History of Halloween

something2say

We celebrate this every 31st October. Bonfires are lit and kids and adults alike dress up as ghosts and goblins and terrorize the neighborhood with their trick or treat questions.
But where did it all start? Where did it all come from? How many different traditions combine to make what we now know as Halloween?

I have started a blog on this.

Please take a look and comment.

We can all discover this together.

www.waitingforhalloween.wordpress.com

nuac

Briefly it was an Irish celebration - Samhain - at all Saints' Day Eve, with some Irish traditions. Ducking for apples, practical jokes on neighbours , ghost stories etc

Brought over to America, and came back to us enhanced with witches costumes, trick and treat etd

dubhthach

Samhain from Samfhuin (fh = silent). "Fuin an tsamhraidh" = setting/end of Summer. Of course in Old Irish the it's generally written as Samain, though samḟuin (with punc on f) is also evident.

DIL (Dictionary of Irish language -- covering Old/Middle Irish) mentions two festivals (feis) one at Eamhain Mhaca and other at Teamhair (Tara)

(b) explicitly of the festival of S. : co ndernad feiss na Samna la Conchobar i nEmain Macha, MU² 30 . oc ferthain óenaig na samna, LU 3224 ( SC 1 ). conid de sin atát na trenae samna sechnón na hErend, 3227 ( SC 1 ). Of the festival held at Tara: do chathim fessi Temrach ar cech s.€, 4210 . fes Temra cecha samna . . . ┐ óenach Tailten cech lúgnasaid, 4211 , cf. IT iii 198 § 55 .

gobnaitolunacy

Interestingly, the Mexican Day of the Dead occurs around the same time. Nov 1st.

tac foley

I think a point has been missed here, somehow. Hallow E'en - formerly All Hallows' Eve, was/is a Christian religious festival falling on the evening before November 1st - All Souls' Day.

It was a time when prayers were said for the repose of the dead, and necessarily involved a certain amount of creepiness in and around graveyards and memorials - something that translated well into the modern idiom of ghost and goolies - helped along by spinning yarns of ghostly imaginings.

tac

ezra_pound

tac foley wrote: »

I think a point has been missed here, somehow. Hallow E'en - formerly All Hallows' Eve, was/is a Christian religious festival falling on the evening before November 1st - All Souls' Day.

It was a time when prayers were said for the repose of the dead, and necessarily involved a certain amount of creepiness in and around graveyards and memorials - something that translated well into the modern idiom of ghost and goolies - helped along by spinning yarns of ghostly imaginings.

tac

All souls day is samhain. They are both celebrated on the 1st November. However pagan Celts start day at nightfall so 1st November started with sunset at end of 31st Oct. Therefore the Celts celebrated the evening of 1st November on oiche shamhna, the night of Samhain which is the 1st November. For us this is the evening if 31st because for us a new day starts at midnight.

The Christians just Christianised this festival.

Manach

The Church re-invigoured and added lustre to Celtic/Roman celebration - as All Saints Day (Nov1st) was known as All Hallows Day, so the evening before became All Hallows e'en or holy evening.

ezra_pound

Manach wrote: »

The Church re-invigoured and added lustre to Celtic/Roman celebration - as All Saints Day (Nov1st) was known as All Hallows Day, so the evening before became All Hallows e'en or holy evening.

Well yes but no.

The reason why they call it e'en is not because its the night before all saints/hallows day but because it is the evening of that feast day based on the culture from whence the feast was adapted.

Don't get your distinction between all saints and all hallows by the way - its the same thing. Like distinguishing between bunnies and rabbits or spuds and potatoes.

Manach

Again, from the source I looked up: it stated the origin of the term Halloween was the evening of the day prior and that All Hallows day was the earlier name for All Saints Day,

ezra_pound

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_calendar

Among the Insular Celts, the year was divided into a light half and a dark half. As the day was seen as beginning after sunset, so the year was seen as beginning with the arrival of the darkness, at Samhain (in modern times the 1 November, or for modern Pagans in early November). The light half of the year started at Bealtaine (in modern times 1 May, or for modern Pagans in early May). This observance of festivals beginning the evening before the festival day is still seen in the celebrations and folkloric practices among the Gaels, such as the traditions of Oíche Shamhna (Samhain Eve) among the Irish and Oidhche Shamhna among the Scots.[3][4]

Julius Caesar said in his Gallic Wars: "[the Gaulish Celts] keep birthdays and the beginnings of months and years in such an order that the day follows the night." Although Caesar says "at night" he specifically does not say "sunset" so we do not know how much the Gauls differed from others in methods of counting from midnight. Longer periods were reckoned in nights, as in the surviving term "fortnight" and the obsolete "se'nnight".

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So the Celts weren't celebrating the night before the new year. They were celebrating the new year.

Furthermore the Wordc eve just meansb evening. However it is used to signify the evening before feast days with pagan origin

wendyjames2

Halloween was originally called Samhain and marked the end of the harvest season for Celtic farmers.

Here's a video:
http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/videos#haunted-history-of-halloween