The Oldest Celebration…maybe (?):

Most Halloween stories and legends can all agree that Halloween most likely stemmed from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced Sow-in or Saw-win) in Ireland. This 2,000 + year old Celtic festival was held during Fall to celebrate the harvest and also to mark the beginning of their new year. After all of the hard work of harvesting was done, celebrations were held with bonfires, food and prayer. I don’t think anyone can say for sure what date the original old celebrations took place, however, later on it was recognized that they took place on November 1st.

The Celts believed that the time of Samhain was a time when the physical and spiritual world could intermingle and ancestors could come back to visit family and loved ones. On the other hand, this was also a time when mischievous spirits could cross over and cause mayhem. For protection against any spirits that would do them harm, the Celts would wear animal skins and skulls during their celebrations to confuse those mischievous spirits. Some believe this is where the origins of wearing costumes started while other recounts of history say wearing costumes started later on during the 10th century when early forms of trick-or-treating began.

How the Church became associated with Halloween:

You may have heard some people claim that Halloween was originally a Christian holiday while others claim that Halloween is purely evil and/or Satanic. Actually, it is neither!

The church did get involved and had a huge influence on shaping our modern day Halloween as far as the date we celebrate it and the name of the holiday.

Approximately 1,220 years ago, the Catholic church in Ireland was full steam into converting any celebration that they deemed non-Christian, into a Christian holiday. They figured that if they could not abolish a celebration, they would just convert it. The same was true with Samhain, They wanted to convert it and so they did! The Pope combined the existing Samhain traditions of celebrating Celtic spirits and the Fall harvest, with the Catholic traditions of celebrating Catholic Saints and Catholic feasts and smooshed them into one big holiday and named it “All Saint’s Day”, also known as “All-Hallows” or “Alholowmesse” (it’s middle-English for those of you that want to look it up). Feasting and celebrating still took place on the same day each year (November 1st), but the focus of the holiday was just shifted slightly away from traditional Samhain practices towards more traditional Catholic practices of that time. They also created “all Soul’s Day” on November 2nd to honor the dead.

Even though effort was made to convert the holiday towards Catholicism, Celtic traditions were deep woven and strong. Because of this, another day was born This day was named “All Hallows Eve” and took place the day before “All Saint’s Day”, on October 31st. On All Hallow’s Eve, the Celts would still dress in animal pelts to ward off spirits and they would also still occasionally cause general mischief throughout the villages just for fun.

For a while, it was thought that the 3 days were combined together to create our one day of modern Halloween (All Hallow’s Eve, All Sant’s Day and All Soul’s Day), but this is not entirely true. While All Hallow’s Eve has morphed into Halloween, All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day are still observed in many cultures. Dias de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is celebrated on November 1st and 2nd. I have recently learned, however, that this is NOT to be combined with Halloween and is its own celebration of honoring deceased loved ones and is more closely related to the original All Saint’s day and All Soul’s Day.

But is it Satanic?

The short answer is: No, we are not practicing or encouraging Satanism by celebrating Halloween.

Let me explain…

As laid out above, the origins of Halloween began with Samhain and the celebration of the Harvest in Fall. Then Samhain became All Saint’s Day when the Catholic Pope declared a day to commemorate all of the Saints who did not have their own specific day already. Then the Celt’s and Catholics both created All Hallow’s Eve which was a night of feasting the night before All Saint’s Day. All Hallow’s Eve is what we know today as “Halloween”. It got it’s name because “All Saint's Day” is “All-Hallows”. This was literally thousands of years ago.

Satanism as an organized religion is fairly new and Halloween is very old. Halloween was not founded nor celebrated on the idea of evil or Satan.

The organized religion of Satanism was founded by Anton LaVey in 1966. Very recent as far as religions go. When Anton was registering Satanism as an organized religion, he was required to choose 3 organized Holidays to put on the calendar on behalf of the organized religion. He first chose each own individual's birthday due to the fact that this is a religion of one’s own self. Second, he chose April 30th, Walpurgisnacht (don’t ask me how to pronounce that!). This is right around the time of Beltane which is the counterpart to Samhain, in the Springtime. Named after a Christian Saint named Walpurga, Walpurgisnacht is rooted in an old Viking celebration of Spring and is known in some areas of Europe as a night when witches and sorcerers gather together to do magic (not even on Halloween - but April 30th). Lastly, Anton LaVey had to choose a third Holiday but he did not have one in mind, so he chose Halloween as a more of a joke since it was already gathering spooky connotations and rumors around it with the superstitious crowd.

Conspiracy theories suggest that Satanists recognize Halloween as Satan’s birthday. But this is inaccurate. The Satanist church describes Halloween as the “Fall Climax” and encourages its members to celebrate the holiday by dressing in costume as something that reflects their inner selves and to reflect on their deceased loves ones.

Even church historian Fr. Augustine Thompson has found through his studies that Halloween is very much rooted in old Fall harvest festivals and that, no, you are not allowing your children to participate in Satanism by allowing them to participate in Halloween. Fr. Thompson found much of the same research that I found above; which is that Halloween, is a Fall holiday very much established in more modern Americanized ways and recent traditions. In fact, witches weren’t even associated with Halloween until the late 1800’s when a greeting card company added a picture of one to their cards in hopes of making more sales.

To summarize, Halloween is just another Americanized and commercialized holiday that we are free to enjoy in this country with no attachments or associations tying us to supporting one thing or another by doing so.

References:

Satanism and Halloween: What's the Connection? (learnreligions.com)

True Origins of Halloween - Pagan Druid or Christian? - (crossroadsinitiative.com)

Trick-or-Treating:

There are several different theories that I have come across to the origins of trick-or-treating. Some point to All Saints Day and All Souls Day Celebrations when poor people would knock on the doors of wealthy families. The wealthy families would hand out “soul cakes” (a yummy sounding pastry with our without icing) in exchange for prayers for the homeowners dead relatives. This practice was known as “souling”.

Another theory is that in the middle ages, people would dress in animal skins and perform antics (fun little skits or physical humor and silliness) in exchange for food and drink. This was referred to as “Mumming”.

Also, in Scotland and Ireland around this time, younger children would dress up and go door to door asking for food or even money. This tradition was called “Guising” (pronounced Guy-zing). Instead of trading gifts for prayers, the homeowners would trade gifts for songs, poems, jokes or have the “Guisers” perform a special talent (otherwise known as performing a “trick”). A trick for a treat, so to say….

Jumping ahead to the 1840’s in America; Irish immigrants helped to make Halloween popular by bringing with them a combination of many of these old traditions. By the 1920’s and into the Great Depression era, American teenagers and young adults had decided that mischievousness and pranks were the best way to celebrate Halloween (said sarcastically).

It was thought that the 1930’s tried to create organized Trick-or-Treat nights in order to stop the pranks and vandalism. However, World War II got in the way because sugar was highly rationed and candy was not being produced. So, trick-or treat nights had to be put on the back burner.

However…come post war, Halloween boomed! Maybe it was because people were waiting for something fun after the Great Depression and the war, maybe it was just good timing, but people were ready for Halloween and candy companies quickly answered the call! It was during this time that people starting seeing advertising specifically aimed towards Halloween candy for the first time.

Trick-or Treating was not thought to be completely modernized and made popular until 1951 when the “Peanuts” characters were depicted in a comic strip going Trick-or-Treating. It is thought that the comic strip helped usher in modern day Trick-or-Treating as we know it.

And while we are discussing Trick-or-Treating, I certainly can’t just skip away to the next section without addressing the mass panic of razor blades in the chocolate bars that was taking the country by storm in the recent past. Why was that a thing? Was it even real?

The myths and legends of poisoned candy, tampered with candy, razor blades in chocolate bars and the like most likely got started due to the creepy and mysterious legends surrounding Halloween itself. I mean, it just kind of lends itself to those sorts of stories. All it took was one person saying to another “Hey, I heard that a kid found a razor blade in their chocolate bar…” and that person repeated it and then another and then…well, you get the idea. Before long, there was mass hysteria across the country. Public service announcements were being made, hospitals were offering to x-ray candy, police were offering to look through children’s candy bags at the end of Trick-or-Treat night. It became such a huge deal that no one stopped to ask. “Has it actually ever happened?”

After listening to some podcasts and doing some reading; here is what I found.

In 1970, a 5 year child passed away from a heroin overdose. The initial first report stated that the child’s candy was covered with heroin dust. The truth is that the child had, unfortunately, found his uncle’s heroin stash in the home and ingested it.

In 1974 where a child consumed a poisoned Pixy Stix that was laced with cyanide and it was initially blamed to be a Halloween candy attack. It turns out that, sadly, it was his own father who poisoned him and tried to blame a random Halloween candy poisoning.

There are many more stories just like these that were initially reported and spread falsely as poisoned Halloween candy. You can read more at this site:

Poisoned Halloween Candy Urban Legend - Demiworld Podcast

What I was NOT able to find; was a legitimate story of poisoned Halloween candy. According to the Los Angeles Times, 1989, 78 individual stories were written and ran between 1958 and 1988 concerning poisoned Halloween candy. During that time, 2 deaths occurred. it was the two I mentioned above and neither one was due to a random Halloween candy poisoning.

Jack-O-Lanterns:

Here is modern day North America, we either pick pumpkins at a farm or purchase big orange pumpkins from a store. Then we open them up, scoop out the insides and carve faces into the sides. Sometimes we place lights inside to add to the spooky fun! Even this simple Halloween tradition has some fun history and some fun variations.

Let’s begin with the most commonly agreed upon Jack-O-Lantern origin that I was able to find. Way back in old Ireland, there was a legend of a man who was nicknamed “Stingy Jack” (pronounced Stin-gee Jack), as in “unwilling to spend”, “ungenerous”, “penny-pinching”.

Well, this guy, Stingy Jack, liked to play tricks on the Devil. His first trick was inviting the Devil out for a drink one night and convincing the Devil to turn himself into a coin. Stingy Jack didn’t even use that coin to pay for his drinks. He kept the coin in his pocket next to a cross which prevented the Devil from changing back. Eventually, Jack freed the Devil with some conditions that the Devil would not retaliate upon Jack such as claiming his soul upon death. The next year, Jack tricked the Devil into climbing a tree to pick a piece of fruit. Jack carves a cross on the tree to trap the Devil up there until the Devil agreed to not bother Jack for 10 years. Jack soon died and was not allowed entrance to Heaven. However, the Devil couldn’t take him either due to his agreement to not claim Jack’s soul. So, the Devil gave Jack a single burning coal for light and sent him back to Earth. Jack carved out a turnip to us as a lantern. He put the coal in it to light his path and has been roaming the Earth ever since.

A long time ago, turnips and potatoes were carved each Halloween to ward off Stingy Jack and other evil spirits. In England, large beets were used to put the lights in. Here is North America, we use orange pumpkins. Other countries use purple pumpkins.

And that is how the “Jack-O-Lantern” came to be.

If you have any specific knowledge of historical Halloween events or interesting websites you would like me to check out pertaining to how Halloween was formed, please feel free to send me an email! Make sure “The Origins of Halloween” is in your subject line.

amy@thehalloweenshack.com