Years ago a woman I knew said that she had become concerned that by celebrating Halloween she was advocating wickedness and evil, and she had decided to stop doing it. Apparently she had been into this holiday big time, with tons of decorations and traditions, probably up to and including cakes sporting spiders and fake cobwebs strewn everywhere. She threw it all out and explained to her kids that they would no longer be participating in any of these activities. She substituted a more innocuous “harvest” holiday, so they didn’t miss out entirely.
I’d be the last person to criticize this woman. She was totally sincere and believed that she was doing right by her family. And yet . . . in order to be perfectly consistent, she would have had to also eliminate Christmas and Easter celebrations from her household as well. Both of those Christian holidays have traditions with pagan roots.
But we don’t worry too much about the fact that pre-Christian Europeans worshipped trees if we celebrate Christmas by decorating a tree. We don’t refuse to call Easter by its name even though that word is not in the Bible and is actually derived from an ancient Babylonian goddess, Ishtar. It may seem quite odd to our modern sensibilities to think of Halloween as any kind of religious holiday, but it’s squarely in the same camp as these other two holidays. (The Jewish holidays of Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah are much more straightforward.) So what’s what? Inevitably I’ll have to simplify what is a very complicated bit of history, but I’ll do my best. When you walk into Party City over the next couple of months and cringe a bit (as I do) at all the gory and gruesome objects on view, you can assure yourself that there’s a legitimate origin for at least some of the stuff. (I’m not going to get into Vlad the Impaler as the model for Dracula; you’ll have to look him up yourself. And I’m sure you’re familiar with the Frankenstein story. Neither of these gentlemen has a thing to do with the real significance of Halloween, but they’ve crept into the holiday because of their general creepiness.)
So. Where to start? I guess with all the skeletons you see scattered about, or, as my son used to call them when he was little, “bone-face guys.” The human skeleton, especially the skull, has been used since medieval times to remind the living of their coming fate; the whole genre of artistic works using this image is called “memento mori,”–literally, “remembrance of death.” During the Black Plague a particularly vivid and popular depiction of this theme was the “dance of death,” with a skeleton leading a line of people from all walks of life, showing that no one was immune. Headstones and crypts were often adorned with skeletons and skulls, as well as with angels snuffing out candles. And it wasn’t just pictures or carvings of skulls and bones that were popular; sometimes it was the real thing. My husband and I visited the Capuchin Crypt on a trip to Rome a number of years ago; the walls and ceiling are covered with bones and skulls of dead monks, all arranged in tasteful(?) patterns. Over the door is the motto: “We bones, lying here bare, await for yours.” You can see how the skeletons would lead to all things cemetery-related: coffins, headstones, worms, spiders, decay, darkness . . . the list goes on.
All very well, you say, but how did this medieval obsession with death get us to today’s holiday with all those adorable (pesky?) little trick-or-treaters? In order to figure out October 31, we have to start with November 1, or “All Saints’ Day.” In the Roman Catholic Church and some Protestant denominations, All Saints honored those who had attained perfection in Heaven, known and unknown, named and unnamed, especially those who had been martyred for their faith. One version of this day’s name is “All Hallows,” with “hallows” meaning “holy ones.” (So in the Lord’s Prayer in the old King James, the phrase is “hallowed be Thy name,” meaning “may thy name be holy.”) The day before All Hallows was All Hallows Eve, or “evening,” or “e’en,” which over time became shortened to “Halloween.” The night before All Hallows was often a time of vigils, as people thought about departed souls and meditated on their own mortality. So it was a time of great spiritual seriousness and significance. But why was this particular date chosen? Almost certainly because of various pagan traditions already in place for that time of year, traditions associated with the beginning of winter and the possibility of spirits or fairies being able to wander the earth. That great font of wisdom Wikipedia says, “The belief that the souls of the dead return home on one night or day of the year seems to have ancient origins and is found in many cultures throughout the world.” The start of winter seemed appropriate, perhaps, because it was seen as a “liminal” time. Isn’t that a great word? It means a “threshold” time, a period of transition. So when the calendar is in flux perhaps the rules are relaxed, thus allowing dead souls some freedom.
Why the costumes and the treats? The idea of dressing up and therefore disguising oneself might have risen from the idea that it might be a good idea not to be recognized by wandering spirits if they were malevolent. On the other hand, the costumes might be seen as representations of those spirits. The “treats” can possibly be traced to the Roman Catholic tradition of “soul cakes” given out to poor children in return for their promise to pray for the dead. But there’s another tradition, this one from Scotland, of young men going around with blackened, painted or masked faces and demanding food in exchange for reciting verses or singing songs. If they weren’t welcomed they might threaten pranks, or “tricks.” It’s all very complicated, as you can see. And don’t get me started on jack-o-lanterns! In folklore they were the same thing as will-o’-the-wisps, the lights often seen over swamps or marshes, believed to be wandering spirits but actually some type of flammable gas, probably methane. It became popular for those same prankish young men mentioned above to carry lights, which also became known as jack-o-lanterns, contained in carved-out turnips. Yes, turnips. Must have been pretty big ones. (The Druids also supposedly used turnip lights in their rituals.) Many cultures have used carved-out gourds to hold lights, with or without any kind of spooky significance. When the custom migrated to America along with European immigrants, pumpkins were substituted for the turnips. And a good thing too, I’d say. Pumpkins are much more attractive.
There’s a lot more I could say about the panoply of ideas associated with Halloween, but the foregoing at least gives a sampling. I think we’re free to pick and choose what we take seriously and what we don’t. As I sit here working on this post it’s mid-October, and the beautiful fall weather we have here in Colorado is in full swing. Hey, break out the hot cider and campfires, if nothing else, and enjoy this time of year. No one can say anything against that!
© Debi Simons
A little added tidbit here, written in Oct. 2023, from an author I deeply respect: Kevin Williamson. He writes for an excellent news outlet called The Dispatch, and his newsletters are available only to subscribers. Here’s a paragraph from his 10/30/23 edition of “Wanderland”–
Halloween apparently has gotten mixed up over the years with various pagan commemorations of the dead and autumnal harvest ceremonies. Making dolls or effigies out of seasonal produce (jack-o’-lanterns, corn dollies) and displaying them in or around the home is one of those traditions that goes all the way back into the shadows of ancient prehistory. The end of summer puts people in a mood to think about mortality, naturally, and so many different cultures around the world have parallel fall rites relating to death and resurrection. These show up in language in funny ways: the pheasant’s-eye flower, which blooms briefly from August to September, is traditionally known in some places as the Adonis flower or autumn Adonis, after the Greek resurrection god. Scarecrows, another autumn staple, figured prominently in the pagan world, with the Greeks using them to display images of Priapus, a god of vegetation and fertility. The old heathen stuff never really goes away: Let’s just say that Christians did not invent the custom of dragging evergreen trees into the house for ceremonial purposes on the longest night of the year. Nor were they the first to pay special attention to such totems of fertility as eggs and rabbits in the spring. And so it is natural that the commemoration of the dead precedes the commemorations of those who have received eternal life. Sometimes, Christians are embarrassed by the pagan roots of some of our observations and imagery. But I don’t think we should be. There’s just the one created world, and we have to rummage around in it for the things we need from time to time. The first Christians who decided that maybe reading Aristotle was all right did themselves a favor.
