Many of the ancient peoples of Europe marked the end of the harvest season
and the beginning of winter by celebrating a holiday in late autumn. The
most important of these holidays to influence later Halloween customs was
Samhain, a holiday observed by the ancient Celts, a tribal people who inhabited
most of Western and Central Europe in the first millennium BC. Among the
Celts, Samhain marked the end of one year and the beginning of the next.
It was one of four Celtic holidays linked to important transitions in the
annual cycle of seasons.
Samhain began at sundown on October 31 and extended into the following day.
According to the Celtic pagan religion, known as Druidism, the spirits of
those who had died in the preceding year roamed the earth on Samhain evening.
The Celts sought to ward off these spirits with offerings of food and drink.
The Celts also built bonfires at sacred hilltop sites and performed rituals,
often involving human and animal sacrifices, to honor Druid deities.
By the end of the 1st century AD, the Holy Roman Empire had conquered most
of the Celtic lands. In the process of incorporating the Celts into their
empire, the Romans adapted and absorbed some Celtic traditions as part of
their own pagan and Catholic religious observances. In Britain, Romans blended
local Samhain customs with their own pagan harvest festival honoring Pomona,
goddess of fruit trees. Some scholars have suggested that the game of bobbing
for apples derives from this Roman association of the holiday with fruit.
Pure Celtic influences lingered longer on the western fringes of Europe,
especially in areas that were never brought firmly under Roman control, such
as Ireland, Scotland, and the Bretagne region of northwestern France. In
these areas, Samhain was abandoned only when the local people converted to
Christianity during the early Middle Ages, a period that lasted from the
5th to the 15th century. The Roman Catholic Church often incorporated modified
versions of older religious traditions in order to win converts. For example,
Pope Gregory IV sought to replace Samhain with All Saints' Day in 835. All
Souls' Day, closer in spirit to Samhain and modern Halloween, was first
instituted at a French monastery in 998 and quickly spread throughout Europe.
Folk observances linked to these Christian holidays, including Halloween,
thus preserved many of the ancient Celtic customs associated with Samhain.
Halloween traditions thought to be incompatible with Christianity often became
linked with Christian folk beliefs about evil spirits. Although such
superstitions varied a great deal from place to place, many of the supernatural
beings now associated with Halloween became fixed in the popular imagination
during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance (14th to 17th century). In
British folklore, small magical beings known as fairies became associated
with Halloween mischief. The jack-o'-lantern, originally carved from a large
turnip rather than a pumpkin, originated in medieval Scotland. Various methods
of predicting the future, especially concerning matters of romance and marriage,
were also prominent features of Halloween throughout the British Isles.
Between the 15th and 17th centuries, Europe was seized by a hysterical fear
of witches, leading to the persecution of thousands of innocent women. Witches
were thought to ride flying brooms and to assume the form of black cats.
These images of witches soon joined other European superstitions as symbols
of Halloween. |
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