Halloween is a holiday so closely associated with Fall that it seems to be advertised earlier and earlier every year. I don’t think it’s a day which requires much introduction — this time of tricks and treats, deceit and feasts, where kids go out for candy and adults party the night away in their liberating new identities. Media has long popularized the pagan roots of the festivities, the supernatural phenomena that are encouraged by witches and druids, all those the elements which create the spooky atmosphere we all love. But some of the more sinister perceptions of our beloved All Hallows Eve has many influences worth considering, one of the most important of which is the Catholic Church.
Not So Pagan
by Levitt Lin
Europe’s influences on the holiday don’t end with the appropriation of one holiday into another. Halloween would gain a notorious reputation with the growing fascination of morbid subjects like skeletons and the Grim Reaper after the Black Plague ravaged Europe in the 14th century. Similarly, the Witch Hunts which seemingly dominated Europe and its colonies throughout the 16th and early 17th century would catalyze our modern interpretation of witches. An interpretation, which stemmed from the perception that women would be more easily tempted by the satanic influences which would break through during Halloween. Something that was rooted in the more recent idea of an all-encompassing evil entity like the Satan, which didn’t entirely exist in the polytheist people who practiced Samhain.
Samhain and Europe
Some of the earliest traces of Halloween can be found in the Celtic harvest festival of Samhain which marked the end of a harvest and the transition into the harsher and colder Winter season. It was a time of deep paranoia of the weakening boundaries between the realms of the supernatural and the world of the living. To ward off the evils which hid in the long nights of Winter the Irish would build massive bonfires to their gods to call for help with offerings, while garbed in masks and animal skins. These offerings would range from livestock, portions of their harvest, and potentially human sacrifice. These supernatural origins can still be felt today in the costumes and decorations.
Of course, it is worth considering just how much of what is recorded about the holiday is not from a Celtic perspective, but a European one which brings into question the use of human sacrifice as smaller religions are often treated as blasphemous. These perceptions would only be reinforced when the festival would be absorbed into Christianity during its expansion in the 9th century to ease native integration of the foreign religion. Samhain would be integrated into All Saints Day, also known as All Hallows(Holy) Day which is a day to honor fallen saints/martyrs of the religion. The day before being Hallows Eve and the day after becoming All Souls Day, a day to remember the souls of the dearly departed. During All Souls Day, the poor would traditionally go from house to house asking for food and money in return they would offer a prayer to the dead in a practice called souling.