Once the heated haze of summer fades away and October rolls in like a gilded fog, New England takes on an otherworldly nature. Known for the most vibrant and abundant autumn foliage in the world, crimson-lake cranberry harvests, quaint villages with fall festooned houses and shops, plentiful pumpkin patches and family-packed autumn festivals, and both fresh and hard apple cider enough to fill everyone’s mug all season long, New England is perhaps the most poignant, stunning, and enjoyable place in the world to celebrate autumn. In addition to being the highest set standard for all things autumn, New England also offers a deeply rooted connection to the very bones of Halloween and its history.
To brush off Halloween as mostly modern, consumerism-based, or evil is not only short sighted, it’s dead wrong. Our modern-day Halloween celebrations and traditions are a patchwork strewn together across cultures, theologies, centuries, and legends. If you want to understand the basis of how we got to the point of trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins, you must spirit yourself away to ancient Ireland.
The origins of Halloween are rooted in the ancient Irish festival known as Samhain – pronounced ‘sah-win’ in Irish language. Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter in Ireland. The day after, Nov. 1, marked the Celtic new year.
Like other ancient Irish festivals, Samhain was seen to be a liminal time -a time when the boundaries separating the spiritual and real world blurred and weakened. Thus, Halloween has become associated with appearance of spirits, fairies and ghosts from the mythical ‘Otherworld’. When the realms of the living and the dead mixed, Celts used the opportunity to honor and worship their ancestors. People set an extra place at the table for supper that their family and friends beyond would feel welcome and join them in spirit. They left lit candles in the windows as a gesture to light the way home for their loved ones.
Many, however, were also concerned about the darker and evil spirits using this night of blurred realms to trouble and influence those in the real world or to keep deceased loved ones from visiting their homes. Various precautions were taken by the living to ensure that as little mischief as possible took place to allow pleasant visits for and from their deceased loved ones and ancestors. The Irish Celts often went so far as to make striking masks and costumes and would dress their children as demons to confuse or scare the evil spirits in to thinking they had met their match and best be off. They also marked their doors with cattle blood from the harvest to deter unwanted visitors and protect all the living and dead who crossed the threshold.
Another important Samhain tradition was the lighting of bonfires. Irish Samhain bonfires, or tine cnámh (pronounced “cheen-ah kin-awe-vh” and literally meaning ‘bone fire’), were lit for both spiritual and practical reasons. In ancient Ireland cattle were used as currency. The highest-ranking Irish Rí (king) was also the person in the area with the most cattle. Samhain was the traditional time to slaughter excess or weak cattle. It was also the time set aside for preparing stores of meat and grain to support the people through the harsh winter.
Bonfires were a central part of the festivities at Samhain for every village and everyone attended. A communal blaze was used by villagers to cast the bones of slaughtered cattle upon the flames of a roaring fire. This was thought to cleanse the land and set forth the good fortune of health and harvest for the coming new year. Once the central Samhain bonfire was lit and fully ablaze, villagers extinguished their own fires in their homes. Then, after song, dance, and incantations, each family took a light from the common bone fire to rekindle the fire in their own hearth. This tradition was a reminder of the importance of community and charity during the time of year when it was hardest to exist, and symbolic for the new light of their new year beginning in the morning. Though not many of us continue to light bonfires on Oct.31, there are plenty of chimneys here in the countryside that start smoking around the end of October and anyone with a knowledge of tine cnámh is likely to see the faint similarity.
More common Halloween traditions we keep today are also harvested from the past and have been given new roles and function in modern day society. Bobbing for apples, for example, is derived from the Roman festival of Feralia that was traditionally celebrated in late October. It was a day to commemorate the souls and spirits of the dead, and was one of the first festivals to be combined with the Celtic festival of Samhain.
Another ancient festival was the Day of Pomona -the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol that represented this goddess was an apple. As the Roman Empire spread and its influence traveled north to Ireland, the lore and celebration of the apple found preplaced common acceptance and revering as Irish society already believed apples to be a sacred fruit from the Tuath Dé Danann (the Gods believed to have founded Ireland). Samhain festivals began to include bobbing for apples, and apple peeling divination where young, unmarried girls would peel an apple and the shape of the peel that fell to the ground could indicate the name or position/trade of their future husband.
Here in New England, we continue to integrate the humble apple into our autumn festivities through harvesting at local orchards, pressing our infamous apple ciders and fermenting apple jack, and baking, cooking, and preserving with apples. Some of the best Halloween parties around are highlighted with competitive apple-bobbing rounds between cider-buzzed adults or groups of sugar-spiked children with wet faces and giggles while trying to catch such a large fruit in tiny teeth. The apple, however, is certainly not the mainstay edible symbol of Halloween. That honor goes to the beloved pumpkin.
To understand how the inimitable, often orange member of the Cucurbitaceae family rose to the ranks of the ultimate symbol of autumn and Halloween, you first need to look back at turnips. Yes, turnips! Pumpkins are indigenous to North America -specifically Mexico, therefore the ancient Irish had never seen them.
During the harvest, there were often a few root vegetables to spare. As the harvest season coincided with Samhain, root vegetables, often turnips, were used as vessels to set small candles in to keep the flames from being extinguished easily by the wild Irish wind. These turnip lights were set on windowsills or carried by children from hut to hut while wearing demon-scaring costumes and “souling” or singing songs of good fortune and praise at the door to spread good luck and in turn be gifted with a “Soul Cake”. Children in costumes traveling about the community after dark and receiving treats… It sounds a bit familiar, yes? Another use for turnips and other root vegetables was to carve faces in -again to scare away evil or mischievous intruders from the Otherworld via menacing illuminated expressions meant to shock a wayward soul back to the hills where the Otherworld portals were said to be -thus the expression “running for the hills”.
One infamous tale of turnips and turmoil was the legend of Jack-of-the-Lantern. Stingy Jack, a troublesome Irish drunk, was said to have encountered the devil as he lay dying on Samhain in an intoxicated stupor. He was, however, as clever as he was inumbrated by his addiction, and he was able to trick the devil three separate times from taking his soul to Hell. Once Jack did finally pass away because of his reckless lifestyle, his soul was rejected at the gates of Heaven, but he had also outwitted the devil enough to burn that bridge as well. The devil gave Stingy Jack a small ember from the pits of Hell and sent him away to eternally wander the realm of the living -neither entirely dead or alive, using a carved turnip to hold his ember of Hell to light the way while aimlessly roaming the Irish countryside -thus becoming Jack-of-the-Lantern.
It is thought by modern historians and scientists that this legend was perhaps perpetuated by the increased phenomenon of “Will O the Wisps” or Peat Bog Flames that occur when methane gas is released from organic matter decaying in bogs. The late autumn weather and temperature led to an increase in these mysterious floating flames suddenly igniting and hovering over Ireland’s many peat bogs -thus providing a scapegoat scenario for the ancient Irish to explain a natural occurrence they did not understand.
During the Great Irish Famine when hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants desperately sought basic survival and dignity as they arrived on the East Coast, their traditions arrived with them and spilled out beautifully into our society. Instead of turnips and parsnips and other hard crops, they were confronted with the North American pumpkin and immediately and collectively saw it as the new ideal vessel for their carving and illumination traditions on Samhain. Today, New England carries on the revering of all things pumpkin and squash in both the most humble and ostentatious ways. From the countless local pumpkin patches dotting the New England countryside to the overwhelming splendor of the Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular at Roger Williams Zoo in Rhode Island, ancient meets modern in the most endearing and magical way all autumn long.
As ancient traditions met resistance and rejection from spreading Christianity in Europe, people found ways to keep the basis of their beloved practices by merging them with their newly either accepted or imposed beliefs. At the behest of Pope Gregory VI, ‘All Hallows’ Day’ was assigned to the date of Nov. 1 – the first day of the Celtic new year. The Pope, nevertheless, renamed the event ‘All Saints’ Day’, making it a formal and rule-regulated religious service in honor of only Christian Saints instead of the previous humble celebration by local communities to honor loved ones and celebrate the harvest.
‘All Saints’ Day’ and ‘All Hallows’ Day’ were used interchangeably by the Catholic Church throughout history. The evening before these dates was then called ‘Hallowe’en’ – a contraction of ‘Hallows’ Evening’. In the last century however, the holiday has been largely taken back to its ancient roots and traditions and is now simply referred to as Halloween. Through centuries of dogmatic hushing of superstitions and traditions, and spanning the distance of the Atlantic, modern-day Halloween is both what we make it and what it was made to be in the beginning.
Halloween in New England, specifically, has filled the role of a “Halloween Hub” for the world partially because of the high concentration of Irish heritage here, but also because the landscape is perfectly suited and destined to feature all things mysterious, beautiful, and community based. The oft moody skies contrasting lush, jewel-colored foliage, historic stone walls lined with bright pumpkins, village gazebos in the center of town flanked by bunched up corn stalks, and historic cities and towns with enough ghost stories to start ghost tour businesses, New England wears autumn more perfectly and effortlessly than any other season.
Though we no longer gather at the center of town for a tine cnámh, we do gather in parking lots to trunk-or-treat and at the farmstand down the road to pick or purchase the same Roman revered orbs prized centuries ago. We may not send our children to sing songs of faith from door to door in masks, but we do rely on our neighbors to put aside their worldly cares for an evening to indulge in needed frivolity. Society-weary adults depend on each other to greet our costume-clad kiddies with genuine smiles and handfuls of candy once the expected childhood incantation, “Trick-or-Treat!” is sung out in a tradition so adorable that it is sacred in its own right. Adults need Halloween as much as children -be it to dance or feast the night away with friends in disguise or attend a haunted house where the biggest threat is not world news and bills, but screeching out from a good ole jump scare.
Halloween is a much-needed respite for all ages to cast aside burdens for one night, become something fantastical, and believe in magic -even for just a moment or two. Perhaps the real spell cast by Halloween is the alchemical child of modern-day people still relating to the needs and dreams, fears and longings, of people long ago. The spirit of ancient Ireland’s Samhain is haunting all of us here in New England in the best and most enjoyable way. Happy Halloween and a Blessed Samhain to all~