Samhain or Halloween: A Night to Honor the Dead

By Rosemary Ellen Guiley
Copyright Visionary Living, Inc.

Every year on October 31, a window opens between the world of the living and the world of the dead.  Communication between the two realms is easier, magic is in the air, and spirits slip into the land of the living.  It’s Halloween, a night of mystery, fright, disguises, tricks and treats.

Halloween, or All Hallow’s Eve, may seem like a night for parties and pranks, but it has ancient and solemn roots.  Originally, Halloween was a festival of the dead, a time for honoring the deceased, praying for lost souls and placating the deities who rule the afterlife.  Many of the things we do on Halloween night are remnants of practices our ancestors did many centuries ago.

Celtic origins
Festivals of the dead are observed around the world at varying times of the year.  Our Halloween descended from Celtic, Roman and Greek observances that were absorbed into the Christian Church.

The ancient Celts celebrated the new year at the start of winter, around November 1.  This most sacred of all Celtic festivals was called Samhain (pronounced sow’ en), which means “end of the summer.”  The festival was dedicated to the Lord of the Dead.  The Celts believed that on the eve of Samhain, the dead rose up out of their graves to wander freely about the earth and make trouble by harming crops and causing domestic disturbances.  During the darkest hours of the eve night, the Lord of the Dead also was believed to call up all the lost souls for resentencing.  Wayward souls were sentenced to spend twelve months in the afterlife in an animal form, while good souls received another twelve months of death, albeit in the form of human beings.  Living persons held a “Samhain Vigil” during these dark hours to pray for the lost souls.

No one wanted to be troubled by spirits.  It was customary for the Celts to make offerings of food and wine to the Lord of the Dead, so that he would be more agreeable in his sentencing of the lost souls.  Offerings also were set out for the returning dead themselves, so that they could refresh themselves and perhaps be less inclined to cause mischief.  The Celts dressed in disguises so as to fool the spirits into passing them by.  Masked villagers led parades in an effort to entice spirits out of town.

The Druids, the priestly caste of the Celts, performed various divination rites to learn the future of the village and to cure illness. All fires except those of the Druids were extinguished on Samhain, and householders relit their home fires from the sacred fires.  Bonfires paid tribute to the waning sun god and rekindled his diminishing energy in the face of winter.

Roman and Greek influences
The Romans celebrated several other festivals that influenced the evolution of Halloween. At the same time of year that the Celts celebrated Samhain, the Romans held the festival of Pomona, the goddess of orchards and the harvest.  Apples and nuts were among the special foods used, and these retained a place in surviving Halloween festivities.

Another festival, Paternalia, observed in February at the end of the Roman year, was a private affair in which families honored their own dead with gifts, food and flowers placed on their tombs.  Paternalia was followed by the Feralia, a public festival to give peace and rest to the dead.

The most significant Roman festival to influence Halloween was Lemuria, a three-day affair that took place in May.  Its purpose was to appease the lemures, who were either evil ghosts or the ghosts of people who died without a surviving family.   The festival took place on the ninth, eleventh and fifteenth of May, which made the entire month unlucky for all sorts of activities, especially marriages.

During Lemuria, businesses and temples were closed, and people observed rituals for the dead.  On the third and final day, the merchants held a festival intended to resume normal activities and help business prosper.  Images made of rushes were cast into the Tiber River.

The most important ritual of Lemuria was performed during the last night by heads of households to protect their homes against ghosts.  In the middle of the night, each participant washed his hands three times, placed black beans in his mouth, and walked barefoot through the house tossing other black beans over his shoulder while calling out, “With these beans I do redeem me and mine.”  The incantation was repeated nine times without looking backward.  Supposedly, any ghosts present would follow along, pick up the beans and then leave until Lemuria the following year.  While walking, the man also kept one hand in the sign of the horns — the thumb crossed over the two middle fingers and the index and little fingers extended — which protected him against any ghosts he might unexpectedly encounter.  To close the ritual, he washed his hands again, and then banged brass cymbals while urging all uninvited spirits to depart the premises.

Many of the customs of Lemuria were borrowed from a similar festival held by the Greeks for three days in February or early March. Temples and businesses were closed.  Residents were careful to avoid contact with ghosts by smearing their doors with pitch and chewing whitehorn, a type of hawthorn used in folk remedies to lower blood pressure and the heart rate, and also considered an effective protection against vampires.  On the final day, sacrifices were made to Hermes, the wing-footed messenger god who escorted the souls of the dead to Hades, and ghosts were invited to leave.

Christian changes
When the Christian Church began converting followers of pagan religions, church leaders astutely saw that they would have an easier time if they incorporated existing holy days and rites into their own.  Worship of pagan deities was transformed into veneration of the Christian saints.

Samhain became assimilated into All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day in the Christian calendar of holy days.  All Saints’ Day was initiated on May 13, 610 by Pope Boniface IV when he dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to St. Mary and martyred Christians.  About a century later, Pope Gregory III re-established the festival to honor the saints of St. Peter’s Church, and moved the date to November 1 to coincide with Samhain and other pagan festivals.  In 834, Pope Gregory IV made the festival universal through the Church.

The Church eschewed the customary animal sacrifices in favor of honoring the dead with prayers.  Food and wine offerings were replaced with soul cakes, little square buns decorated with currants.  The cakes were given away to the village poor, who in turn would pray for the dead.  “Soulers” would walk about begging for cakes.  People who feared the spirits of the dead–or feared for them–were encouraged to give generously.  Over time, the practice degenerated into a popular practice for young men and boys, who went from home to home singing “souling songs” in exchange for ale and food.  Today we have trick-or-treating by youngsters.

The Church also allowed masquerading, but emphasized that it was to honor dead saints and not to frighten off spirits.

By the tenth century, November 2 was being observed by as All Souls’ Day, the feast day for the dead.  The holiday was approved by Pope Sylvester II around 1000, and became established throughout Europe from the eleventh through fourteenth centuries.

In 1517, Martin Luther deliberately picked October 31 as the day to nail his reformation proclamation to  the door of the castle church at Wittenberg, because he knew that the townspeople would be attending services that night.  The Protestant movement dropped the observances of saints’ days, and with that went the rites performed on the eve of All Saints’ Day as well.

Nonetheless, the custom was not about to die.  It continued on in pockets, especially in strong Celtic areas such as the British Isles, chiefly as folk rites, with feasts, fires, games and pranks.  As time went on the ranks of the dead were joined by the fairies, goblins and other spirits of local lore, who were said to come out in force on this particular night. Particularly fearsome was the Wild Hunt, a pack of ghosts of the restless dead led by spectral hounds and pagan goddesses or witches, said to scream through the sky on All Hallow’s Eve night.

In England, Guy Fawkes Day, celebrated on November 5, became the big festival that absorbed the primary characteristics of Samhain and All Saints’ Day. Guy Fawkes was a Catholic Revolutionary who was executed for his attempt to blow up the Protestant-sympathetic House of Lords on November 5, 1605.  Halloween gets small attention in contemporary England — all the action of  feasting, fireworks, games and bonfires takes place on Guy Fawkes Day instead.

Halloween comes to America
In America, Halloween celebrations were scattered during Colonial times.  Practices varied widely depending upon the dominance of a particular ethnic or religious group.  Areas heavily settled by the English–such as Massachusetts, a stronghold of English Calvinists–paid scant attention to Halloween, while areas predominated by Scots or Irish gave Halloween more due.

In the 1820s and 1840s, the potato famines drove thousands of poverty-stricken Irish to America.  With them came their rich folklore that added to Halloween.  Hearth fires replaced the Celtic bonfires, parlor divination games replaced the Druid oracle rites, harvest feasts replaced the feasts for the dead, and young people played tricks on neighbors. The customs of wearing masked costumes and begging for food also continued.  Play parties, also part of the annual harvest rites, included games, dancing and the telling of ghost stories.

The Irish had a Halloween custom of carrying lanterns made out of hollowed out turnips or beets, called jack-o’-lanterns or jacky lanterns, which were used to scare away spirits in the night.  Immigrants to America substituted pumpkins.

According to folklore, the jack-o’-lantern got its name from a ne’er-do-well man named Jack, who had a run-in with the Devil.  Jack thwarted the Devil several times from claiming his soul, but the Devil had the last laugh.  When Jack died, he could not get into heaven because of his mean ways in life.  He went to the gates of hell, but the Devil wouldn’t let him in, either.  Instead, the Devil tossed out a piece of coal to help Jack find his way in the dark.  Jack put the coal in a turnip, and the lantern serves as his light in his eternal wanderings about the earth.

Halloween customs followed immigrants as they migrated across America.  In the West and Southwest, the customs were influenced by the Mexican Day of the Dead rites observed at the same time of year.  During Victorian times in America, Halloween enjoyed a renaissance as a genteel party.  The pagan customs had a particular appeal to Victorian society, which watered them down to prim social rites.  Halloween became a festive night for young people, and played an important matchmaking role.  Pageants with costumes and fortune-telling games to see one’s future spouse were especially popular.

Modern Halloween/Samhain
During the early years of the twentieth century, Halloween in America was largely a community affair, a time for large social gatherings.  The festival was subdued or cancelled during World War II, and emerged in the post-war, baby-boom years as the Big Event for youngsters.  Door-to-door trick-or-treating for candy was favored over community parties.

Today Halloween is popularly observed by people of all ages with parties or trick-or-treating.  For Wiccans and Pagans Halloween is known by its old Celtic name, Samhain, and is part of the Wheel of the Year seasonal and sacred holidays.  Samhain is a time for honoring the dead and welcoming in the Celtic New Year, and is celebrated with fire rituals, gift-giving, feasting, and rituals for the dead.

A new perspective
Whatever Halloween means to you, remember your links to an ancient past the next time you don your costume.  Halloween is one of our oldest customs, bridging us to our ancestral heritage as well as to the world beyond.  In addition to making merry, try something new: give small gifts to family and friends and light a candle for those who’ve passed on.  You’ll touch the true spirit of a fascinating holiday.

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Rosemary Ellen Guiley is the author of The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits and The Encyclopedia of Witches, Witchcraft and Wicca, published by Facts On File, and other books on the paranormal and mystical.  Her website is www.visionaryliving.com.