This episode focuses on the brief history of Halloween. It’s time for goblins and pumpkins – but how did all this stuff get started?
Book recommendation:
Medieval Celebrations: How to Plan Holidays, Weddings, and Feasts with Recipes, Customs, Costumes, Decorations, Songs, Dances, and Games by Daniel Diehl & Mark P. Donnelly
Suggested links:
Episode 033: Renaissance Ghosts
Episode 34: Witches and Witchcraft
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]
A brief history of Halloween transcript:
Hello, and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast. I’m your host, Heather Teysko. Fall has come and I’m spending my Sundays watching football. Stores have all the Halloween decorations out, which has me thinking a lot about the history of our current trick-or-treating traditions and how they celebrated this festival during the Renaissance.
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celts who lived 2000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and Northern France celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marks the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter. A time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred.
On the night of October 31st, they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to the earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the druids or Celtic priests to make predictions about the future. For people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were very important during the long dark winter to give them comfort and direction.
On October 31st, after the crops were all harvested, and put into storage for the winter ahead, the cooking fires in the homes would be extinguished. The druids, the priests would meet on the hilltop in the dark oak forest. Oak trees for their size and strength, and mistletoe for the remaining green in the winter, and having berries in the cold were considered sacred. The druids would light new fires and offer sacrifices of crops and animals to thank the gods for the harvest and appease the gods for the long coming winter.
The morning after, the druid priests would give out a hot ember from the fires to each family, who would then take them home to start new cooking fires. The fireplace and the fire were a big deal as they kept the homes warm and free from evil spirits all during the dark winter.
By AD 43, the Romans had invaded and we’re ruling parts of England. Some historians believe that the Romans added a few of their own traditions to the celebration of Samhain, such as celebrating the end of the harvest and honoring the dead. Others say that since the Romans never fully conquered the Celts, Ireland, and Scotland, there was no mingling of cultures, and that the Celts celebrated the end of the harvest and honor their dead in this way anyway.
All Saints Day originally fell on May 13. In 601 AD, Pope Gregory I issued an edict to his missionaries regarding the beliefs and customs of the people that they wanted to convert. Rather than try to banish native people’s customs and beliefs, the Pope had their missionaries try to incorporate them. If a group of people worshipped a tree, rather than cut it down, he told them to consecrate it to Christ and allow its continued worship.
By the 800’s the influence of Christianity had spread to the Celtic lands. In the 7th century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 “All Saints’ Day” – a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the Pope was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related but church-sanctioned holiday.
The Catholic Church had this long-standing policy of incorporating the non-Christian traditions into their holidays. The celebration was also called All Hallows’ or All Hallowmas. Hallow is another word for holy, as in “Hallowed be thy name” in the Lord’s Prayer. And the night before it, the night of Samhain began to be called All Hallows’ Eve, and eventually Halloween.
Even later in at 8100, the church would make November 2, All Souls’ Day – a day to honor the dead, not just the saints. It was celebrated similarly to Samhain with big bonfires and parades, and dressing up in costumes of saints, angels and devils.
Together, the three celebrations, the Eve of All Saints’, All Saints, and All Souls’ were all called Hallowmas. Whether it was the Celtic New Year or not, Samhain was the beginning of the winter or dark half of the year, the day before Samhain is the last day of summer or the old year. The day after is the first day of winter or the New Year.
Being between seasons or years Samhain was considered a very magical time, when the dead walk amongst the living, and the veils between the past, present and future are lifted in prophecy and divination. People gathered to sacrifice animals, fruits, and vegetables. They also lit bonfires in honor of the dead, to help them on their journey to the other world, and to keep them away from the living.
On that day, all manner of beings were afoot – ghosts, fairies, and demons. Many of the activities of the Samhain festival were related to these beliefs, and many of the practices evolved into modern-day Halloween traditions.
It was on Halloween in 1517 that Martin Luther began to try to reform the Catholic Church by nailing up his 95 Theses. It ended in the formation of the Protestant Church, which of course didn’t believe in saints in the Roman Catholic sense of specific individuals. For most of the 16th century, England was officially very confused about its religion, waffling between Catholic and Protestant. Both with each new wife of Henry VIII’s, and then when each of his children took the throne.
His daughter Mary was a strong Catholic who tried to pull England back away from the Reformation. But after she died, and Elizabeth I took the throne, England was once again Protestant. Most people would have had a really hard time keeping up with all of these changes and probably didn’t care that much.
Given that Halloween was a secular, as well as a religious holiday, the average person would have celebrated as they always had. At least until close to the end of the 16th century, when it became clear after nearly 40 years of Protestant rule, that England was a Protestant nation. Without saints, there would be no All Hallows’ Eve, and no Halloween, and no partying.
So in England, when a conspiracy to blow up the parliament and King James I in 1605 was discovered, this became a convenient way to solve two issues at once. The celebrations that people were accustomed to, just move to November 5 and became Guy Fawkes Day. So although technically, the celebration was to commemorate the failure of the plot, nevertheless, it was Halloween just a few days later.
Bonfires were lit across the country, and people made lanterns from carved-out turnips, and children went begging. Realizing that it could not completely get rid of all the supernatural aspects of the celebrations, the Catholic Church began characterizing the spirits as evil forces associated with the devil. And this is where much of the more malevolent Halloween imagery such as evil witches and demons come from.
In the Celtic times, and up until the Middle Ages, fairies were also thought to run free on the eve of Samhain. Fairies weren’t necessarily evil, but they weren’t particularly good. They were mischievous. They liked rewarding good deeds, and did not like to be crossed. On Samhain, fairies were thought to disguise themselves as beggars and go door-to-door asking for handouts. Those who gave them food were rewarded. Those who did not were subjected to unpleasantness.
In medieval times, one popular All Souls’ Day practice was to make soul cakes, a simple bread dessert with a current topping. In a custom called “souling”, children would go door-to-door begging for cakes, much like modern day trick-or-treaters. For every cake a child collected, he or she would have to say a prayer for the dead relatives of the person who gave the cake. These prayers would help the relatives find their way out of purgatory and in to heaven.
The children even sang a soul cake song, along the lines of the modern “Trick or Treat? Trick or Treat? Give me something good to eat.” As part of the Samhain celebration, Celts would bring home an ember from the communal bonfire at the end of the night. They carried these embers in hollowed-out turnips, creating a lantern resembling the modern day jack-o’-lantern.
This carried on in Ireland and Scotland through the 18th century. A very popular character in Irish folk tales was Stingy Jack, a famous cheapskate who on several occasions avoided losing his soul to the devil by tricking him often on All Hallows’ Eve. In one story, he convinced Satan to climb up a tree for some apples, and then cut crosses all around the trunk so that the devil can’t climb down. The devil promised to leave jack alone forever if he would only let him out of the tree.
When jack eventually died, he was turned away from heaven due to his life of sin. But in keeping with their agreement, the devil wouldn’t take Jack either. He was cursed to travel forever as a spirit in limbo. As Jack left the gates of hell, the devil threw him a hot ember to light his way in the dark. Jack placed the ember in a hollowed-out turnip and wandered off into the world. According to the Irish legend, you might see Jack’s spirit on All Hallows’ Eve, still carrying his turnip lantern through the darkness.
Traditional jack-o’-lanterns were the hollowed-out turnips with the candles inside and became a very popular Halloween decoration in Ireland and Scotland. Irish families who immigrated to America brought the tradition with them. But they replaced the turnips with more plentiful pumpkins. And as it turns out, pumpkins are easier to carve than turnips are. So people began to cut frightening faces and other elaborate designs into their jack-o’-lanterns.
That’s it for this week, except for the book recommendation, which is Medieval Celebrations: How to Plan for Holidays, Weddings, and Feast with Recipes, Customs, Costumes, Decorations, Songs, Dances and Games by Daniel Diehl and Mark Donnelly. It is essentially a how-to guide for putting on medieval celebrations, including all the things mentioned above. Costumes, decorations, songs, and dances. And I’ll put a link to purchase it up on the blog.
You can also visit the blog and send me comments, story ideas, or other general thoughts. The address is Englandcast.com. Thank you so much for listening, and I promise I won’t let it go for so long until another episode. Have a wonderful Halloween!
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]