Halloween
Halloween, is a celebration observed in many countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It is at the beginning of the observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the Christian liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints, martyrs, and all the faithful departed. In popular culture, Halloween has become a celebration of horror and is associated with the macabre and the supernatural.
One theory holds that many Halloween traditions were influenced by Celtic harvest festivals, particularly the Gaelic festival Samhain, which are believed to have pagan roots. Some theories go further and suggest that Samhain may have been Christianized as All Hallows' Day, along with its eve, by the Church. Other academics say Halloween began independently as a Christian holiday, being the vigil of All Hallows' Day. Celebrated in Ireland and Scotland for centuries, Irish and Scottish immigrants brought many Halloween customs to North America in the 19th century, and then through American influence various Halloween customs spread to other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century.
Popular activities during Halloween include trick-or-treating, attending Halloween costume parties, carving pumpkins or turnips into jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling frightening stories, and watching horror or Halloween-themed films. Some Christians practice the observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, although it is a secular celebration for others. Historically, some Christians abstained from meat on All Hallows' Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating of certain vegetarian foods on this day, including apples, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.
Etymology
Hallow derives from Middle English halowen, from Old English hālig meaning holy and has been used synonymously with the word saint. The word Halloween or Hallowe'en comes from the Lowland Scots form of All Hallows' Eve : even is the Scots term for 'eve' or 'evening', and is contracted to e'en or een; so Hallow Een became Halloween. A term equivalent to 'All Hallows Eve' as attested in Old English. Thus, the name has an origin in Christianity, and means 'Saints' eve'.History
Christian origins and historical customs
Halloween is influenced by Christian beliefs and practices surrounding All Hallows' Day. The English word 'Halloween' comes from "All Hallows' Eve", being the evening before the Christian holy days of All Hallows' Day on 1 November and All Souls' Day on 2 November. Since the time of the early Church, major feasts in Christianity had vigils that began the night before, as did the feast of All Hallows. These three days are included in the liturgical period of Allhallowtide, a time when Western Christians honour all Christian martyrs and saints, as well as pray for departed souls.After the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, "there were more martyrs than there were days in the year, and so one day was set apart in honor of them all, and called All Saints' Day." Commemorations of all saints and martyrs were held by several churches on various dates, mostly in springtime. In 4th-century Roman Edessa it was held on 13 May, and on that date in 609, Pope Boniface IV re-dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to "St Mary and all martyrs". This was the date of Lemuria, an ancient Roman festival of the dead, when it was believed that restless and vengeful souls wandered. Some folklorists also suggest the ancient Roman festival of Parentalia influenced All Saints' and All Souls' days. Parentalia involved a commemorative meal at the graves of relatives, during which food and drink were offered to the dead, and Christian Romans continued this custom, extending it to the saints and martyrs.
There is evidence that by 800, churches in Ireland and Northumbria were holding a feast commemorating all saints on 1 November. In 835, the Frankish Empire officially adopted 1 November as the date of All Saints' Day. This may have been promoted by Alcuin of Northumbria, who was a member of Charlemagne's court, or by the Irish clerics and scholars who were also members of the Frankish court. Some suggest the date was due to Celtic influence; others, that it was a Germanic idea, although it is said that both Germanic- and Celtic-speaking peoples commemorated the dead at the beginning of winter. They may have seen it as the most fitting time to do so, as it is a time of "dying" in nature. It is also suggested the change was made on the "practical grounds that Rome in summer could not accommodate the great number of pilgrims who flocked to it", and perhaps because of public health concerns over Roman Fever, which claimed a number of lives during Rome's sultry summers.
All Souls' Day, a feast commemorating all deceased Christians, became widespread in the 12th century. Its date was fixed on 2 November, the day after All Saints' Day. By the end of the 12th century, they had become holy days of obligation requiring church attendance in Western Christianity and involved such traditions as ringing church bells for souls in Purgatory. It was also "customary for criers dressed in black to parade the streets, ringing a bell of mournful sound and calling on all good Christians to remember the poor souls".
The Allhallowtide custom of baking and sharing soul cakes for all christened souls has been suggested as the origin of trick-or-treating. The custom dates back at least as far as the 15th century and was found in parts of England, Wales, Flanders, Bavaria and Austria. Groups of poor people, often children, would go door to door during Allhallowtide, collecting soul cakes in exchange for praying for the dead, especially the souls of the givers' friends and relatives. This was called "souling". Soul cakes were also offered for the souls themselves to eat, being laid on graves, or the "soulers" would act as their representatives. As with the Lenten tradition of hot cross buns, soul cakes were often marked with a cross, indicating that they were baked as alms. Shakespeare mentions souling in his comedy The Two Gentlemen of Verona. While souling, Christians would carry "lanterns made of hollowed-out turnips", which could have originally represented souls of the dead; later jack-o'-lanterns were used to ward off evil spirits.
Christian minister Prince Sorie Conteh linked the wearing of costumes to the belief in vengeful ghosts: "It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving to the next world. In order to avoid being recognized by any soul that might be seeking such vengeance, people would don masks or costumes". In the Middle Ages, churches in Europe that were too poor to display relics of martyred saints at Allhallowtide let parishioners dress up as saints instead. Some Christians observe this custom at Halloween today. Lesley Bannatyne believes this could have been a Christianization of an earlier pagan custom. Many Christians in mainland Europe, especially in France, believed "that once a year, on Hallowe'en, the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival" known as the danse macabre, which was often depicted in church decoration. Christopher Allmand and Rosamond McKitterick write in The New Cambridge Medieval History that the danse macabre urged Christians "not to forget the end of all earthly things". The danse macabre was sometimes enacted in European village pageants and court masques with people "dressing up as corpses from various strata of society", and this may be the origin of Halloween costume parties.
In Britain, these customs came under attack during the Reformation, as Protestants berated Purgatory as a "popish" doctrine incompatible with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. State-sanctioned ceremonies associated with the intercession of saints and prayer for souls in Purgatory were abolished during the Elizabethan reform, though All Hallows' Day remained in the English liturgical calendar to "commemorate saints as godly human beings". For some Nonconformist Protestants, the theology of All Hallows' Eve was redefined: "souls cannot be journeying from Purgatory on their way to Heaven, as Catholics frequently believe and assert. Instead, the so-called ghosts are thought to be in actuality evil spirits". Other Protestants believed in an intermediate state known as Hades. In some localities, Catholics and Protestants continued souling, candlelit processions, or ringing church bells for the dead; but the Anglican Church eventually suppressed this bell-ringing. Professor of medieval archaeology Mark Donnelly and historian Daniel Diehl write that "barns and homes were blessed to protect people and livestock from the effect of witches, who were believed to accompany the malignant spirits as they traveled the earth".
After 1605, Allhallowtide was eclipsed in England by Guy Fawkes Night, which appropriated some of its customs. In England, the ending of official ceremonies related to the intercession of saints led to the development of new, unofficial Allhallowtide customs. In 18th- and 19th-century rural Lancashire, Catholic families gathered on hills on the night of All Hallows' Eve and one person held a bunch of burning straw on a pitchfork while the rest knelt around him, praying for the souls of relatives and friends until the flames went out. This was known as teen'lay. There was a similar custom in Hertfordshire, and the lighting of "tindle" fires in Derbyshire. Some suggested that these fires were originally lit to "guide the poor souls back to earth". In Scotland and Ireland, old Allhallowtide customs that were at odds with Reformed teaching were not suppressed because they "were important to the life cycle and rites of passage of local communities" and so curbing them would have been difficult.
On All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day during the 19th century, candles were lit in homes in Ireland, Flanders, Bavaria, and in Tyrol, where they were called "soul lights", that served "to guide the souls back to visit their earthly homes". Across Christendom, in preparation for Allhallowtide, Christians flocked to cemeteries "decorating the graves of their dear ones with flowers, tending the lawn, and spreading fresh white gravel around the tombs" with "candles, protected by little glass lanterns" being "placed around the graves or at the foot of the tombstones, to be lighted on All Saints' eve and left burning prior through the night." The use of candles by Christians symbolized the light of Christ and the use of lamps at the tombs of Christian martyrs dates back to the early Christian period.
In 19th century Brittany, libations of milk were poured on the graves of kinfolk, or food would be left overnight on the dinner table for the returning souls; a custom also found in Tyrol and parts of Italy. In Salerno, until the 15th century, families left a meal out for the ghosts of relatives before leaving for church services. In 19th century Bavaria, food was laid on graves to feed the souls of the dead.
In 19th-century Italy, churches staged "theatrical re-enactments of scenes from the lives of the saints" on All Hallows' Day, with "participants represented by realistic wax figures". In 1823, the graveyard of Holy Spirit Hospital in Rome presented a scene in which bodies of those who recently died were arrayed around a wax statue of an angel who pointed upward towards heaven. In the same country, "parish priests went house-to-house, asking for small gifts of food which they shared among themselves throughout that night".
In 19th-century Spain at Allhallowtide, there was a procession in the city of San Sebastián to the city cemetery, an event that drew beggars who "appeal to the tender recollections of one's deceased relations and friends" for sympathy. People in Spain continue to bake special pastries called "bones of the holy" and set them on graves; and at cemeteries in both Spain and France, as well as in Latin America, priests lead Christian processions and services during Allhallowtide, after which people keep an all-night vigil.