History of the Hallowtide

A HISTORY OF THE HALLOWTIDE

Death Makes a Holiday

Introduction: Our Night of Fright

Ancient calendars, both Roman and Christian, run rife with holidays for every time and taste, encouraging the faithful to lead a life of constant remembrance, reverence, and celebration.  Alas, as Western Civilization has turned from ecstasy to efficiency, the vast majority of our holidays have withered and passed from memory; even Holy Mother Church struggles to keep the people enthused for anything beyond Christmas and Easter!

Yet there stands on the calendar one glorious exception to this otherwise dreary trend: Hallowe’en!  Far from withering, Hallowe’en seems to be the one holiday upon which everyone in American society can agree, and its popularity seems to grow continually.  Today American Hallowe’en traditions are being enthusiastically imported to Europe, Latin America, and even Japan!  Few, however, know the history of Hallowe’en, or even that it is but the beginning of the three-day medieval festival known as Hallowtide.

Make no mistake: Hallowe’en is a child of the Church, even though, like all the Church’s children, she is adopted.  Let us explore the history of this most misunderstood of Christian holy days, ever recalling that the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it!

Part I:  Pagan Precursors

Many a fundamentalist has decried Hallowe’en as a pagan celebration, as opposed to a Christian one.  This is patent nonsense.  The facts are plain: nearly every single holiday or important date on the Christian calendar is a conversion, an adoption, a fulfillment and resurrection of an earlier Jewish or pagan celebration.  From wedding rings to Christmas trees, there’s little in the Church that wasn’t once pagan—especially the Christians themselves.  In truth, there is not Christian and pagan; there is only pagan with the Word of God added, and pagan without!

Hallowe’en came into the Church along with her Celtic children, especially the Scots and the Irish.  The ancient Celtic celebration of Samhain (confusingly pronounced SOW-win) fell on October 31st.  Samhain was one of two great seasonal festivals for the Celts, the other being Beltane, held six months later on the eve of April 31st.  Samhain, quite simply, was a harvest festival, celebrating the transition from fertile months to the long icy dark of winter.  Amidst the harvest plenty stood the disquieting truth that all the food gathered had to last the entirety of winter.  Light and darkness, plenty and want, warmth and cold, life and death—these are the primal themes of any seasonal harvest festival.

How many of our modern Hallowe’en traditions hearken back to Samhain is a matter of debate.  Neopagan pseudo-history has produced grandiose claims that are little more than fantasy.  (Neopaganism purports an ancient lineage, but is at best less than a century old.)  We do know this: for all the reasons listed above, Samhain was viewed as a time when the veil between this world and the next—betwixt the living and the dead—was stretched to its most diaphanous.  Indeed, it was believed that on Samhain, the dead (especially those who’d died in the past year) could visit the living.

Keep in mind that Celtic culture was a particularly brutal one, involving blood sacrifice and gristly ritual.  Pagan houses were decorated with the severed heads of enemies.  Caesar reports various types of human sacrifice, including the infamous “wicker man,” a gigantic wooden frame of humanoid shape, packed with living people and set alight.  Apparently the doorway from death to life turned both ways at Samhain.

As the rays of the sun waned, great bonfires were built to summon the sun’s return.  Bats flew about the fire circle, as they do at modern bonfires, drawn by clouds of insects.  Given the blending of worlds, Samhain was considered a particularly appropriate time for divination, especially via the burnt entrails of animal sacrifices.  Divination and ghost stories would persist in Hallowe’en lore ever after.

The dead, however, were not the only guests at Samhain.  Closely associated with the departed were non-human spirits: the dark fairies.  Hobgoblins, kobolds, sprites, brownies, elves, and what-have-you would emerge from the “fairy mounds” so revered throughout Celtic Europe and the British Isles.  In much Celtic folklore, fairies could actually enslave the dead, and so the line between ghosts and goblins often blurred.

The pre-Christian Romans, meanwhile, had a harvest festival of their own: that of Pomona, goddess of orchards and apples.  As the Romans conquered the Celts and marched as far as Britannia, these two pagan holidays—Samhain and Pomona—blended and merged.  Hence, the association of apples, apple-bobbing and the like with October 31st.

Part II:  The Light of Christ

As the Romans conquered large parts of what would someday become England, many British Celts turned away from barbarism to embrace Western civilization.  Amongst such Romanized Celts was the family of St. Patrick (AD 387-493).  Born to a well-to-do family (Patricius, after all, means patrician), Patrick was stolen as a little boy by savage Irish pirates and carried off to the Emerald Isle—often referred to as “Wolfland.”

Left alone in the brutal wilderness for long periods of time, where he was forced to tend his captors’ flocks, Patrick—up until now a frivolous child—prayed to his parents’ Christian God.  Christ answered him, and guided Patrick in an astounding and miracle-filled adventure back to freedom in Britannia.  Now a devout young man, Patrick entered the service of the Church and was ordained when he received a vision in a dream: the image of an Irishman crying out for help!

With astonishing charity, Patrick returned to the island of his enslavers, spreading the Gospel of Christ wherever he went.  Given the savageness of Celtic paganism, with its fearful ghoulies and sickening human sacrifice, it seems little wonder that the Irish freely adopted Christianity with zeal and joy.  Many a pagan king challenged Bishop Patrick, but always his God came to his aid.  Few Christians are as revered, as beloved, and as celebrated as St. Patrick, who Christianized the Celts with no sword but that of the Gospel, and who won Ireland—which means “Holyland”—for God through thick and thin.

Of course, Christ did not convert individuals only through St. Patrick; He converted entire cultures, symbols, and celebrations!  Most prominent amongst these, naturally, was Samhain.  When the pagan kings burned their bonfires, Patrick built his higher and lit them earlier!  When they burned their fires in valleys, he burned Christ’s on hilltops.  When pagans worshipped images of the sun and moon, Patrick defiantly placed his cross between them, creating the famous twin circles of the Celtic cross.  Rather than struggle against Celtic culture, the Church adopted it wholesale to the benefit of all.

Around AD 600, missionaries in Ireland wrote to Pope Gregory I, complaining that newly converted Celtic Christians still gathered for pagan ceremonies at a certain sacred tree.  Should the tree be destroyed?  The Pope wrote back, famously decreeing that the tree should not be felled, but rather consecrated to Christ, and the Celts instructed to continue meeting there as before!

In the Eighth Century AD, Pope Gregory III designated November 1st as All Saints’ Day, a festival to celebrate all those saints who did not have a feast day of their own.  This was known at the time as All Hallows’, and thus the night before, October 31st, became All Hallows’ Eve—Hallowe’en.  (Earlier, All Saints had been celebrated on May 13th.)

In the Tenth Century this trend continued, when the Church transferred All Souls’ Day (for those faithfully departed, especially in the last year, who were not yet saints but were in the process of purgation) from May 1st to November 2nd.  Notice that as All Saints fell upon Samhain, so had All Souls previously fallen upon Beltane.  Today May 1st is commemorated as May Day, dedicated especially to the Virgin Mary, and April 31st is celebrated as Walpurgis Night, in honor of St. Walpurga.  In parts of Europe, Walpurgis Night was also considered to be a time when the dead may visit the living.

This three day festival—Hallowe’en, All Saints, and All Souls—became collectively the Hallowtide.  No longer a time of fear, the Church took a pagan tradition based on the dead and focused it to orthodox ends: a time to celebrate the Church Triumphant (in Heaven) and Church Expectant (in Purgatory).  Some paganism lingered, of course, but as superstition rather than religion.  The old practices of divination and cavorting with spirits gave rise to the Hallowtide’s association with witches and their “familiars,” especially the black cat.

Prayers for the dead in Purgatory dominated much of All Souls’ Day, and so on the evening of All Souls—i.e., All Saints’ Day—beggars and children would often go door-to-door, asking for “soul cakes” of oatmeal and molasses.  In exchange for such sweet treats, the needy would say prayers for the donor’s dead, until the cakes themselves came to represent souls fleeing from purgation into the beatific vision of union with God in Heaven.  That this is a precursor to today’s trick-or-treat ritual seems obvious; that there were earlier pagan traditions upon which soul cakes were based is more debatable.

Part III:  Ecclesia Semper Reformanda

When the Reformation and Counter-Reformation rolled through the Church, they left no stone unturned, including Hallowe’en.  Luther, having little use for Purgatory, dismissed All Souls and expanded All Saints to honor every faithful Christian.  Calvinists had little use for any of the dead—who, like the living, were predestined from eternity—and so did away with the Hallowtide altogether.  The explosive growth of the Spanish Empire, however, found fertile ground for Hallowtide traditions amongst Native American cultures.  All Saints and All Souls would become Latin America’s Dias de los Muertos.

Still, old habits die hard.  Lutheranism’s Reformation Day falls on October 31st specifically because of the medieval popularity that the Hallowtide enjoyed; Luther posted his 95 Theses on All Hallows’ Eve precisely because he knew that the Castle Church in Wittenberg would be packed with worshippers on All Saints’ Day.

The Puritans of Cromwell’s England, with their harsh Calvinism, officially forbade the Hallowtide (and for that matter, Christmas), but were able to bring it in the back door when Guy Fawkes, an English Catholic, attempted to blow up Parliament on November 5th, 1605.  Fawkes was hung, drawn and quartered, and the anniversary of his foiled plot became immortalized as Guy Fawkes’ Day:

Remember, remember, the fifth of November,

The gunpowder treason and plot

I see no reason why the gunpowder treason

Should ever be forgot!

If Hallowtide was too Catholic for Cromwell’s ilk, Guy Fawkes’ Day was acceptable precisely because of its anti-Catholicism.  Straw effigies of Fawkes were dressed up in increasingly ridiculous costumes, eventually mirroring the commedia de’llarte, and burned.  Bonfires, pageantry, and begging “a penny for the Guy” all returned in full force.  Much of our modern Hallowe’en pageantry stems from Guy Fawkes’ Day.

As English Calvinism gave way to Anglicanism and Anglo-Catholicism, Hallowe’en once again took hold as a time for adult gatherings and formal parties.  Divination based on apples and roasting nuts sought to unveil future spouses and household deaths.  Crops left unharvested were thrown in thunderous storm against front doors.  Both pranks and fortunetelling often revolved around kale stalks, which could be packed with fibers and stuck through a keyhole to produce a frightening jet of flame!

At this time, the term jack-‘o-lantern was used interchangeably with will-‘o-wisp, referring to the swamp gas phenomenon of “fools’ fire” and legends of a man so nasty that he was barred from both Heaven and Hell—though the Devil gave to him an infernal coal with which to light his wandering way.  Jack is said to have carved a turnip into a lantern for his coal, though alas, he lacked the New World pumpkin.  As the Victorian era dawned, Hallowe’en was held up as a rather sanitized holiday, though it got a much-needed shot in the arm from the Spiritualist movement of the 19th Century.

Part IV:  A Uniquely American Celebration

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the Pilgrims of Plymouth and Puritans of Boston had no Hallowtide traditions of their own.  Neither, for that matter, did the Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam and of Washington Irving’s delightful Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  Still, Calvinist paranoia over witchcraft (as witnessed in the Salem Witch Trials and related craze throughout New England) along with ancient Netherlands legends contributed greatly to later American Hallowe’en iconography.

The South, however, with its large Irish and Scottish populations and its Episcopalian/Anglo-Catholic elite, kept Hallowe’en alive as a time for home parties and divination games.  (Such was common practice for Christmas as well: “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire,” and all that.)  But what brought Hallowe’en to the North—and into its own as a truly American celebration—was wave after wave of Irish immigration to the New World during the devastating Potato Famine of the 19th Century.

Two million Irish came ashore on the East Coast, having survived the harrowing transatlantic “coffin ships,” and they brought with them their Hallowtide tales of life and death.  Carved turnips became carved pumpkins, and the modern jack-‘o-lantern was born!  Americans, aping the British Empire, tried to whitewash much of Hallowe’en’s edgier side, but that was soon to change.

With the dawn of the 20th Century, Hallowtide celebrations turned from home parties to focus exclusively on children.  Kids were turned out into the street en masse and unsupervised, mimicking medieval celebrations of societal inversion such as Midsummer’s Eve or the Feasts of Fools.  For one night out of the year, children were permitted to take a measure of revenge against the adult world, as pranks and vandalism came to the fore.

When Hallowe’en mischief became too much for parents to stomach, Anoka, Minnesota led the way to reform with America’s first major civic Hallowe’en party in 1920.  Hallowe’en had moved from the Victorian house to the unsupervised street, and was now being relocated once again to town hall.  This was an attempt to tame Hallowe’en.

While costumes had come to be associated with Hallowtide around 1900 or so, truly elaborate disguises and trick-or-treating were not yet traditions particular to Hallowe’en.  In fact, costuming was much more closely associated with Thanksgiving—a tradition continued by the Mummers’ Thanksgiving Day Parade.  Child beggars known as “ragamuffins,” mimicking Guy Fawkes rituals, went trick-or-treating door to door, extorting candies under threat of prankster vandalism.  It was, in effect, a form of class warfare.  Alas, come the Great Depression of 1932, Thanksgiving extravagance was officially done away with—but the ragamuffins, unwilling to be denied, switched to the far less regulated holiday of Hallowe’en!  Thus modern trick-or-treating came into its own.

With the dawn of World War II, Hallowe’en found itself canceled as well, at least for the duration of hostilities.  It came roaring back, however, with the postwar Baby Boom, which was the birth of our modern Hallowe’en craze, complete with horror films.

But the heady days of the 1950s gave way to the societal upheavals of the 1960s and the escalating violence of the 1970s and 80s.  Hallowe’en pranks expanded to urban arson, with disaffected adolescents torching enormous numbers of condemned buildings.  In fact, October 30th, the night before Hallowe’en, became so infamous for its infernos that newspapers christened it “Devil’s Night.”  Down and up and down again!

Neopagans from the 60s claimed Hallowe’en as their own, giving it a New Age (and fallacious) back story, while reports of poisoned or booby-trapped Hallowe’en candy fueled social anxiety and mistrust of neighbors.  In truth, no American child has ever been poisoned or injured by a neighbor’s or stranger’s candy on Hallowe’en; the only kids ever murdered in this manner were killed by parents and close family members.  America had reached the point where we no longer feared otherworldly spirits, but the very human face next door.

But night gives way to day, and in the 1980s and 90s, the children of the 50s and 60s grew up, bringing with them all their fond childhood memories of the Hallowtide.  Adult parties sprouted up, allowing both children and parents to express their wild sides.  Cross dressing exploded in San Francisco, sexual liberation peaked at the Playboy Mansion’s annual Hallowe’en party, and taboos of every sort were allowed a ritualized release on this single day of the year.  House parties, civic parties, children’s parties, and the traditions from every age all returned to one extent or another.  Haunted Houses aspired to mimic Disney’s Haunted Mansion, and even Evangelical Hell Houses got in on the act.

Conclusion: Resurrection Reclaimed

Today, Hallowe’en is more popular than ever, though it largely has been removed from any religious roots, pagan or Christian.  But even as Neopagans try to claim it for themselves, an influx of Latin American immigration has brought the Dias de los Muertos—All Saints and All Souls—back to the American consciousness.  All Souls in particular, with its “bread of the dead” and wacky Calaveras, proves a powerful culture.

The Hallowtide has never left the Christian calendar, even if it has drifted from the minds of the faithful.  The Church still takes these days to celebrate our dead, no longer with fear, but with Christian hope, faith and love.  Ever since Patrick lit his fires in the dark pagan night, Hallowtide has been transformed, converted, from a night of horrors to a celebration of laughing at horrors.  All the things which used to terrorize us—ghosts and ghoulies, witches and will-‘o-wisps, death, the Devil and Hell itself—have been conquered in Christ, and we are liberated from their ancient grip.

Hallowtide, for the Church, is a time to dance in the face of death, and thereby know what it is to truly be alive.  Now what could be more Christian than that?

Originally posted on A Guide for the Perplexed in October 2010