Posted on 10/31/2016 5:31:59 AM PDT by SandRat
Feeding your inner nerd with words, their origins, and the stories behind them
Where did “Halloween” come from? Here’s the story. In 609 A.D. Pope Boniface IV created All Saints Day, hoping it would replace a highly popular pagan rite that was aimed at appeasing the spirits of the dead, especially the bad spirits. All Saints Day is a twist on this same theme, honoring the deceased saints and asking them for help. Pope Gregory III moved All Saints Day to its current Nov. 1 date.
Now, don't confuse All Saints Day with All Souls Day, which is also a Christian holiday and is celebrated on Nov. 2. All Souls Day is specifically for all the souls of those who have died but haven’t quite yet made it to heaven, and are in need of a boost, which the celebration is intended to provide.
An alternate name for All Saints Day is Hallowmas. “Hallow” comes from a Saxon word “halig” meaning “to make holy”. In fact, the word “holy” derives from hallow, and a “holiday” is a “holy day” with just a slight change in pronunciation. And the "mas" in Hallowmas means "mass", which is the Roman Catholic word for a religious celebration — the same as in Christ-mas.
Are you with me so far? Okay, the day before Hallowmas — that is, All Saints Day — was “All Hallow’s Evening.” That got shortened to All Hallow’s Eve, then to Hallow’s Eve, then to Halloween. You can thank the Scots for all that shortening.
But the official Christian holidays don’t really explain the odd ritual of dressing up our children in scary costumes, going door to door begging for food, and threatening neighbors with harm if they don’t cough up the goods. For that, we need to turn to a pagan tradition from the Celtic culture that remained in Ireland and Scotland. The Celts had an autumn festival celebrating the summer’s end. The festival’s name is spelled “S-a-m-h-a-i-n”, but in Old Irish it is pronounced “Sah-win”. In Celtic culture, at this time of the year dead souls could intermingle with the living. The souls of one’s ancestors, who presumably were good souls, were invited into the home. But there are bad souls too, and something needed to be done about them. So the Celts donned masks and costumes, either to propitiate the evil spirits by mimicking them, or fool them into thinking the costume-wearer was a fellow evil spirit and not worth bothering with.
Another ritual in the Celtic Samhain festival involved large community fires in which animal bones were used as fuel — hence, the name “bonefire,” which evolved into what today we call a bonfire, by which we mean any large outdoor fire, no matter what fuel we use, bones or no bones.
So, with all the communicating with dead souls, evil spirits roaming around, and warding them off with masks and costumes, we can see why today Halloween is a time for dressing up as witches, ghosts, ghouls, goblins and the like. But how about the custom of going door to door and begging for food? This comes from the Medieval tradition called "souling", in which poor people would go door to door on All Souls Day promising to pray for the souls of ancestors in return for food. Eventually this tradition blended with the tradition of dressing up in scary costumes, with children leading the way—and now we have trick or treating on Halloween. With the spread of American pop culture, this secular Halloween tradition is now celebrated by children in many parts of the globe.
I feel edified indeed. Thank you.
Thank you for this clarification.
No matter it’s origins Halloween today is only about candy for the kiddies and an excuse for adults to party. It’s as satanic as Groundhog Day.
Every year on FR I sit on these Halloween threads waiting for someone to say something stupid. This year I’m not seeing the crazies come out so I’m disappointed and sad. But the day isn’t over. There’s still hope. :)
No disrespect to the Irish, but why on God’s green earth would the ROMANS who had their own paganism co-opt an IRISH pagan holiday that had no connection to its citizens and whom they considered barbarians?
Plus the Samhain link is tenuous even in Ireland...since the earliest Irish martyrologies have All Saints in the *spring*. It was only moved to this date in deference to Rome.
I thought bonfire was bon (French for ‘good’) fire, as opposed to a house fire or a forest fire.
Hmmmmm....
Dictionary.com agrees with the author as to the origin of the word: “a fire with bones for fuel.”
I would have gone with your idea too.
yes they both are
I think the important thing for Christians is to “repurpose” the three days as a spiritual event, picking and choosing among possible origins for a satisfactory whole.
1) October 31st, Halloween. The veil between the world of the living and the world of the dead become thin for the evening and the next two days. Those deceased who were not good people, or who embraced sinful habits are “the first through the door”, impatient and hurried hoping to exploit the world of the living to continue with their sins. So Halloween is a time of masks, to keep them from harassing the living. It is a time of laughter and noise, which is disruptive to haunts.
2) November 1st, All Saints’ Day. After the first wave has passed, the spirits of the Saints, the best of the righteous, return and both dispel the spirits of ill intent back to the world of the dead, and bestow blessings on the living. They impart the humble gifts of virtue and reverence. So it is a time of quietude and good feeling, to try and emulate such good examples.
3) November 2nd, All Souls’ Day. Once the Saints have “cleared the air”, comes a time to honor the spirits of the imperfect, but mostly virtuous dead, especially of beloved family members and the recently deceased. To remind them of love and reverence and joy and hope, that they may again experience them in resurrection.
Those groundhogs are pretty evil.
I grew up in the 60s. We ventured out in small groups after dark with or without grownups.
I have the vaguest recollection of seeing kids collecting for UNICEF or hearing some of the older fellow Catholic school kids speak of collecting for “pagan babies.” Not sure whether the pagan babies got to wear goat leggings
I would have been mortified if my parents ever tried to accompany me trick or treating. Then again, they never thought it necessary once I was 6 or 7. I did the UNICEF thing one year. My lefty 8th grade teacher made the whole class do it.
In England they go “Drink or Drinking”. People keep bottles of booze near the door for the adults. When I lived there many years ago, my girlfriends British mother turned me on to it. It was easy to be hammered all night long.
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