HALLOWEEN

Halloween is thought to have derived from a pre-Christian festival known as Samhain (pronounced "Sah-wen") celebrated among the Celtic peoples. The various peoples whom we now refer to as "Celts" once lived across Europe, but in time they came to inhabit the areas known today as Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Brittany, and Cornwall. Today's Irish, Welsh, and Scots peoples are the descendants of these peoples, as are their Gaelic languages.

Halloween in the Old World and the New

Samhain was the principal feast day of the year; it was New Year's Day of a year that began on 1 November. Traditionally, bonfires were lit as part of the celebration. It was believed that the spirits of those who had died during the previous twelve months were granted access into the Otherworld during Samhain. Thus, spirits were said to be traveling on that evening, as the Celtic day was counted from sundown to sundown.

Scholars know little about the actual practices and beliefs associated with Samhain. Most accounts were not written down until centuries after the conversion of Ireland to Christianity circa 300 a.d., and then by Christian monks recording ancient sagas. From the evidence, we know that Samhain was a focal point of the yearly cycle, and that traditions of leaving out offerings of food and drink to comfort the wandering spirits had joined the bonfire custom. Also, the tradition of mumming—dressing in disguise and performing from home to home in exchange for food or drink, as well as pranking, perhaps in imitation of the wandering spirits, or simply as a customary activity known to accompany periods of liminality and transition throughout Europe—had become part of the occasion. With the acceptance of Christianity, the times of the pre-Christian festivals were used as occasions for church feast and holy days. In the sixth century, 1 November became the Feast of All Saints, or All Hallows. Many of the folk traditions surrounding this occasion continued, and the Eve of All Hallows, Hallow Evening, has become conflated into the word "Halloween." In the ninth century, 2 November was assigned the Feast of All Souls, a day set aside for prayers for all the faithful departed who had died during the year previous.

Halloween was brought to North America with Irish and British colonists, although it was not widely observed until the large influx of European immigrants in the nineteenth century, especially the Irish fleeing the potato famine in the 1840s and thereafter. Into the nineteenth century in New England, one was more likely to encounter some version of Guy Fawkes Day, known also as Bonfire Night and Pope Day (because of its antipapist nature). The day commemorated the apprehension of Guido Fawkes on 5 November 1605 in a plot to blow up the Houses of Parliament in London. He was hung, drawn, and quartered. Effigies called "guys" were immolated on bonfires in British New England, and this tradition continued into the twenty-first century in Great Britain and parts of Canada. In the United States, Halloween, celebrated on 31 October, is a time for parties and pranking. As a festival of autumn, the fruits, vegetables, and foods associated with it are those of the harvest. Games were and are still played with apples, and the primary symbol of Halloween is the jack-o'-lantern, the great carved pumpkin. Likewise, both apple pie and pumpkin pie are commonly served.

In Ireland, however, Halloween is much more a harvest festival than it is in the United States, where Thanksgiving has become the official day of thanks for abundance. As Samhain, November Eve was one of the four great quarter days of the year, each one marking the beginning of a new season. Samhain also marked the start of a new year. Halloween commands a place of honor in Ireland today greater than in the United States. And, in fact, it functions much like the American Thanksgiving does. Family meals and a gathering of relatives are common. There is pranking throughout the season, and Halloween rhyming, in which young people go from door to door for weeks in advance of 31 October, and present a rhyme or perform a song of some sort in return for nuts, apples, or money. The money is spent on fireworks. Also well in advance of the actual day, lanterns are carved out of large turnips, called "swedes," or rutabagas in the United States. These are given a face and a handle, and are carried about or set on walls to create a spooky atmosphere. When the old tradition of the turnip lantern was brought to the New World, settlers found the already hollow pumpkin to be preferable to the hard turnip, and so the pumpkin replaced the turnip in the United States. But the pumpkin is a fruit introduced to Europeans by Native Americans and is not native to Ireland, Great Britain, or the rest of Europe.

By carving a face on a turnip or a pumpkin, one transforms the organic item into a cultural one. The jacko'-lantern is the wandering spirit of a man who was refused entry into either heaven or hell in the afterlife. He is condemned to wander this earth, carrying a lantern to guide his way. He is a trickster; he will lead hapless souls who follow his light to no good. The turnip lantern is said to represent the spirits of the dead—ghosts. The organic items are made to reference the supernatural. Also, they are turned into another kind of cultural item: food. Pumpkin pies and mashed turnips are foods of the season, and they represent domestic aspects of Halloween. The wild, unpredictable outside and the safe, nuturing inside are two poles of this festival. Halloween combines danger and safety, as when trick-or-treaters in the United States are invited in for cider and doughnuts. In Ireland, the inversive elements usually precede the day itself, which is given over to parties, special meals, and traditional games. These games are often played with the seasonal foods, such as dunking for apples, but they are also used in a playful way as divination games. For instance, Halloween in Ireland is also known as Nut Crack Night, because a common game is to place two nuts together near the hearth, name them for an adolescent or courting couple, then see what the effect of the heat is on the nuts. If they explode and pop away from each other, their relationship is doomed.

Foods and Games of the Holiday

Divination and Halloween food come together in the apple tarts (pies) and the cakes known as barm brack. "Barm brack" means speckled bread. It is a corn loaf, and it is baked with tokens inside, usually a ring, but also a thimble or a button. To get the ring means you will be married; the button suggests bachelorhood for a man, and the thimble suggests spinsterhood for a woman. There may be other tokens as well. The apple tart is also baked with charms, usually a coin (preferably silver.) This means good luck for the recipient. These food customs are widespread in Ireland—one sees the bake shops advertising their apple tarts and barm bracks "with rings and mottoes." Likewise, in the supermarkets, quantities of apples, hazelnuts, peanuts in the shell (called "monkeynuts"), and even coconuts are displayed alongside soft drinks and false faces.

Many are the divination games and rites of Halloween. It is said, for instance, that one should peel an apple continuously, so that the peel is in one long piece, then toss it over one's left shoulder. As it lands, the peel will form the initial of one's future love. Typically, these games are played by girls, to whom the indoor, domestic, nurturing realm is given, while the adolescent boys collect bonfire materials and engage in games of macho daring with firecrackers. Halloween is in these ways very gendered.

According to some accounts, the Halloween supper has featured roast fowl or even meat, but as the day before a holy day of obligation in the Catholic Church, Halloween has traditionally been a day of abstinence from meat. The dishes most associated with Halloween in Ireland, colcannon, champ, and boxty, are all made from root vegetables and those earthy harvests such as potatoes and cabbage. Champ is mashed potatoes, frequently with leeks, and served with a pool of melted butter in the top. Colcannon is potatoes and cabbage. Boxty is mashed potatoes mixed with grated raw potatoes, onion, and cabbage. The ingredients are mixed together, boiled, then cut into portions and fried.

These traditional foods are emblematic of Halloween for many in Ireland. Sometimes, portions were left out for the fairies. In an article published in 1958, K. M. Harris quotes a man who recalls his mother putting salt on the head of each child to prevent him or her from being taken away by the "wee people" on Halloween. He also recounts her placing a thimble-full of salt on each plate. If the salt fell down, that person would die in the next twelve months. We see in these beliefs the continued association of food with the supernatural, and perhaps also an echo of the old new year's day of Samhain in the idea that what happens on this night affects the next twelve months.

Celebrating Halloween in the Twentieth Century and Beyond

Periods of transition and seasonal change frequently are felt to be times when the barriers between the natural and the supernatural—between our world and the other-world—are opened. During such times, spirits and other worldly creatures such as fairies are especially active. They are dangerous and must be appeased; thus, the offerings of food. But they are also tricksters and can be imitated, therefore lending an air of inversion to Halloween. In the United States, 31 October has become a major celebration that appeals to adults as well as children, as shown by the elaborate homemade and store-bought decorations people use to decorate their homes, and also by the adult street festivals, masquerades, and parties found all over the United States. Commercially, Halloween has become second only to Christmas in the amount of revenue it generates.

Ironically, by the mid-twentieth century, Halloween in the United States had become almost exclusively a children's event. The custom of trick-or-treating (the American version of Halloween rhyming) seems to have been introduced in the 1930s as an alternative to the children's pranking activities—sometimes dangerous, such as logs in the road. Trick-or-treating became a widespread activity after World War II. While treats could include apples and homemade sweets, the favored treat was commercially produced candy. In the United States, then, Halloween has always reflected the commercial culture of capitalism. In recent decades, stories known as "urban legends" have circulated, describing poisoned treats and apples with razor blades hidden in them. While there has been no substantial verification of the stories, the belief is widespread. The result is that homemade treats and natural fruits are looked at suspiciously—many communities offer Halloween treat X-raying services—so now more than ever, the commercially produced sweet is preferred.

By the late twentieth century, as the generation that had enjoyed Halloween as children became adults, the holiday returned to being one in which different age groups engaged. College students hosted large costume parties. Cities such as New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., and San Francisco had major street festivals. As a day of public costuming and inversion, a time when people confronted images of the taboo—representations of death, evil, and chaos—Halloween had long been used by the gay population as a "safe" time to parade in drag, to publicly display an identity that they felt they had to keep hidden the rest of the year. By the end of the century, the rest of the population joined them to create a kind on national Mardi Gras. Unlike the actual Fat Tuesday, however, this carnival is in the autumn, and it combines seasonal images of the harvest with images of human death (ghosts and skeletons) as well as other unspeakables. All of this is done as the nights grow longer and winter approaches, and it is done with a sense of humor. Halloween is a time when it is safe to play with our fears, to allow our demons to come out from under the bed and take center stage once a year.

See also: Commecialization of Children's Play, Commercialization of Leisure

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ellis, Bill. "'Safe' Spooks: New Halloween Traditions in Response to Sadism Legends." In Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life. Edited by Jack Santino. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994.

Harris, K. M. "Extracts from the Committee's Collection." Ulster Folklife 4 (1958): 37–49.

Rogers, Nicholas. Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Santino, Jack, ed. All Around the Year: Holidays and Celebrations in American Life. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

——. Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994.

——. The Hallowed Eve: Dimensions of Culture in a Calendar Festival in Northern Ireland. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1998.

Tuleja, Tad. "Trick or Treat: Pre-Texts and Contexts." In Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life. Edited by Jack Santino. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1994.

Jack Santino