Halloween

Halloween, celebrated on October 31, originally marked the beginning of the dark half of the year. Once tied to seasonal shifts and pastoral cycles in northwestern Europe, Halloween has always been seen as a portal for the spirit world. The imagery of Halloween is often the imagery of death—skeletons, corpses, ghosts—and Halloween's association with death and the spirit world can be seen in its Celtic mythological origins, its incarnation as a medieval church holiday, and its rendering in modern popular culture.

November 1 was once called Samhain, or summer's end, and marked the beginning of winter in the British Isles and Scandinavia. Samhain was first noted in Irish mythological sagas recorded by medieval monks as a time when demons were released, great kings slain, and sacrifices made. Fairy mounds opened to reveal the otherworld, and it was on Samhain that a magical fog lifted to reveal the dead. In 17th-and 18th-century Ireland, men returned from work abroad to spend the winter with their families on Samhain. The dead were so much a part of the Irish family that they would have been included in any reunion. People left out food and drink for them or kept an empty chair near the fire.

A series of medieval papal edicts instituted a church feast day to honor all saints that was eventually set on November 1 by Pope Gregory IV in 835. All Saints was known as All Hallows in Britain (Hallow meaning holy or one who is holy) and the evening before, as All Hallow's Eve, or Hallowe'en. Although Halloween owes its name to All Saints, it owes its association with death and the spirit world to the November 2 feast of All Souls.

Conceived around 1000 C.E. in the French monastery of Cluny and then set on November 2 by Peter Damian in 1063, the feast of All Souls was a time to pray for friends and family who had died. At the end of the 12th century, church liturgists emphasized the pairing of All Saints and All Souls feasts, sometimes called Hallowtide, to underscore how the living could hasten the journey of souls through purgatory. Saints, they taught, could intercede on behalf of the dead, and prayers or contributions could shorten a loved one's stay in purgatory. People came to believe that if this was true, then souls in purgatory could also return to haunt the living.

All Hallows was considered both a religious and an otherworldly time. Church bells rang throughout Western Europe to remember the dead. Italians in Naples opened charnel houses and dressed cadavers in robes for display. Halloween “guisers” (people dressed in monstrous costumes to resemble the dead) made a ruckus at court in 16th-century England, and in the countryside, bonfires blazed to ward off spirits. Some also carved turnips—representing souls trapped in purgatory—and went “souling” door-to-door or begged for small breads called “soul cakes” in return for prayers. The custom was common enough in Shakespeare's day that his character Speed (Two Gentlemen of Verona, first performed 1594–1595) [Page 550]derides his love-struck master for “puling [whining] like a beggar at Hallowmas.”

...