The History of Halloween! Halloweencostume.co.uk! Halloween Fun, Facts and Activities.

The History of Halloween!

We occasionally hear people griping about fancy dress being a recent invention (and an import at that). Well, it’s neither! The roots of Halloween go back into pre-Roman times. It used to be a time for games, fun and fortunetelling; for ghost stories and making mischief. Today, not that much has changed, and on 31 October millions of people all over the world celebrate a very old festival indeed.

Today, many people say that Hallowe’en is just an excuse for a good time, and Hey, they have a point! That said, what makes Halloween so very special is its long and colourful history. For all the fun and games, it is part of the story of Britain, Ireland and northern France. For us here in Europe, it’s part of our Celtic past extending way beyond the arrival of Christianity. It is a night when witches walk - or fly, ghosts and spirits are on the loose and ordinary folk also believe that they can see into the future...

Originally Halloween was known as the Festival of the Dead, and it had a strong hold on our Celtic and Saxon ancestors, later on we will see how the Church adopted the pagan festival and made it All Hallow’s Eve.

The building blocks of a good Halloween are firmly rooted in our pagan past, and below are some of the things we associate with this party time. One of the most obvious questions is why do we dress up at Halloween?

And what is the fascination with party games like bobbing for apples at Halloween? Read on below and these, and many other fascinating points will be addressed...

• The Festival of Samhain.
• A Night for Misbehaving!
• Trick or Treat.
• Dressing Up.
• Magic Lanterns.
• Witches, Spells and Fortune-telling.
• Fairy Places.
• Little People.
• A Feast of Apples!
• Fire!
• Halloween in America.

The Festival of Samhain

Before the Romans first came to Britain in 55 BC the natives were (amongst other things) Celts. The Celts had two seasons, winter from November to May and then summer. November 1st started the winter and the New Year, so on the last day of October the old year died. The festival of Samhain was also a festival of the dead. This the Celts celebrated with the festival of Samhain (or Samhuin), their New Year’s Eve. (Samhain means "summer’s end" in Celtic.) It was a time when vegetation was dying. Life and crops would return early in the summer...

At Samhain food was left outside for the dead, as everyone believed that they would return on that night and it was important to avoid the visiting ghosts. In Cheshire "soul cakes" were eaten by candlelight - light that was supposed to guide the spirits back to their old homes. Other rituals and ideas about Halloween developed (we’ll look into some of these later on) and over time it developed into a larger and more widespread festival.

The Church was not happy with this, and decided that the best way to compete with pagan celebration was to have a more fitting one if its own. In the AD 834 Pope Boniface IV decreed that 1st November was All Saints’ Day, when they would venerate Saints and martyrs. The popularity of All Saints’ Day was such that many hundreds of British churches have been named All Saints. And one of the most famous of Oxford colleges bears the name All Souls.

In AD 988, it was decided that 2nd November would be known as All Soul’s Day. On this day, the church remembers all faithful Christians who have died. It is a day when many Roman Catholics offer prayer for those still in purgatory who have not yet been blessed by reaching heaven and God. Together these two days were known as Hallow Tide, "Hallow" meaning to have respect or reverence and "Tide" meaning season or time.

The Church, treating Halloween as the eve of a sacred time, attempted to draw public attention onto it's newly invented Hallow Tide. So it seems that Halloween was, and still is more of a "heathen" festival than a Christian one. Over time the popularity of Halloween faded slightly, but never fully went away. When groups from Northern Europe went over to colonize America they took traditions and celebrations with them, and the old festivals from home reinforced their sense of community and set in place the American fascination with Halloween that we see today.

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A Night for Misbehaving!

Halloween fun and games have quite often gone too far on both sides of the Atlantic. The fact that in Yorkshire, and other northern counties in England it used to be called Mischief Night, gives us a clue why.

Nowadays, Mischief Night has lost a lot of its mischief. In recent times, Mischief Night gradually got shifted to Guy Fawkes’ Eve - 4th November. But a century ago Halloween was the night for naughtiness. If you could not wait until the next October to be bad again then there was always May Eve, 30th April.

So twice a year you could smear doorknobs with treacle, take doors off their hinges and put fireworks through letterboxes (please don’t attempt to do this, it is stupid and illegal). Another terrible thing to do was to get up onto a roof and stuff a chimney with soil, the house below would fill up with smoke (another thing you must not try at home).

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Trick or Treat!

Trick or treating is the highlight of Halloween for children in North America - and it is quickly becoming a real favourite here too.

People give "trick or treaters" sweets or other treats, so that they will not have practical jokes played on them. They usually pay up! Of course, especially in these sometimes dangerous times, care has to be taken. Traffic can be heavy in the evening, and some cities have areas that are unsafe. Adults usually accompany young children and light coloured clothes should be worn so that traffic can see you. Click here for our Trick or Treat Safety Guidelines.

Did you know that trick or treat is a modern variation on an old tradition? Originally this was the other way round, the emphasis was placed on the trick. Youngsters would knock on a door and sing a song, do a dance or tell a story (that’s their trick) and they would get a treat so perhaps it should have been known as "trick for a treat"!

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Dressing up at Halloween!

"Guisers" or "guizers" are Halloween characters that have a very long history. Guiser is short for "disguiser", and disguising yourself is a sensible precaution when you are playing pranks on people! Some say the origin of the guisers goes back to ancient druid days. Then, the druids blackened their faces so that the spirits would not recognise them, using ashes from the bonfire. We do not recommend trying ash on your face, although click here for our own Halloween makeup tips including some simple but effective gory effects (you have been warned)!

Guising was done by young men and women who roamed parishes, wearing masks or soot-blackened faces and demanding money or food. In the 19th century they cleaned up their act and developed themselves into touring entertainers, still in costume and still painting their faces, so again little has changed!

Guising lives on in trick or treat (so, sorry USA! Again you really did not come up with this idea!) The guisers carried turnip masks and lanterns associated with Halloween. In North America, as we shall see, pumpkins are now used instead.

The Halloween masks link our present festival with Samhain and the masked dances that took place in ancient times. Up to a century ago Scottish guisers looked quite frightening! In some areas, the men masked or blackened their faces, supposedly to hide them from the dead (this really is a recurring theme). This also prevented the living from knowing who was playing pranks on them - like some trick or treaters.

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Magic Lanterns!

Looking into the history of Jack-o-Lanterns we found a reference to Somerset (in the British West Country) where they have a festival of "punkies" and they regard Halloween as punkie night. Punkies are lanterns which in the past were made from mangle-wurzels. These are a large type of beet, which cattle eat, and are of course hollowed out for the big occasion. Candles are then put inside the punkies.

These lanterns date back at least to the 1840’s. The village women were becoming worried that their men had not returned home from the fields one Halloween. The men had all the paraffin lanterns, so the women decided to make some out of the turnip-like vegetables. From that time onwards punkies were being made every Halloween.

Jack-o-lanterns are a great feature of Halloween in North America. They are hollowed-out pumpkins, they are easier to use than the turnips traditionally used in the British past. A spooky face is cut into one side of the pumpkin, and there is a candle or light placed inside the pumpkin. Click here to see our own pumpkin cutting designs.

Jack-o-lanterns got their names from Jack who, according to an Irish legend, was so mean with his money that he was not allowed into heaven. As he had played pranks on the devil he was not even allowed into hell! So he is still wandering around, plus lantern, waiting for judgment day, when his luck may change. There are several different legends about Jack and his lantern, but it is also thought that any night watchman was also known as Jack O’Lantern.

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Witches, Spells and Fortune-telling!

Witches have been a tradition in Europe for centuries, not always celebrated along with Halloween. In Germany they are celebrated on Walpurgist Nacht, which is centered on the Hartz Mountains, Brocken, the highest peak. On a night in May they fly to Brocken. In Germany you know when you are dealing with a witch because they have a large wart on their nose! However, these are good witches, unlike the ones we now remember at Halloween.

At one time our witches were real people, wise women, keepers of the healing arts, providing herbs, potions and poultices for cures. In more recent times the establishment (especially the church) challenged their power and demonized them. At Halloween, people believed they were at their wicked worst, and fires blazed across the countryside to frighten them and other evil spirits away.

In Scotland, possibly a more Halloween gripped country than England, there is a custom of burning a model witch on a bonfire at Halloween. These fires were supposed to burn the witches as they flew over them on their broomsticks.

Queen Victoria used to enjoy Halloween at Balmoral Castle. There, an effigy of a witch was tried and condemned to be burnt. This "witch" who had been brought forward to the sound of bagpipes, represented all the bad things that had happened over the year. The evils, supposedly, were burnt with her...

Robert Burns, the famous Scottish poet, described in "Tam o’Shanter" what happened to Tam at Halloween. Full of drink, he came upon witches and warlocks at a church, with the devil paying the bagpipes! The lights went out and the witches came after him. He just managed to escape, but his poor horse lost its tail to a witch. Tam had got half way across a bridge, which made him safe. (Witches cannot cross water, but you knew that!) however, the horse’s tail was not far enough across the river!

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Fairy Places!

If one of our ancestors offered another one a trip to fairyland, he or she would think the other mad! No night was more dangerous than Halloween, it was then that you could be snatched away forever by the fairies. Today if someone is accused of being "off with the fairies", they are thought not to be of sound mind, it sounds a bit funny, but if you believed that it was because the fairies had befuddled your mind then it is more sinister! It was taken so seriously that a seventeenth century register of death has three people frightened to death by the fairies, and one lead into a horse-pond by a will-o’the-wisp.

If you were searching for a missing loved one you may have wanted to try one of the dangerous methods for getting to fairyland. If you circled a certain Scottish hill nine times, between dusk and dawn, on Halloween it was said a door in the hill would open. Enter it and you would be in part of fairyland, the risk is you might not get back!

There are many other superstitions surrounding fairies. Anyone unlucky enough to get a visit from a fairy when moving house was in danger as bad luck was sure to follow. And on Halloween, fairies would appear in the homes of people whose ancestors had chased them away many years earlier. However, there was one thing more dangerous than a visit from the fairies and that was for an area to lose its fairy population altogether. To guard against this it was necessary to have a good supply of food handy just in case the fairy folk needed it. If you have a surfeit of food and a festival coinciding... well, it’s obvious what happens... let’s PARTY!

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The Little People!

Once the Celts believed that the people who had inhabited Britain since time immemorial were the "little people". These little people knew all about herbs and poisons in a way that their enemies did not, and they could vanish into the landscape without a trace. So it’s not surprising that the Celts came to believe that the little people had other magical power. They also thought that Samhain and midsummer nights were big nights for the little people.

People believed in the existence of the little people long after the Romans left Britain, and even today there are some that believe they still exist. Many of the enchanted folk from fairy tails stem from these little people, including such favourites as fairies and goblins.

The Romans, who conquered the Celts, adopted some of the traditions of the Celtic folk-lore, including the belief in the little people. They thought that not all these mysterious folk were hostile, but that they had the power to frighten them!

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A Feast of Apples!

The apple is the most important of all fruits and plants at Halloween. This is not just because of all the games people play with them. Apples were once thought to be a link between men and the gods...

The Romans combined two of their festivals with the Celtic Samhain. "Ferelia" honoured the dead in late October, while "Pamona" honoured the goddess of trees and fruit. Apples are plentiful in October and this along with the combining of festivals may well be the reason why apples, more than any other fruit are connected with Halloween. Halloween also ties in with the Druid land of Avalon. Click here for more about Halloween apple games.

The druids believed in an Apple land called Avalon, which was where the immortals lived. Immortal souls had to pass through water to get there.

Our link with that fabled past is not so romantic - ducking in water for apples at Halloween. Not that you always have to bob for apples. Some Cornish apples are reputed to bring you good luck just by eating them. In St. Ives, Halloween was apparently called Allan Day, with "fairy" apples for sale in a special market. By putting an apple under your pillow, you could dream a wish and eat the apple in the morning. Anyone wishing to live more dangerously can play the game of eating an apple whilst balancing on a plank of wood, on which there is also a lighted candle (Do not try this at home!)

Yet another use of the fruit was in apple peeling. To play it first peel your apple, making sure the peel comes off in one piece. Then you throw your peel over your right shoulder. Look down at the peel and see what letter shape it has made on the ground, and you will know the initial of your future love! In another apple ceremony, the performer brushes or combs his or her hair in front of a mirror at midnight, whilst eating an apple. Soon the form of the performer’s future husband or wife should show in the mirror.

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Fire!

All over the world there were and still are Fire Festivals and, as we have seen, Halloween is one of them. And Halloween fires mean far more than ordinary bonfires! At the onset of winter the fires not only were for warmth, light and protection from animals. They had other mythical meanings...

Many accounts of Halloween rituals describe a rite where every fire in the area was meant to be put out and lit again later from the sacred or blessed fire. Then and only then could all be sure of a safe future. As late as the nineteenth century, farmers would walk with their families around their fields holding torches. These they had lit from these special fires. As long as they did this, so they believed, their crops would grow and their cattle produce calves.

Naturally, another reason for bonfires at Halloween was for clearing up autumnal vegetation. The ash from these fires would bless the land. Once we had more understanding of the science behind these rituals we see that ash can be good for the land - indeed the ritual does improve the chance of a good crop. Many people believed that light would also help souls in purgatory. Purgatory is the place where the Roman Catholic Church says that the dead are forced to stay until their souls are purged of their sins prior to them entering heaven. A quick search on Google brings up listings of purgatory fields and a farm in Lancashire is called Purgatory, presumably named after this belief, and there are other "purgatory fields" in northern England to this day.

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