Halloween/Samhain

Posted by Paula Stiles Nov 9, 2006

Halloween (or All Hallow's Eve) is actually a three-day event consisting of three originally separate festivals established at different times. The first and oldest, Samhain (celebrated on October 31), is ancient in origin, though consequently also the least understood of the three. It appears to have originally been a druidic festival for calling the dead to help the living in surviving the winter. "Samhain" is the Irish word, with the Welsh, Scots and Cornish all using different words for the same thing. But it was generally celebrated by all Celts as the end of summer and the beginning of winter. It was the complement of the spring celebration of Beltaine. Bonfires were lit and maintained at both celebrations. The bonfires for Samhain were later coopted by the celebration of Guy Fawkes Night (November 5). Ironically, Samhain legends tend to be mixed up with those of other ancient festivals. For example, this week's film review discusses an ancient Slavic legend about a witches' sabbath that appears to occur on Halloween, but actually occurred in midsummer. You would think that the least likely period for a witches' sabbath, or dance of the dead would be during the shortest days of the year, but not, apparently, according to Ukrainian legend.

Medieval and postmedieval Western European legends involving mortals who encounter fairies or where the dead rise and dance appear to derive from the Celtic tradition that the burial mounds, the gateways to both the underworld and the fairy world (the same thing in places like Scotland), only opened during Beltaine and Samhain. Modern horror films like Evil Dead are based on this idea of the dead being a lot closer than you might want them to be during this time of year. It is not intended to be a safe holiday, since the druidic intent appears to have been to bring the living and dead closer in order to enlist the aid of the dead in the coming difficult months of winter. It's possible that these two festivals were also associated with human sacrifice during the Iron Age in Britain and Northern Europe, even into the early Middle Ages. But the archaeological evidence (mainly bog bodies like Lindow Man) is highly contested.

One of the problems with tracing the history of Halloween is that it has been so popular (and also disapproved at an official level) that, like the Winter Solstice, it has accrued an amazing variety of legends and practices that bleed into each other to a confusing degree. The Church has both helped and hindered the situation by adding two more holidays to Halloween/Samhain (continued in this week's article).