Samhain

Samhain, in ancient Celtic religion, a festival marking the end of summer and beginning of winter. It has been celebrated on October 31 or on November 1, a date set after the Christianization of the British Isles. In ancient Ireland it was a time of ingathering for the winter and served as a bookend to Beltane on May 1, which celebrated the inauguration of summer. It was believed that on Samhain, during this seasonal transition, spirits came to the world of the living, and their presence was regarded with trepidation. In conjunction with All Souls’ Day and All Saints’ Day, Samhain had an influence on the modern holiday of Halloween, and it is also celebrated as an important holiday in modern Paganism.

History and practices

Very little can be said with certainty about the ancient Samhain observances, because evidence is sparse. One might say that the spookiness of this time, according to the Celtic perspective, parallels the mysteriousness of ancient Samhain for people today who seek knowledge of the past. The ancient Celts of Ireland left few records of the holiday, and much of what is known comes either from Christian writers after Christianity had become predominant in the region or from observations of local practices in more-recent centuries. Brief references to Samhain as a calendrical holiday appear in Irish tales dating to the 10th and 12th centuries, but more-specific descriptions date only to the 18th century and are based on writings about practices in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and the Isle of Man. Whether these practices reflected the ancient Samhain or were merely local secular ways of celebrating a holiday is unclear.

Stray strands of folklore from Ireland and Wales suggest that Samhain was believed to be a period when mysterious events could happen because of the opening of the barrier between the realm of the spirits and the realm of the living. Some writings suggest a belief that those who had died in the past year passed to the next realm, but spirits in that realm could also return to the world of the living. Moreover, a person could accidentally stumble into the other realm. Fairies in particular were believed to emerge from mounds and play tricks on the living.

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Halloween

In response to these perceived supernatural threats, Celtic practitioners in some regions possibly lit large bonfires on Samhain, believing that the fires would offer protection from supernatural beings such as fairies, witches, and goblins. In 1589 there was a prohibition of “hollowmass” fires in Stirling, Scotland. The 17th-century Irish antiquary Jeffrey Keating suggested that one bonfire would be lit on the hill of Tlachtga (Hill of Ward) and families would light their fires from it. However, he cited no sources, and the assertion itself might be folklore. The evidence for fires being lit on Samhain in Ireland is thin but stronger for them being a part of Beltane festivities there, which might have led to some confusion. In some regions of Scotland and Wales, however, large fires were used as part of divination practices on Samhain to ascertain fates of the living. In southern Ireland, woven crosses called parshells, made from sticks and straw, served to ward off evil on Samhain, and other apotropaic rituals observed on the holiday in Ireland and environs have been recorded.

Scattered mentions in folklore point to feasting, games, stories, and alcohol consumption as part of Samhain’s festivities. Food-related practices might have included serving food to the deceased who returned to the world of the living. There were also various rituals employed on the holiday to predict a young woman’s romantic or matrimonial future, including “dumb suppers” or “dumb cakes”—food eaten in silence—which were thought capable of inducing visions of future husbands. According to Irish folklore in the Tochmarc Emire, of the Ulster cycle, Samhain was treated as a New Year festival, but it is unclear whether that was the case only in some parts of Ireland. Further hints indicate that Samhain was linked to pastoral schedules—a time of bringing in the cows from pasture and of slaughtering pigs for the winter. However Samhain was observed, it is clear that the holiday marked a changing of seasons and an opening between mundane and supernatural realms.

Samhain has been adopted and adapted in modern Paganism, particularly Wicca, as a major holiday. Within that family of religious movements, which establish their legitimacy as a harkening back to pre-Christian European religion, Samhain is celebrated predominantly as a holiday of honoring the dead. In many modern Pagan celebrations, altars are constructed and furnished with photographs of the deceased, thus echoing Christian practices on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, as well as the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico. Ritual activities in the modern Pagan version of Samhain also include sitting in sacred circles in which the spirits of the deceased are invoked and attempting to communicate with spirits in the next world.

Influences on Halloween

Samhain coincides with the later Christian festival of All Saints’ Day, which is part of Allhallowtide, a period of three days dedicated to remembering the dead that begins with All Hallows’ Eve (October 31) and is followed by All Hallows’, or All Saints’, Day (November 1) and All Souls’ Day (November 2). Some scholars, such as James Frazer, allege that these holidays of the dead were based on Samhain or were crafted by Christian leaders to diminish the pagan Samhain festival. However, these Christian holidays developed very early in the history of Christianity and were established by the Roman Catholic Church on these dates in the 9th century entirely independently of Samhain. Local forms of observing these Christian holidays developed in England, Scotland, and Ireland through the centuries. With the Protestant Reformation—and its view of the veneration of saints as idolatrous and pagan—these Catholic holidays, particularly in Britain, were replaced with a general sense of a time for honoring the dead at this juncture in the calendar. This shift gave rise to the nonreligious holiday of Halloween.

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The modern celebration of Halloween as a festival for the dead, involving spirits, costumes, and general trickery, emerged not simply from Celtic Samhain nor entirely from the Christian Allhallowtide but from a combination of both. What vestiges of Samhain remain in Halloween is unclear, as they may have been filtered through English, Irish, and Scottish forms of observing the Christian holidays—if any Samhain vestiges are there at all. The wearing of masks has been said to be a way to dress as Samhain spirits, to hide from them, or to ward them off. Wearing disguises was part of Scottish All Souls’ Day celebrations, but it is unclear whether that observance was Samhain in disguise. Additionally, masked performances called mumming, which were popular at other holidays, including Christmas, had become a widespread part of the Halloween festivities in England only by the 20th century. Carving frightening faces into hollowed-out turnips that are then used as lanterns (which turned into pumpkins when the holiday arrived in the United States) is sometimes said to have been a way of warding off spirits and thus being a holdover from Samhain. Yet, this vegetable lamp tradition may instead be a remnant from All Saints’ Day or Guy Fawkes Day (November 5). In short, as much as Samhain is said to have blurred the boundaries between the worlds of the living and the dead, Halloween blurs the boundaries between ancient Celtic and later Christian historical influences.