Samhain to Soulmass: The Pagan origins of familiar Halloween rituals

Beverley D'Silva
BBC

OCTOBER 30,2024


From outrageous costumes to trick or treat: the unexpected ancient roots of Halloween's most popular – and most esoteric – traditions.


With its goblins, goosebumps and rituals – from bobbing for apples to dressing up as vampires and ghosts – Halloween is one of the world's biggest holidays. It's celebrated across the world, from Poland to the Philippines, and nowhere as extravagantly as in the US, where in 2023 $12.2 billion (£9.4 billion) was spent on sweets, costumes and decorations. The West Hollywood Halloween Costume Carnival in the US is one of the biggest street parties of its kind; Hollywood parties such as George Clooney's tequila brand's bash make a big social splash; and at model Heidi Klum's party she is renowned for her bizarre disguises, such as her iconic giant squirming worm outfit.

Heidi Klum wore a worm costume for Halloween 2022 in NYC – scary disguises were originally intended to ward off evil spirits (Credit: Getty Images)

With US stars turning out again for the biggest dressing-up show after the Oscars' red carpet, it's no surprise Halloween is often viewed as a modern US invention. In fact, it dates back more than 2,000 years, to Ireland and an ancient Celtic fire festival called Samhain. The exact origins of Samhain predate written records but according to the Horniman Museum: "There are Neolithic tombs in Ireland that are aligned with the Sun on the mornings of Samhain and Imbolc [in February], suggesting these dates have been important for thousands of years".


Celebrated usually from 31 October to 1 November, the religious rituals of Samhain (pronounced "sow-win", meaning summer's end), focused on fire, as winter approached. Anthropologist and pagan Lyn Baylis tells the BBC: "Fire rituals to bring light into the darkness were vital to Samhain, which was the second most important fire festival in the Pagan Celtic world, the first being Beltane, on 1 May." Samhain and Beltane are part of the Wheel of the Year, an annual cycle of eight seasonal festivals observed in Paganism (a "polytheistic or pantheistic nature-worshipping religion", says the Pagan Federation).


The ancient Celtic festival of Samhain is still celebrated in some places, including Glastonbury Tor, pictured in 2017 (Credit: Getty Images)

Samhain was the pivotal point of the Celtic Pagan new year, a time of rebirth – and death. "Pagans had three harvests: Lammas, harvest of the corn, on 1 August; the one of fruit and vegetables at autumn equinox, 21 September; and Halloween, the third," says Baylis. At this time animals that couldn't survive winter were culled, to ensure the other animals' survival. "So there was a lot of death around that time, and people knew there would be deaths in their villages during the harsh winter months." Other countries, notably Mexico, celebrate The Day of the Dead around this time to honour the deceased.
Costumes and ugly masks were worn to scare away malevolent spirits believed to have been set free from the realm of the dead


At Samhain, Celtic Pagans in Ireland would put out their home fires and light one giant bonfire in the village, which they would dance around and act out stories of death, regeneration and survival. As the whole village joined in to dance, animals and crops were burned as sacrifices to Celtic deities, to thank them for the previous year's harvest and encourage their goodwill for the next.


It was believed that at this time the veil between this world and the spirit world was at its thinnest – allowing the spirits of the dead to pass through and mingle with the living. The sacred energy of the rituals, it was believed, allowed the living and the dead to communicate, and gave Druid priests and Celtic shamans heightened perception.

And this is where the dress-up factor came in – costumes and ugly masks were worn to scare away malevolent spirits believed to have been set free from the realm of the dead. This was also known as "mumming" or "guising".

Those early Samhain dressing-up rituals began to change when Pope Gregory 1 (590-604) arrived in Britain from Rome to convert Pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. The Gregorian mission decreed that Samhain festivities must incorporate Christian saints "to ward off the sprites and evil creatures of the night", says Baylis. All Souls Day, 1 November, was created by the Church, "so people could still call on their dead to aid them"; also known as All Hallows, 31 October later became All Hallows' Eve, later known as Halloween.

"There is a long tradition of costuming of sorts that goes back to Hallow Mass when people prayed for the dead," explains Nicholas Rogers, a history professor at York University in Canada. "But they also prayed for fertile marriages." Centuries later boy choristers in the churches dressed up as virgins, he says. "So there was a certain degree of cross-dressing in the ceremony of All Hallow's Eve."

New York City Halloween parade participants in the early 1980s (Credit: Getty Images)


The Victorians loved a ghost story, and adopted non-religious Halloween costumes for adults. Later, after World War Two, the day centred on children dressing up, a ritual still alive today at trick-or-treating time. Since the 1970s, adults dressing up for Halloween has become widespread again, not just in creepy and ugly costumes, but also hyper-sexualised ones. According to Time, these risqué outfits emerged because of the "transgressive" mood of the occasion, when "you can get away with it without it being seen as particularly offensive". In the classic teen film Mean Girls, it's jokingly said that "in girl world" Halloween is the "one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it". It's not just in "girl world" that Halloween has a disinhibiting effect – it is a hugely popular holiday in the LGBTQ+ community, and is often referred to as "Gay Christmas". In New York, the city famously comes alive every year with a Halloween parade featuring participants in elaborate and outlandish costumes.

Playing with fire

Echoes of Samhain also live on today in fire practices. Carving lanterns from root vegetables was one tradition, although turnips, not pumpkins, were first used. The practice is said to have grown from a Celtic myth, about a man named Jack who made a pact with the devil, but who was so deceitful that he was banned from heaven and hell – and condemned to roam the darkness, with only a burning coal in a carved-out turnip to light the way.

The ritual of carving lanterns out of pumpkins came from the myth of a man called Jack who made a pact with the devil (Credit: Getty Images)


In Ireland, people made lanterns, placing turnips with carved faces in their window to ward off an apparition called "Jack of the Lantern" or Jack-o'-Lantern. In the 19th Century, Irish immigrants took the custom with them to the US. In the small Somerset village of Hinton St George in the UK, turnips or mangolds are still used, and elaborately carved "punkies" are paraded on "punkie night", always the last Thursday of October. In the UK town of Ottery St Mary there is still an annual "flaming tar barrels" ritual – a custom once practised widely across Britain at the time of Samhain, where flaming barrels were carried through the streets to chase away evil spirits.
Soulers went door to door singing and saying prayers for souls in exchange for ale, cakes and apples

Leaving food and sweetly spiced "soul cakes" or "soulmass" cakes on the doorstep was said to ward off bad spirits. Households deemed less generous with their offerings would receive a "trick" played on them by bad spirits. This has translated into modern-day trick or treating. Whether soul cakes came from the ancient Celts or the Church is open to argument, but the idea was that, as they were eaten, prayers and blessings were said for the dearly departed. From Medieval times, "souling" was a Christian tradition in English towns at Halloween and Christmas; and soulers (mainly children and the poor) went door to door singing and saying prayers for souls in exchange for ale, cakes and apples.
Advertisement

More like this:

• Britain's most chaotic rituals

• The historic roots of goth

• Is County Meath the birthplace of Halloween

Apple bobbing – dipping your face into water to bite an apple – dates back to the 14th Century, according to historian Lisa Morton: "An illuminated manuscript, The Luttrell Psalter, depicted it in a drawing." Others date the custom back further, to the Romans' conquest of Britain (from AD43) and the apple trees that they imported. Pomona was the Roman goddess of fruitful abundance and fertility, and hence, it is argued, apple bobbing's ties to love and romance. In one version, the bobber (usually female) tries to bite into an apple bearing her suitor's name; if she bites it on the first go, she is destined for love; two gos means her romance will start but falter; three means it will never get started.

It is thought that apple bobbing originated in the 14th Century – or possibly even further back (Credit: Getty Images)


British rituals, at the heart of Halloween traditions, are the subject of Ben Edge's book, Folklore Rising, illustrated with his mystical paintings. Edge says that he has observed a "resurgence of people becoming interested in ritual and folklore… I call it a folk renaissance, and I see it as a genuine movement led by younger people".


He cites such artists as Shovel Dance Collective, "non-binary, cross-dressing and singing traditional working men's songs of the land". There is also Weird Walk, a project "exploring the ancient paths, sacred sites and folklore of the British Isles… through walking, storytelling and mythologising." If interest in folk rituals is on the rise, so too are the numbers turning to such traditions as Paganism and Druidry, both adhering to the Wheel of the Year, and Samhain, "dedicated to remembering those who have passed on, connecting with the ancestors, and preparing ourselves spiritually and psychologically for the long nights of winter ahead".

Ben Edge
The Flaming Tar Barrels of Ottery St Mary (2020) is featured in artist Ben Edge's book about ancient traditions, Folklore Rising (Credit: Ben Edge)

Philip Carr-Gomm, a psychologist, author and practising druid, says that he has witnessed a "steady growth" in interest around Druidry over the past few decades. "We now have 30,000 members, across six languages," he tells the BBC.

The need for ritual, connectedness and community is at the heart of many Halloween traditions, says Baylis: "One of the most important aspects of Halloween for us is remembering loved ones. We light a candle, possibly say the name of the person or put a picture of them on an altar. It's a sacred time and ceremony, but you don't have to be a Pagan to be involved. The important thing is that it comes from a place of protection and love."

A modern witch celebrates the cycle of life and death at the confluence of cultures

This time of year, a bruja, or witch, practices central Mexican Indigenous rituals and modern pagan ones, both honoring the Earth and “us as individuals as part of nature.” But the holidays of the Day of the Dead and Samhain are not the same.

The Rev. Laura Gonzalez poses after teaching about Day of the Dead at a bookstore in Chicago in 2019. Courtesy photo

October 28, 2022

By 

Heather Greene

(RNS) — As Americans of all faiths prepare for Halloween with costumes and candy or the Day of the Dead with food and flowers, the pagan community is also preparing for its holiday celebrating death and rebirth.

Samhain is the third and final harvest festival of the pagan Wheel of the Year, as the holiday calendar is known in many Earth-based religions.

“(Modern) Pagans have incorporated the seasonal concern with the dead in a holy day that celebrates the cyclicity of life, death, and rebirth,” writes folklorist and pagan scholar Sabina Magliocco in her book “Witching Culture.” 

Not unlike the Day of the Dead and Halloween, Samhain (a Gaelic word pronounced “Sow-en”) includes feasting and honoring one’s ancestors, though those celebrating Samhain are likely to add some divination. Based largely on Irish folk religion, it is a time when the divide between the physical and spiritual worlds are believed to be thin.

---

RELATED: No, they do not worship the devil, and other myths dispelled in new book on satanism

---

The Rev. Laura González, who is a practicing witch and a pagan educator and podcaster in Chicago, celebrates all three. “(My practice) is a hodgepodge,” she laughs.

The Rev. Laura Gonzalez celebrating Tlaxochimaco 2022 in Little Village, Chicago. Courtesy photo

González merges modern paganism with Mexican traditions, including practices indigenous to central Mexico, where she is from. “At their core, modern paganism and these indigenous practices both honor the Earth,” she said. Nature reverence is essential, she said, to her spiritual path.

“Let me describe to you what happens in my life,” González said in a phone interview. On Oct. 1, the decorations go up for Halloween, a purely secular holiday for her. Then, around Oct. 27, she sets up a Day of the Dead altar to honor deceased relatives, as most Mexicans do about this time, she said. “My mother died on Oct. 27, 2011. I believe it was her last wink to me,” said González.

Since then, González has been honoring her mother with bread and coffee but has also made it her mission to teach others about the Day of the Dead and its origins. She teaches those traditions as well as modern paganism both locally and over the internet at the pagan distance-learning Fraternidad de la Diosa in Chihuahua, Mexico.

On Samhain, González always hosts a small ritual for her Pagan students and participates in Samhain celebrations, either as an attendee or organizer. Some years she travels to Wisconsin to be with fellow members of the Wiccan church Circle Sanctuary.

Samhain is traditionally honored on Oct. 31, but some pagans celebrate it Nov. 6 or 7, an astrologically calculated date. Regardless, group celebrations must often yield to modern schedules, and González said she will celebrate an early Samhain this year.

“My (Samhain) celebration is for the ancestors and for the Earth going into slumber — the Goddess goes to sleep,” González said. She likes to focus her ritual on modern pagan trailblazers, often referred to as “the mighty dead,” rather than on her relatives, which she honors on the Day of the Dead.

González’s central Mexican indigenous practice and her modern pagan practice, rooted in  northern Mexico and the United States, “are very similar,” she added, both honoring the Earth and “us as individuals as part of nature,” something she believes has been lost in modern Day of the Dead traditions. However, she quickly added, “Indigenous practices are not pagan.”

Growing up in Mexico City, González was surrounded by mainstream Mexican culture, with Day of the Dead festivals and altars. As she was exposed to the Indigenous traditions that are still woven through Mexican culture, she explained, she began to study folk magic and traditions, as well as “Native philosophies.”

The Day of the Dead, she said, “is the ultimate syncretic holiday,” a merger of the European-based Catholic traditions with Indigenous beliefs and celebrations. “The practices brought to Mexico by the Catholic colonizers were filled with pagan DNA,” she said. All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day contain remnants of traditional Samhain and other older beliefs, she noted.

“These colonizers came to a land filled — filled — with skulls and its imagery,” she said, which must have been frightening and somewhat of a culture shock, she added.

An altar during Tlaxochimaco 2022 commemorations in Chicago. Courtesy photo

González is now actively participating in the revival of the Indigenous traditions as a teacher and celebrant. The Indigenous holiday, she said, is a 40-day celebration. The first 20 days is called Tlaxochimaco, or the birth of flowers, and the second is Xoco Huetzi, or the fall of the fruit.

“We all are flowers,” she explained. We grow, flower, bloom and then become fruit. Eventually falling and becoming seed, and the cycle continues. The Aztecs “used this mythology to describe life and life cycles,” she said.

“But there are people who do not make it to fruit. They die young,” González explained. These people are honored during Tlaxochimaco.

During Xoco Huetzi, celebrations are held to honor those who have made it to old age before passing. Both festivals traditionally involve dancing, she said, which is considered an offering to the dead. 

The 40-day celebration was eventually condensed into two days aligning with the colonizers’ Catholic traditions, she said, becoming the modern Day of the Dead celebration, a holiday that is quickly becoming as popular north of the Mexican border as Halloween is.

While González is not offended by purely secular Halloween celebrations, even with its classic depiction of witches, she struggles with the growing commercialization of the Day of the Dead. “I know what I am, and I know what I celebrate,” she said, speaking of Halloween. “I find it funny that the wise woman has been made into something scary.”

What does offend her is people dressed as sugar skulls. “It’s a double-edged sword,” González said. “It’s a source of pride knowing the world loves our culture,” she said. However, she added, “You love our culture, you love our music, you love our food, you love our traditions, you love our aesthetics, you love our parties and holidays, you love all of that, but you don’t love us.”

---

RELATED: The most recognizable work at the Whitney Museum’s new modernism exhibit may be a tarot deck

---

An example of a Samhain altar. Photo by Heather Greene

This is the definition of cultural appropriation, she added.

“The world is filled with racism, discrimination, colorism, classism,” she continued. “There is a disconnection between the thing and the people who made the thing.” She likened this to a second wave of colonization.

Her recommendation: “If you like Day of the Dead stuff,” she said, “shake a tree and a Mexican artisan will fall from it. Buy Mexican. You will benefit the very people who have created the aesthetic,” she said. “The big box stores don’t need your money,” she said, but Mexican and Mexican American families do.

Many pagans, especially in the growing Latino pagan community, do honor multiple traditions like González, particularly around the time when the holidays align.

“I think it’s important to recognize where we come from and how we survive whatever challenges our ancestors had,” said González. Samhain, Day of the Dead and the Aztec traditions “are, after all, a celebration of life and their lives.”

The Afterlife: A Trick or a Treat?

Halloween Celebrations Past and Present

by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin / October 28th, 2023

Snap-Apple Night, painted by Daniel Maclise in 1833, shows people feasting and playing divination games on Halloween in Ireland.   It was inspired by a Halloween party he attended in Blarney, Ireland, in 1832.

The answer seems to be that we make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones. With the endless inventiveness of humankind, we grasp the very elements which are so divisive and destructive and try to turn them into tools—to dismantle themselves.
― Stephen King, Danse Macabre, April 209, 1981

Halloween is creeping up on us again replete with all its ghostly traditions celebrated all over the world.

Also known as All Saints’ Eve, it is the time in the liturgical year or Christian year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints (hallows), martyrs, and all the faithful departed. It is followed by All Saints’ Day, also known as All Hallows’ Day on the 1 November, and All Souls’ Day, a day of prayer and remembrance for the faithful departed, observed by certain Christian denominations on 2 November.

However, it is also believed that Halloween is rooted in the ancient pagan Gaelic festival of Samhain which marks the change of seasons and the approach of winter. Samhain begins at sunset on October 31 and continues until sunset on November 1, marking the end of harvest and the start of winter. This Celtic pagan holiday followed the great cycle of life as part of their year-round celebrations of nature along with Imbolc (February 1), Beltane (May 1) and Lughnasadh (August 1).

During Samhain people would:

bring their cattle back from the summer pastures and slaughter livestock in preparation for the upcoming winter. They would also light ritual bonfires for protection and cleansing as they wished to mimic the sun and hold back the darkness. It was also a time when people believed that spirits or fairies (the Aos Sí ) were more likely to pass into our world. […] Dead and departed relatives played a central role in the tradition, as the connection between the living and dead was believed to be stronger at Samhain, and there was a chance to communicate. Souls of the deceased were thought to return to their homes. Feasts were held and places were set at tables as a way to welcome them home. Food and drink was offered to the unpredictable spirits and fairies to ensure continued health and good fortune.

Dancing around the bonfire. The Graphic | 7 January 1893

The Celts believed in an afterlife called the Otherworld which was similar to this life but “without all the negative elements like disease, pain, and sorrow.”

Therefore, the Celts had little to fear from death when their soul left their body, or as the Celts believed, their head.

As Christianity spread in pagan communities, the church leaders attempted to incorporate Samhain into the Christian calendar. The Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic lands by A.D. 43 and combined two Roman festivals, Feralia and Pomona with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. Feralia was similar to Samhain as the Romans commemorated the passing of their dead, while Pomona, whose symbol was the apple, was the Roman goddess of fruit and trees, and may be the origin of the apple games of Halloween.

Some centuries later the church moved again to supplant the pagan traditions with Christian ones:

On May 13, A.D. 609, Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1. By the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In A.D. 1000, the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead.

While on the surface the changes from the Celtic Otherworld to the Christian concepts of Heaven, Purgatory and Hell may not seem very radical yet when one looks further into the different beliefs about the afterlife a very different story emerges.

The Otherworld

The Celtic Otherworld is “more usually described as a paradisal fairyland than a scary place” and sometimes described as an island to the west in the Ocean and “even shown on some maps of Ireland during the medieval era.” It has been called, or places in the Otherworld have been called,  “Tír nAill (“the other land”), Tír Tairngire (“land of promise/promised land”), Tír na nÓg (“land of the young/land of youth”), Tír fo Thuinn (“land under the wave”), Tír na mBeo (“land of the living”), Mag Mell (“plain of delight”), Mag Findargat (“the white-silver plain”), Mag Argatnél (“the silver-cloud plain”), Mag Ildathach (“the multicoloured plain”), Mag Cíuin (“the gentle plain”), and Emain Ablach (possibly “isle of apples”).”

As can be seen from the names given to the places of the Otherworld there are two important, salient points. One is the positive, almost welcoming aspect of the descriptions implied, and secondly their close relationship with nature and places in the real world. The Otherworld is described “either as a parallel world that exists alongside our own, or as a heavenly land beyond the sea or under the earth,” and could be entered through “ancient burial mounds or caves, or by going under water or across the western sea.”

We may then ask who could enter the Otherworld in the afterlife?

Although there are no surviving texts from the continent which comment on this, on the basis of comparisons with comparable societies and burial practices we can guess that both the gods and the ancestral dead were believed to inhabit the Otherworld. The earliest literary texts in Irish reflect exactly this idea.

These deductions about the afterlife then reflect the nature-based ideology of pagan religion which is focused on the cycles of nature, and also the fact that we ourselves are part of that nature, thus both the ancestral dead and the gods inhabited the Otherworld. It seems that the dead entered the Otherworld fairly quickly and could even return to visit the living when the darkness started to take over from the light at Samhain. Even the living could visit the Otherworld but these visits would have their own drawbacks; for example, Oisín discovers that what had only seemed a short stay in Tír na nÓg had been hundreds of years in the real world.

Ghosts walk the night in Brittany by F. De Haenen | The Graphic | 5 November 1910

Christian heaven, hell, and purgatory

The differences between nature-based paganism and the Master and Martyr ethics of Christianity mean that entry to heaven is not guaranteed and may even be delayed for a long time in purgatory. For example:

Christianity considers the Second Coming of Jesus Christ to entail the final judgment by God of all people who have ever lived, resulting in the approval of some and the penalizing of most. […] Belief in the Last Judgment (often linked with the general judgment) is held firmly in Catholicism. Immediately upon death each person undergoes the particular judgment, and depending upon one’s behavior on earth, goes to heaven, purgatory, or hell. Those in purgatory will always reach heaven, but those in hell will be there eternally.

Hell is often depicted with fire and torture of the guilty. Thus, Christianity brings a strong element of fear into perceptions of the afterlife. The people whose behaviour needs to be controlled are frightened into being good and given long promises about eventual eternal bliss at the end of time.

The patriarchal element of Christianity and its desire to control and direct the remnants of pagan religion gave rise to other important aspects of Halloween. The dark symbolism of witches on broomsticks with black cats are an essential element of the Halloween imagery. By late medieval/early modern Europe, fears about witchcraft rose to fever pitch and sometimes led to large-scale witch-hunts. The Church saw these women (whose knowledge of nature was transformed into healing homoeopathic treatments) as a threat to their authority and demonised them before their own communities.

The witches “occasionally functioned as midwives, assisting the delivery and birth of babies, aiding the mother with different plant-based medicines to help with the pain of childbirth. […] The word Witch comes from the word for ‘wise one’ that was ‘Wicca’, and who were once considered wise soon became something to be feared and avoided.”

“Halloween Days”, article from American newspaper, The Sunday Oregonian, 1916

Like many traditional festivals Halloween has different historical sources, pagan and Christian, that have come together to form the holiday as we know it today.

Jack-o’-lantern

Jack-o’-lantern represents the soul caught between heaven and hell who can know no rest and must wander on the earth forever. It is believed to originate in an old Irish folk tale from the mid-18th century which tells of Stingy Jack, “a lazy yet shrewd blacksmith who uses a cross to trap Satan.”

A plaster cast of a traditional Irish Jack-o’-Lantern in the Museum of Country Life, Ireland. Rutabaga or turnip were often used.

Jack tricks Satan who lets him go only after he agrees to never take his soul. When the blacksmith dies he is considered too sinful to enter heaven. He could not enter hell either and asks Satan how he will be able to see his way in the dark. Satan’s response was to toss him “a burning coal, to light his way. Jack carved out one of his turnips (which were his favorite food), put the coal inside it, and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place.”

The Irish emigrants to the United States are believed to have switched the turnip for a pumpkin as it was more accessible and easier to carve. Ironically, in Ireland now, pumpkins are grown and sold to make modern Jack-o’-lanterns.

Modern carving of a Cornish Jack-o’-Lantern made from a turnip.

Door to door traditions

Another American tradition, trick-or-treating, has also taken root in Ireland in recent decades. As a child growing up in the United States, I also went trick-or-treating in Boston. However, after our move to Dublin, our trick-or-treating questions at Halloween were met with bewilderment as Irish people were used to a simple request for ‘anything for the Halloween party’.

The tradition of going door to door on Halloween may come from the belief that supernatural beings, or the souls of the dead, roamed the earth at this time and needed to be appeased. In Europe, from the 12th century, special ‘soul cakes’ would be baked and shared. People would pray for the poor souls of the dead (in purgatory) in return for soul cakes. In Ireland and Scotland “mumming and guising (going door-to-door in disguise and performing in exchange for food) was taken up as another variation on these ancient customs. Pranks were thought to be a way of confounding evil spirits. Pranks at Samhain date as far back as 1736 in Scotland and Ireland, and this led to Samhain being dubbed ‘Mischief Night.’”

Antrobus Soul Cakers at the end of a performance in a village hall in or near Antrobus, Cheshire, England in the mid 1970s. The Soul Cakers are a traditional group of mummers, who perform around All Soul’s Day (October 31st, Hallowe’en) each year. The characters are (left to right) Beelzebub, Doctor, Black Prince, Letter-In, Dairy Doubt, King George, Driver, Old Lady, and Dick, the Wild Horse in the foreground.

It has also been suggested that trick-or-treating “evolved from a tradition whereby people impersonated the spirits, or the souls of the dead, and received offerings on their behalf.” It was thought that they “personify the old spirits of the winter, who demanded reward in exchange for good fortune”. Impersonating these spirits or souls was believed to protect oneself from them.

Thus, while Halloween may have become highly commercialised in recent years it is still an important custom that brings people and families together in their communities. It still marks an important part of the annual  cycles of nature as the bountifulness of harvest time is contrasted with the bareness of winter. It prepares us psychologically for the dark days ahead. In the past Halloween allowed people to celebrate the completion of the work of life (the production of food) to having the time to contemplate the absence of their forebears: the people who gave them life, nurtured them, and taught them the skills of survival. It is a time to make the young generation aware of their parents’ temporary existence too, in a fun way.

Halloween is a time for confronting our basic fears about death and darkness. It is a time to remember the ancestral spirits of past generations who have ‘passed’ (a word that has become more popular than ‘died’ in recent years) through the thin veil between life and death. And, most importantly, a time to rethink our relationship with nature.

Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. Caoimhghin has just published his new book – Against Romanticism: From Enlightenment to Enfrightenment and the Culture of Slavery, which looks at philosophy, politics and the history of 10 different art forms arguing that Romanticism is dominating modern culture to the detriment of Enlightenment ideals. It is available on Amazon (amazon.co.uk) and the info page is here. Read other articles by Caoimhghin.

The problem with the Halloween ‘hag’ witch – and what you need to know about real-life witchcraft

October 29, 2021 7.05am EDT

For many witches, the internet offers a community and the opportunity to practice with like-minded people. Pexels/mikhail nilov


Halloween is here once again with supermarkets displaying devil and monster costumes. In my neighbourhood, I will see a mob of wart-ridden, green-faced witch children, terrorising neighbours with the threat of a trick if they are not treated with sweets.

Witches are synonymous with this time of year and most often they are presented as old, ugly and evil – and as something to avoid.

Erdman Palmore, a medical sociologist, has previously written about how the older, more forthright and more outspoken a woman is, the more she is considered a threat. In this way, the caricature of the witch, which stereotypes women as evil and dangerous, helps to silence a woman’s power. It also manipulates and controls societies’ perception of older women, by presenting them as being untrustworthy or mad.

Read more: Hag, temptress or feminist icon? The witch in popular culture

And in this sense, the hag-witch identity has what sociologists refer to as symbolic violence, which is an unconscious mode of cultural or social domination. In other words, the hag witch stereotype, which is imposed upon women, is a form of non-physical violence.

So it’s important to understand that beyond the fairy tales, mythical stories and stereotypes, there are many different ways to be a witch.
The modern witch

As part of my PHD research I interviewed 13 UK based self-identified witches and analysed hundreds of different witch identities on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Pinterest. I have seen how people use social media as a platform to teach, learn and practice witchcraft and as a space to promote their witch-selves.

Many of the witches I interviewed and came across on social media spoke about the importance of online spaces because of the lack of local Pagan communities. They also said that the internet offers a community and the opportunity to practice with like-minded people.

Modern-day witches are reclaiming witchcraft’s dark history.

  YAKOBCHUK VIACHESLAV/Shutterstock

It seems being a witch is not something people tend to be initiated into, as with Christianity. More they become a witch (often as a teenager) after realising that the philosophies of witchcraft – such as goddess worship, the moon cycle and positive affirmations – resonate. I’ve seen witches describe how they “came out of the broom closet” and started to present themselves as a witch via the use of memes and images on social media.

I have found though that the stereotypical image of a witch – as an evil, angry woman or an ugly wart-ridden hag – is used often by these groups as a way of reclaiming power. People use the hag or evil witch stereotype to fight the patriarchy. Often using the meme: “We are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn”.


In this way, the modern witch identity is not about creating fear. It’s about sharing wisdom with the next generation. And my research has found that the modern witch identity is empowering women to stand loud and proud within a patriarchal society.
Halloween or Samhain?

Many trick or treaters may also not be aware that Halloween originates from Samhain, a three-day ancient Celtic pagan festival. Samhain marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter or the “darker-half” of the year and it’s significant to witches.

It falls on the 31 of October – the same day as Halloween – and is one of the eight festivals (Sabbats) within the witch’s year. Samhain is marked with candles, music, bonfires and food. Historically it marked the change of the season but more recently it’s also a time to celebrate life and remember those who’ve died.

The stereotypical Halloween hag. Ian Good/Shutterstock

For many witches, 31 October is a spiritual festival. It celebrates harvest bounty and an opportunity to provide offerings of thanks to the god of the Sun and others. It is not about creating mischief or evil or eating children, as the stereotype would have us believe. So while Halloween may seem like just a bit of fun, it’s also problematic in that it reinforces stereotypes that cause confusion.

This is why I would like Samhain to be acknowledged and respected as a faith-based autumn festival similar to Diwali in Hinduism that celebrates how light and good overcame darkness and evil, or the same way Harvest is in Christianity.

Indeed, by painting the witch as evil, devil-worshipping and harmful, it limits the exploration of the various identities of the witch. Witch is also not a gender-specific term, it’s an empowering faith identity and it should be presented as such.

So this Halloween, rather than taking on the hag witch persona, why not explore the identity of the Samhain witch in an alternative Halloween celebration – you could take a nature walk, light a bonfire or candles, cook a nice meal and give thanks for the things you are grateful for.

Author

Maggie Webster

Senior Lecturer in Education, Edge Hill University
Disclosure statement

Maggie Webster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Partners

This Is Why We Celebrate Halloween in the First Place
Marissa Laliberte, RD.com

© Photo: Poznyakov/Shutterstock

The spooky origins of Halloween

Modern Halloween is basically an excuse to dress up in outrageous costumes, load up on candy, and deck out the yard with spooky decorations. But long before Halloween became a family-centred day for tricks and treats (Ok, mostly treats), its origins verged more on the scary side.

Most people believe the roots of Halloween can be traced back about 2,000 years to the Celtic pagan “summer’s end” festival of Samhain, which landed on November 1. During that time, the Celts believed spirits would pass through the physical world and potentially ruin their crops. To protect their harvests, families would leave out food and drinks as offerings to the spirits, and people would often disguise themselves in white with blackened faces in hopes of blending in with the ghosts. (Check out these other creepy events that actually happened on Halloween.)

After the Romans conquered the Celts and started spreading Christianity, they likely figured flat-out banning pagan holidays like Samhain would lead to pushback, so scholars believe they instead combined those traditions with Catholic celebrations, in hopes of phasing them out. Around the 9th century, the Christian feast day for martyrs was moved from May 13 to the time of Samhain and was renamed Feast of All Saints. On October 31, the night before the festival, churches would hold a vigil for All Hallows Eve (“hallows” was another word for “saints”), which was later shortened to Halloween.

© Provided by Reader's Digest Canada
Horror Movies Inspired By Real Life

Eventually, the two celebrations became even more entwined. During the Christian All Souls Day, poor people would go “souling”: saying prayers for others’ deceased loved ones in exchange for pastries called soul cake that represented being saved from Purgatory—a church-friendly substitute for leaving food out for evil spirits. By the 1800s, the tradition was turned into a fun activity called guising, with children giving a performance of jokes, poetry readings, or music to earn rewards like fruit and money. (You can keep up the tradition with these corny jokes that are perfect for Halloween.) Irish immigrants eventually brought modernized versions of guising to North America, which morphed into trick-or-treating as we know it today. The days of hiding from real evil spirits might be long gone, but the fun of dressing up as ghosts lives on.

Now that you know the origins of Halloween, take a virtual tour of the most haunted places in Canada.

© Provided by Reader's Digest Canada

20 Pumpkin Carving Ideas

© Provided by Reader's Digest Canada
Can You Solve These Halloween Riddles?

The post This Is Why We Celebrate Halloween in the First Place appeared first on Reader's Digest.

Opinion
This All Souls’ Day, experience moments of connection with those who have gone before us

This is an intentional act of cultivating relationship with our ancestors.

People hold candles over a tomb decorated with flowers at a cemetery in Atzompa, Mexico, Oct. 31, 2023. In a tradition that coincides with All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1 and All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2, families decorate graves with flowers and candles and spend the night in the cemetery, eating and drinking as they keep company with their dearly departed.
(AP Photo/Maria Alferez)

November 1, 2023

By 

Christine Paintner

(RNS) — In Celtic tradition there are many moments considered to be a “thin time,” which means that heaven and earth feel closer and we might experience moments of connection to those who have gone before us in ways that we don’t usually.

These moments include the daily portals of dawn and dusk as the world moves from dark to light and back to dark again. They also include the eight threshold moments of the year, which are the solstices, the equinoxes and the cross-quarter days that fall between the solstices and equinoxes. Of these eight, Samhain, which falls on Nov. 1, is considered to be the thinnest time, when the ancestors and spirits walk among us. The door between the spiritual and the physical is even further open than at other times.

Samhain is the start of the dark half of the year. It is the season of rest, incubation and mystery. It is the season of dreamtime and the perfect time of year to open your heart to connect with those who journeyed before you. Winter invites us to gather inside, grow still with the landscape and listen for the voices we may not hear during other times of the year. These may be the sounds of our own inner wisdom or the voices of those who came before us.

Listen for the messages of the ancestors in those days especially — they will speak their wisdom through raven and stone, tree and rain, dreams and synchronicities. This is the language through which we receive these gifts and only need to open ourselves to them.

The Celtic feast of Samhain coincides with the Christian celebration of All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1 and All Souls’ Day on Nov. 2, which begin a whole month in honor of those who have died. We tend to neglect our ancestral heritage in our Western culture, but in other cultures, remembering the ancestors is an intuitive and essential way of beginning anything new. We don’t recognize the tremendous wisdom we can draw on from those who have traveled the journey before us and whose DNA we carry in every fiber of our bodies.

Ritual has a way of bridging the gap between the visible and invisible worlds and between the conscious and unconscious knowing. We can open ourselves to communication from our grandmothers and grandfathers. What we work on consciously through ritual and prayer has an impact in the world of the ancestors. Ritual is the intentional cultivation of relationship, but communication happens in spontaneous ways as well.

In Christian ritual and liturgy, there is the celebration on the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls. Some churches keep a Book of the Dead, in which the names of loved ones who died are written and kept near the altar so they may be remembered at Masses throughout November.

November is the month of the dead, and churches often have special Masses of remembrance throughout the month as well as setting up a special ancestral altar somewhere in the church space where members can bring photos, flowers and other offerings. Many churches also have votive candles available all year, which people can light either as a prayer for themselves or another or in remembrance of a loved one.

In medieval Europe, there were many practices for All Souls’ Day, including creating altars, celebrating requiem Masses, lighting candles and bonfires, visiting graves, ringing bells and making soul cakes, which were small, round, spiced loaves to commemorate the dead that were given out to people who came door to door.

We communicate with ancestors much in the way we would communicate with angels and saints — through dreams, visions, synchronicity, nature, ritual and imagination. We call upon them through prayer, we honor them through ritual offerings, and we ask them for guidance.

Henri Nouwen offers us this wisdom: As we grow older we have more and more people to remember, people who have died before us. It is very important to remember those who have loved us and those we have loved. Remembering them means letting their spirits inspire us in our daily lives. They can become part of our spiritual communities and gently help us as we make decisions on our journeys. Parents, spouses, children and friends can become true spiritual companions after they have died. Sometimes they can become even more intimate to us after death than when they were with us in life. Remembering the dead is choosing their ongoing companionship.

I especially love that final sentence: “Remembering the dead is choosing their ongoing companionship.” This is an intentional act of cultivating relationship.

The first fundamental blessing we can offer gratitude for is the gift of life itself. No matter what kind of family we came from, no matter how much suffering was caused, there is the fundamental impulse toward life that we can celebrate. We can give thanks for being here, being fully alive and even having the privilege of taking time to do this healing work: to explore spiritual practices and to ponder what makes our lives meaningful. Many of our ancestors never had that luxury.

Many worked very long hours for little reward and were never able to pause and ask themselves how their own generational connection could bring more wisdom to their lives.

I like to remember as well that in the midst of my ancestors’ struggles there was at least some resilience and courage developed that I have inherited. This is the second fundamental blessing we can offer gratitude for. I may never know what they went through exactly, but I can sometimes feel their sturdiness and how they endured. They too lived through times of war and plague and economic struggle.

Sometimes when I go outside at night and can see the brilliance of the stars, I remember that my ancestors also had moments of wonder and awe standing with their faces upturned toward the vast expanse of the universe. I remember that they too had moments of delight, of joy, of dancing, no matter how hard their lives were.

(Christine Valters Paintner is the author of “The Love of Thousands: How Angels, Saints, and Ancestors Walk With Us Toward Holiness” (Sorin Books), from which this column is adapted with permission. She is the online abbess for Abbey of the Arts, a virtual monastery offering classes and resources on contemplative practice and creative expression. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)