Hey history fans, your friendly, neighbourhood DSC would like to wish you a spooktacular Halloween with this week’s #TBT post. Halloween is a childhood staple in this country and around the world. Before we traded in our pillow cases full of candy for drunken, nocturnal antics (worst deal ever) we would look forward to going door to door to demand candy from strangers, but have you ever stopped to wonder how this tradition came about? This week’s post will explore this question and many other staples of this annual, ghoulish affair we call Halloween.
Where better to start than the origin of the holiday itself, the pagan holiday Samhain, which is pronounced "sah-win", which means "summer's end" in Gaelic.[1] Halloween is seen as having its earliest origins with the Celtic tradition of celebrating the New Year and the harvest by dressing up as evil spirits. The Celts believed that at this time of year the barrier between the world of the living and the dead was the weakest, and demons would roam the earth. Dressing up was a way to defend against these demons, once you were in disguise as a ghoul or goblin the demons would see you as one of their own. [2]A lot of what we know about the origins behind this holiday comes from the Irish Sagas. In the sagas the act of paying tribute to the gods is very similar to the folk custom of setting out food and gifts to appease wandering spirits, which in turn parallels the of giving candy and treats to children on Halloween.[3] .This is practice was often called mumming, from a Danish work mumme, which means to parade in masks.[4]
These customs had major cultural significance to the Celtic people, and this poised a problem for those who wished to convert these people to Christianity. Pope Gregory the 1st in 601 C.E. decided o use these holidays to his advantage, and he instructed his missionaries to make these holidays more Christian, instead of pulling people away from their traditions.[5] They decided to place Catholic feast days and religious observances around the time of the original pagan celebration, so the new pagan converts could more easily fall into the new religious order. The traditions were much the same, but given a Christian twist, “According to priests, fairies were fallen angels, thus identifying them with devils in Catholic theology. The spirits of the dead still traveled, fairies still roamed, but there were deliberate attempts to define these creatures not merely as dangerous, but as malicious.”. [6]So, through this cultural exchange and evolution the pagan celebration of Samhain would become All Hollow’s Eve.
These pre-Christian and early Christian ideas of Halloween might seem abstract and alien from a modern standpoint, but as we look at more recent developments we can see more of the holiday we know and love. By the late 1800s, the practice of playing tricks on Halloween was well on its way to be the nuisance we know today. On this side of the pond, the pranks included tipping over outhouses, egging houses and other mature, kind things.[7] Hey now, don’t you kids get any funny ideas, pranks are best left on Youtube. These traditions became more troublesome in 1920s and '30s where the celebrations were more vandalism than anything.[8] Halloween is meant to be fun, spooky and safe, so don’t go scaring the townies kids, they’re delicate. It seems though trick-or-treating as we know it today didn't start in North America until World War II, but kids were known to go out for “Thanksgiving begging”.[9]
It seems even in the 20th and 21st century we are not above developing our own myths and legends. One such urban legend is the classic hidden razor blade in the apple story. This might seem to be the product of some silly, viral junk that’s shared from one hysterical, helicopter parent to another, but lots of people believed this sort of thing for a long time. Halloween sadism Is widely considered an urban legend that came about in the 1970s to give credence to growing fears about the safety of children, the danger of crime, and other sources of social strain.[10] It is interesting how supposedly modern people can be fooled by something as simple as word of mouth. There is very little evidence of such crimes taking place, but parents still check candy to this day.
Halloween now is a day which children, adults and everyone in between get together to form fond memories, have fun and revel in the dark. It’s a night where you can be anyone or anything and that fundamental aspect of Halloween transcends centuries, and makes it an important part of our cultural heritage. The History DSC Blog Team would like to extend to you a very happy (and spooky) Halloween.
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Works Cited
[1] Benjamin Radford. "History of Halloween." LiveScience. September 18, 2017. Accessed October 13, 2017. https://www.livescience.com/40596-history-of-halloween.html.
[2] Rose Eveleth. "The History of Trick Or Treating Is Weirder Than You Thought." Smithsonian.com. October 18, 2012. Accessed October 13, 2017. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-history-of-trick-or-treating-is-weirder-than-you-thought-79408373/.
[3] Jack Santino. "Halloween in America: Contemporary Customs and Performances." Western Folklore 42, no. 1 (1983): 4-6
[4] Ibid
[5] Santino, Contemporary, 7-9
[6] Ibid
[7] Radford, Halloween, 2017
[8] Radford, Halloween, 2017
[9] Ibid
[10] Joel Best and Gerald T. Horiuchi. "The Razor Blade in the Apple: The Social Construction of Urban Legends." Social Problems 32, no. 5 (1985): Passim