Halloween's Pagan Celtic Roots
Today Halloween is joyously celebrated by children across the Western world.
There is a popular misconception
though that Halloween is a modern American invention. Not so. Though
our American cousins have to be congratulated for making this very
special festival a fantastic children-centric occasion nevertheless, as
with so
many other things that have brought great happiness and joy to humanity for millennia, its roots lay firmly in the culture of the Irish Celts!
(Photo shows my son Dáire & 'friend' that was taken a good few years ago)
Yet in the modern repackaging of this
ancient pagan festival, many of the fine traditions that
were once such an integral part of the festivities have disappeared. For instance our
Celtic custom of placing human skulls with candles at entrances to
domestic dwellings in order to ward off evil spirits has been replaced
by lights in hollowed-out pumpkins!
Likewise
the visits of children dressed up in ghoulish and macabre fancy dress
going door-to-door looking for gifts of sweets and fruits is a poor
substitute for the former visits of the ghosts of our ancestors who used
to drop in once a year on October 31st for a nice meal with their
living relatives (we would prepare a place for them at the dinner
table).
It was said too that live captives were placed in wicker cages above
huge bonfires and burnt alive (as portrayed in the classic British 1970s
cult film “The Wicker Man”). But such horror stories were originally
spun by those nasty Romans when they were at war with the Celts. So it
was probably nothing more than malicious enemy propaganda. After all,
what do you take us Celts for? Barbarians?!!
As with so many other annual family festivals, Halloween has become so
commercialised by 'Americanised' popular culture that its true origins
and religious aspects have long since being forgotten.
So here is the true story of 'Féile na Marbh' (Festival of the Dead'):
Christianisation of 'Samhain'
Yet
modern-day Americans were not the first people to re-brand the
festival. In the middle ages the Catholic Church created the Christian
festival of '
All Hallows Eve' or '
All Souls Day' when people were asked to remember and pray for their dead family members.
This event was superimposed onto the ancient pagan Celtic festival of
'Samhain'
which marked the end of the summer season characterised by heat &
light and the coming of the dark cold barren winter months.
Celtic Festivals
Typical of many agricultural societies, the Celts had four major annual
festivals based on the cyclical differences experienced in the changing
seasons of nature and their corresponding weather patterns. The other
three were
'Imbolc' (spring) '
Bealtane' (summer),
'Lugnasa' (autumn). The latter was associated with harvest time.
Bon(e)Fires
Samhain was a time when food was
hoarded as people prepared for the cold season when no plants grew.
While many domestic animals such as cattle were brought indoors for the
winter, others were slaughtered and most of their meat salted for
storage whilst the remainder was cooked for the big feast. As with all
Irish festivals, communal bonfires were lit as people gathered together
at warm fires to socialise and to give thanks to the deities. Bones of
the slaughtered animals were thrown into the fire as symbolic gifts to
the gods, an action which give rise to the term '
bone fires' or '
bonfires'. Embers from this sacred fire were taken by local people to their households to light their own domestic fires.
Antecedents to the Pumpkin & 'Trick or Treat'
But Samhain was also a time when creatures from the supernatural world could enter into the world of mortals. 'Fairies' (Irish='
Sidhe' as in ‘
Banshee’/‘female fairy’)
and the spirits of the dead would walk the earth. Many of these beings
were benevolent and the spirits of dead ancestors; so families laid out
extra food and set aside a table space for their ghostly visitors. This
metaphorised into the custom of today's children dressing up as demons
and witches & calling to the neighbours' houses to receive presents.
But there were spirits that came on the night of Samhain that were
malevolent. Candles were placed in skulls at the entrance to dwellings
as light was feared by these dark foreboding creatures. This protection
against evil became transformed in modern times into the positioning of
hollowed-out turnips and later pumpkins with carved out faces and
internal candles at windows and doorways.
Centuries-old party games of trying to eat an apple lying in a basin of water ('
bobbing') or dangling on a string tied to a ceiling ('
snapping') are still popular festive past-times with Irish children.
The apple is probably the most common edible fruit in Ireland. It was also strongly associated with the spirit world and the fairies (sidhe). In the Arthurian legends, the mystical island of Avalon is where Arthur (of the Celtic Britons) obtains his magical sword Excalibur and where he is taken at the end of his life by the Lady of the Lake and her female fairy companions (banshee). Avalon comes from the Welsh word afal or Irish aball.
Fortune Telling at Halloween
Central to the Irish Halloween is the eating of a fruit bread known as '
Barmbrack' from the Gaelic term 'Báirín Breac' (speckled or spotted top). It is still a popular festive food today.
Various symbolic pieces were placed in the dough before it was baked
such as a ring, a pea and a stick. When an item was found in the slice
when it was being eaten, it told of the future that awaited the
recipient. For instance, the 'ring' signified marriage within a year; a
'stick' represented a bad or violent marriage; the 'coin', wealth and a
'pea', a long wait before marriage.
Irish Export Halloween to North America
The Irish emigrants of the nineteenth century introduced Halloween and
its rituals to America. Within a few decades, the festival was
transformed into the fun and games event of today.
Significant Irish Contributions to World Culture:
No. 7642- 'Dracula'
Considering our national passion of asking the dead to resurrect
themselves & drop into the house for a late night meal & party,
it should come as no surprise that the world's most well known vampire
Count Dracula was the creation of an Irishman, the novelist Bram Stoker in 1887.
His inspiration though was
Carmilla, a book about a lesbian vampire created naturally enough(!) by another well known Irish writer, Sheridan Le Fanu.
(Photos from Macnas Halloween youth parade in Ballinfoile, Galway City)
