Garden of Evil.  The main reason for this is that if you cut an apple across its equator, the seed pocket is shaped like a pentagram, an ancient symbol for the Goddess among Celts, Romans and many other people.  Bobbing for apples used to be a similar tradition to catching the garter belt at a wedding: the first person to bite a bobbing apple would be the next to marry.

All Saints Day (presently celebrated on November 1st) was created by Pope Boniface IV in the 7th Century AD and is where we got the name Halloween.  The word “Hallow” is an Old English word meaning “Saint”.  So, if November 1st was All Hallows’ Day, then October 31st would be All Hallows’ Eve.  In good Cockney tradition, All Hallows’ Eve was shortened to “Hallows’eve” and eventually “Halloween”.

So that’s where the name Halloween came from.  But where did All Saints’ Day come from?  Well, as I said earlier it was invented by Pope Boniface the IV.  It was needed because by the 7th Century, there were so many saints that there were not enough days in the calendar year to go around.  Hence All Saints’ Day, celebrating all the saints who did not have their own special day (for instance, St. Patrick’s Day or St. Valentine’s Day), or who had not been officially recognized by the church.

What’s interesting about All Saints Day is that it was not always celebrated on November 1st.  When Pope Boniface IV created the holiday, he decreed that it be celebrated on May 13.  Problem was, try as the Holy See might, it could not convert those pesky Pagans to Christianity, nor could it get them to stop celebrating their own holidays out in the woods, much less recognize the churches holy days.  So in 835AD Pope Gregory decided if he couldn’t beat them, he’d assimilate them and thus moved All Saints’ Day to November 1st, successfully linking the Samhain celebration with a Catholic holiday.

All Souls Day (November 2nd), was created to celebrate not those in Heaven, but those stuck in Purgatory, and it too closely resembled the Pagan tradition of honoring spirits that walk the earth.  The tradition of Souling is going door to door asking for soul cakes, small square pieces of bread with currants, in exchange for prayers for the members of the family who may be awaiting entrance into Heaven.  Sound familiar?  Remember the tradition of the Celtic Samhain, going door to door asking for food to offer the Gods?

All three days came be to known en masse as Hallow Tide, and are all still celebrated within the Church, though most modern Halloween traditions are still treated with ill-respect by Christianity and often linked with the practice of Satanism.

Some other international holidays are rooted in the same Samhain traditions, most notably in England where they celebrate Guy Fawkes Night or Bonfire Night, celebrated on November 5th.

In 1605 Guy Fawkes and several other conspirators attempted to blow up the House of Commons as a symbol of revolt against an aggressive anti-Catholic king, James I.  The whole attempt came to be known as the Gun Powder Plot.  On the night that Guy was to light the 36 barrels of gunpowder, the Kings men captured him.  He was quickly tried, convicted and killed by disembowelment in a public square.

The very same night that the Gun Powder Plot was foiled, Londoners heard that their King was safe and lit bonfires all over town.  By the next year, the bonfires were coupled with effigies of Guy Fawkes.  But then a peculiar thing happened…  as distrust and ill-will toward both England’s Monarch and the Pope grew and the people found themselves further and further under the boots of the wealthy and influential, Guy Fawkes and his Gun Powder Plot gained in popularity.  Eventually the King, the Pope and many other politicians and heavy-handed policemen found their effigies roasting on November 5th.

Harkening back to Samhain, children began going door to door asking for coins which were cast into the flames while reciting “Remember, Remember the Fifth of November.”  To this day likenesses of the Pope, the Queen and more recently Prime Minister Tony Blair are burned alongside Guy Fawkes, a tradition which is accepted but frowned upon by the Vatican, the Monarchy and the elected government of the United Kingdom.

Another noteworthy fact is that the town of Hancock, MD has refused to recognize a permanent date for Halloween, stating that if a child were to be hurt during trick-or-treating on a day the city sponsored, it may be held liable for damages.  This is, of course, a silly suggestion.  But it does mesh well with my own theory that we should unleash ourselves from the 31st and move Halloween to the last Saturday in October, because let’s face it: Halloween sucks mid-week.  The kids have to wait until their parents get home from work and they have to get the trick-or-treating over with early, thereby cheating the kids out of their well-earned goodies; Halloween Parties held mid-week suck and leave you with a terrible hangover at work the next day; and you can’t buy dry ice on Sundays, so the Sabbath is out too.  And from a purely personal point of view, I spend countless hours setting this crap up for two hours of trick-or-treating on a weeknight, as opposed to the whole night of fun offered by Fridays or Saturdays.  So write your Congressmen and help me start Weekend Only Halloween Revolution!