A few weeks ago, I wrote that I planned on doing a post about the origins of Halloween. I’m particularly interested in what Halloween “means,” or, why it’s still something we celebrate – its cultural purpose, as opposed to “because the Costume Industrial Complex tells us to.”
The good ol’ History Channel is a font of information – check out http://www.history.com/content/halloween for more than you ever wanted to know about everything Halloween.
In a nutshell, Halloween has its roots in the ancient Celtic new year’s observance Samhain, which marked the end of happy summer and yummy harvest, and the beginning of the many months my ancestors would spend holed up in their peat moss huts with their own livestock. The Celts’ belief system taught them that Samhain was a time where the line between the worlds between the living and the dead was thinner than normal, so it would be easier to tap into the spirit consciousness and predict the future. They would use flames from the ritual bonfires to light each home’s hearth, a fire that would kindle all winter long.
From a sociological perspective, that’s some deep stuff, even if you don’t buy into pagan beliefs. Northern Europe was not a happy place to be in the Hundreds A.D., and the Celts’ religion was as much an attempt to understand their world as any religion is. Ancient people had no way of understanding disease or weather; transportation and communication, particularly in what’s now Great Britain, was damn near impossible during the winter. One can see how a religious observance based on figuring out death and the future would appeal to them.
Native Americans also had late-fall celebrations (I KNOW you didn’t think the Pilgrims came up with that…), but it’s hard to find information about them online without turning up 50 thousand Slutty Pocahontas costumes.
When the Romans reached what’s now Britain, they brought their own beliefs, which also included late-fall celebrations: “The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.”
The Christians who came next also celebrated what we call Halloween (take that, stupid church in Canton). Pope Boniface IV designated Nov. 1 All Saint’s Day, a time for honoring the church’s martyrs and saints. Says the History Channel: “Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints', All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.”
But, even today, the juxtaposition seems a little funny. Christianity teaches its believers that they have everlasting life in God; other religions also preach communion with God upon death. My Moravian ancestors, like most 18th Century pietists, didn’t do Hallowmas (or Christmas there for awhile, but that’s another post). Despite Old Salem’s belated cashing-in on its spooky legends, the people who lived there didn’t believe in ghosts.
Halloween in America really emerged as a phenomenon in the mid-19th Century (as did Christmas, coincidentally). Harvest festivals – sorry, Protestants, we’re not giving up on those – merged with the Samhain traditions carried over by Irish and Scottish immigrants, turning into the secular, community festivals that we know today.
So why do we still fool with all this? The easy answer – hey, any excuse to party – is surely a piece of it, and always has been. Are the Slutty Fill-in-the-Blank costumes of today the descendents of the 19th Century girls who played at conjuring their future husbands by carving apples and pumpkins or looking backwards into mirrors? Maybe.
But I think it’s more than that. There must have been something elemental about Samhain. Even thousands of years later, with cell phones and Internets and tweets, we still haven’t shaken this primitive need to look death in the face and shake it off. Sure, it’s counter to the Christian idea that faith should be comfort enough. But, as I think God would be the first to understand, we’re human. And as long as humanity is finite and fragile, we will be drawn to events like Halloween that dare us to confront our mortality.
No comments:
Post a Comment