History of Halloween

This is taken from one of my first graduate papers back in 2003. Happy Halloween and remember there is an 8pm curfew in Summerside. Happy haunting.

Hallowe’en has a long and rich history, originating in Pagan Ireland as the festival of Samhain and becoming All Hallow’s Eve in Christian times. More than two thousand years ago, the Celtic people who lived in France and the British Isles observed a calendar that began and ended with their New Year’s Eve festival every October 31/ November 1. This festival was called Samhain, which means summer’s end, and was also regarded as a day of the dead, a night devoted to the practices of magic and a festival to celebrate the harvest. The ancient Celts believed that an invisible veil existed, which separated the worlds of the living and the dead. On this night, it was believed that home sick spirits were free to roam the mortal world, return to their old earthly homes and to seek warmth and the fire of their living kin. Families would prepare offerings of fruits and vegetables and hilltop bonfires, which served as a guiding light for the souls of the dead. These fires were kept burning to frighten away evil spirits who intended to harm the living.
In Ireland, a religious group of Celts known as Druids are believed to have performed gruesome sacrificial rites on the eve of Samhain. They constructed giant wicker cages, which were used to confine prisoners of war and criminals. The Druid priests would set them on fire and the entrapped were burned alive. Sometimes animals would be sacrificed in addition to human offerings. The Druid’s sacrificial rites of Samhain served two purposes: In addition to appeasing the Lord of the Dead, they offered the priests important omens of the future. These signs were said to have been read in the ways that the victim died, sounds emitted from the fire, shapes of the flames, and the colour and the direction of the smoke.
The inhabitants of pre-Christian Ireland also believed that Samhain was a time when a strange, dark skinned race of goblin like creatures with occult powers emerged from their secret hiding places. Resentful of the human race for taking over the land that was once theirs, they delighted in creating as much mischief as possible. Some were merely pranksters, while others were supposed to be evil and more dangerous. According to the legends, every seven years these creatures would steal human infants or small children and sacrifice them to their god.
Samhain was more than a night when spirits walked the earth. Like the other great festivals dominating the old Celtic calendar, Samhain was also connected with the fertility of the earth and the fertility of animals. It was a time when the final harvest was celebrated and when farmers brought their livestock down from the pastures and made preparations for the coming winter.
In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV introduced All Saints’ Day to honour God and the early Christians who had died for their religious beliefs. The festival of the Catholic Church was originally held on May 13th. In the year 900, Gregory III changed the date to November first in order to try to displace the Samhain festival of the dead.
All Saints’ Day was also called Hallowmas or All Hallows’ Day but eventually evolved into the word Hallowe’en. Halowe’en was brought to North America by Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century. (Dunwich, 2000)