For a while, I believed with all certainty that Halloween was the only holiday on the calendar that was actually pagan, or at least, the only holiday on the typical American festival calendar upon which pagan influence could still be felt. Christmas doesn’t have as much paganism in it as people think, and Easter has almost no paganism in it at all, but Halloween is definitely pagan… right? Well, this isn’t my first rodeo, and at this point I know enough to be very skeptical of my earlier assumptions about the holiday. I’m calling it right now: It’s very likely that there’s nothing pagan about the modern Halloween at all. But it’s worth tracing the origins of the holiday and its traditions, just to be sure.
Samhain in Irish and Scottish Literature
It’s well-known that Halloween is based off of the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. Samhain was a real festival, and is better-attested than some of the other ones on the Wheel of the Year. The problem is, of course, the same problem that we always run into whenever we try to learn anything about the ancient Celts — most of the sources we have were recorded by medieval Christians. That means it’s very difficult to tell how many of the ideas associated with Samhain are authentically pre-Christian, and how many arose after Christianization.
Samhain is attested multiple times throughout Irish mythology, which was recorded by Christian monks throughout the Middle Ages and into the early modern period. Most of the surviving manuscripts that mention Samhain date to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, but are based on older material that dates as far back as the ninth or tenth century. The oldest source that mentions Samhain is the same as one of the earliest mentions of Bealtaine, Tochmarc Emire:
‘Bend Suain, son of Rosc Mele, which she said this is the same thing, viz., that I shall fight without harm to myself from Samuin, i.e., the end of summer. For two divisions were formerly on the year, viz., summer from Beltaine (the first of May), and winter from Samuin to Beltaine.
This tells us that Samhain is on the opposite side of the year from Bealtaine and that it marks the beginning of winter. That would put it roughly in the spot where Halloween is now. It doesn’t tell us anything else, though — nothing about spirits of the dead, nothing about associated rituals or practices, nothing about what the actual festival of Samhain consists of. It’s also notable that Samhain is not called the beginning of the year. It’s one of the corner days of the year, and an important turning point, but it’s not necessarily the point at which the year starts and ends. According to Ronald Hutton in Stations of the Sun, this idea was propagated by two nineteenth-century scholars, John Rhys and…
*guitar chord, my fingers clamp on my pistol, a lone tumbleweed blows past* …James Frazer.
In Táin Bó Cúailnge and Cath Maige Tuired, both big epic battles begin on Samhain. Táin Bó Cúailnge mainly mentions Samhain as a measure of time, i.e. “From the Monday after Samain until the Wednesday after the festival of Spring [Bealtaine?] Cú Chulainn had not slept.” Cath Maige Tuired tells the story of the battle between the Tuatha Dé Danann, the gods, and the Fomorians (some kind of antagonistic force, possibly “demons” or monsters but also possibly another race of gods, sort of similar to the Titans or the jotnar). The armies assemble on Halloween:
So the áes dána did that, and they chanted spells against the Fomorian hosts. This was a week before All Hallows,* and they all dispersed until all the men of Ireland came together the day before All Hallows. Their number was six times thirty hundred, that is, each third consisted of twice thirty hundred.
On that day, The Dagda goes to the Fomorians, allegedly on a diplomatic mission, but really it’s just to delay them for as long as possible. They feed him an entire cauldronful of stew, threatening to kill him if he doesn’t eat it all. He does, easily, but by then his belly is so big that his tunic doesn’t even cover the bottom half of his body anymore. The Morrigan meets him on the road back to the Tuatha Dé Danann’s camp, and mocks him. She wrestles against this gigantic fat god, and wins. The Morrigan compels him to carry her on his back by reciting his true name, which is so goddamn long that there is an “unclear” gap in the manuscript as if the scribe just gave up. Then they have sex.
There’s a pagan Halloween story for you.
Many of these stories treat Samhain more as a measure of time than anything else. We know that it is a significant date, and we also know that it marks the beginning of winter. It’s an auspicious day on which important stuff happens. One of my personal favorite Irish myths is Aisling Oengus, in which the dream-maiden Caer and her maidens spend every other year in the form of swans, turning back into women every other Samhain. We don’t get any details about how Samhain was celebrated from that, though. Luckily, there are other sources that are more detailed.
Mesca Ulad is about Cú Chulainn and the Ulstermen getting roaring drunk and going all across Ireland on what is essentially a bar crawl, and it takes place on Samhain. They’re so drunk that they end up going way off course and crashing at the wrong castle. This story gives us a more substantial description of Samhain festivities:
A year was the province thus, in three divisions, until the feast of Samain was made by Conchobar in Emain Macha. The extent of the banquet was a hundred vats of every kind of ale. Conchobar's officers said that all the nobles of Ulster would not be too many to partake of the banquet, because of its excellence.
Honestly, it’s sort of a given that [insert festival here] will be celebrated by everybody feasting and getting drunk. After all, that’s what we do on holidays, and (costumed) bar crawls are still a really popular Halloween activity. It’s adult trick-or-treating. Feasting and getting drunk is what pagans did for pretty much every festival ever, so, no surprises here. But none of the weirder and more specific folklore, either.
We get another little piece from Togail bruidne Da Derga. It recounts the downfall of a legendary High King, Conaire Mór, who is forced to break one geas after another, culminating in his death. Togail bruidne Da Derga also a fascinating insight into pagan Irish culture, because it is based around an essentially pagan set of values and cultural assumptions. It’s sort of along the same lines as Oedipus Tyrannus in that we watch a powerful and respected figure slowly do himself in by breaking taboos. It also happens to include the very specific trope of a woman being confined in a box with no doors and windows, only a skylight, through which her husband sees her and comes to her by supernatural means to conceive the hero. Just like Danae…. I digress. Here’s the mention of Samhain:
For two causes [the robbers] built their cairn: first, since this was a custom in marauding; and, secondly, that they might find out their losses at the Hostel. Every one that would come safe from that were slain would be left, and thence they would know their losses. And this is what men skilled in tory recount, that for every stone in Carn Lecca there was one of the reavers killed at the Hostel. […] A “boar of a fire” was kindled by the sons of Donn Desa to give warning to Conaire. So that was the first warning-beacon that was made in Erin, and from it to this day every warning-beacon is kindled. This is what others recount: that it was on the eve of Samain the destruction of the Hostel was wrought, and that from that beacon the beacon of Samhain followed, and stones are placed in the Samhain-fire.
The titular event of the narrative, “The Destruction of Dá Derga’s Hostel,” takes place on the eve of Samhain. We also get a mention of Samhain fires here, all lit from an original warning-beacon, which means that balefires were another aspect of the holiday. Again, not all that surprising, since balefires are a big thing at most Irish festivals to this day. We’ll get back to the cairn, so hang onto that.
For the more specific lore, there’s this gem from Macgnímartha Fionn:
At that time there was a very beautiful maiden in Bri Ele, that is to say, in the fairy-knoll of Bri Ele, and the name of that maiden was Ele. The men of Ireland were at feud about that maiden. One man after another went to woo her. Every year on Hallowe'en the wooing used to take place; for the fairy-knolls of Ireland were always open about Hallowe'en; for on Hallowe'en nothing could ever be hidden in the fairy-knolls. To each man that went to woo her this used to happen: one of his people was slain. This was done to mark the occasion, nor was it ever found out who did it.
There we go! An actual medieval Irish source confirming that the veil between worlds is thin on Samhain! So to speak. The Irish conception of the Otherworld wasn’t that it existed beyond a “veil,” bur rather that it exists alongside the real world. The fairies are always there in their mounds, but on Samhain those mounds are open and more easily accessible.
There’s also the interesting bit about a person dying each time a man tries to woo the fairy-woman. The man himself isn’t killed (as is common in fairy tales when a man fails to win the princess), but “one of his people” is taken, almost like a bride-price. The concept of a blood tithe on Samhain appears in other sources, as well. In Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of Invasions), the Nemedians are oppressed by the Fomorians, who demand that they sacrifice a whole two thirds of their children to the Fomorians every Samhain:
The progeny of Nemed were under great oppression after his time in Ireland, at the hands of More, s. Dela and of Conand s. Febar [from whom is the Tower of Conand named, which to-day is called Toirinis Cetne. In it was the great fleet of the Fomoraig]. Two thirds of the progeny, the wheat, and the milk of the people of Ireland (had to be brought) every Samain to Mag Cetne. Wrath and sadness seized on the men of Ireland for the burden of the tax. […] Two-thirds of their shapely children, it was not generous against military weakness— a lasting tax through ages of the world— two-thirds of corn and of milk. To hard Mag Cetna of weapons, Over Eas Ruaid of wonderful salmon, it was prepared against help, against feasting (?) for them, every Samain eve.
It’s important to not that this does not mean that human sacrifice actually happened on Samhain. This is part of a myth, and it functions to prove how evil the Fomorians are. It’s not a historical account. But the fact that the association exists is what’s important. Associated with Samhain is the idea of a tithe to supernatural beings — giving up some of one’s bounty before the coming of winter, during which every scrap of food counts — and sometimes that tithe is paid in blood.
There’s a much more detailed description of Samhain festivities from the beginning of Serglige Con Culainn:
Every year the men of Ulster were accustomed to hold festival together; and the time when they held it was for three days before Samhain, the Summer-End, and for three days after that day, and upon Samhain itself. And the time that is spoken of is that when the men of Ulster were in the Plain of Murthemne, and there they used to keep that festival every year; nor was there an thing in the world that they would do at that time except sports, and marketings, and splendours, and pomps, and feasting and eating; and it is from that custom of theirs that the Festival of the Samhain has descended, that is now held throughout the whole of Ireland. Now, once upon a time the men of Ulster held festival in Mag Muirthemne, and the reason that this festival was held was that every man of them should every Samain give account of the combats he had made and of his valor. It was their custom to hold that festival in order to give account of these combats, and the manner in which they gave that account was this: each man used to cut off the tip of the tongue of a foe whom he had killed, and carry it with him in a pouch. Moreover, in order to make more great the numbers of their contests, some used to bring with them the tips of the tongues of beasts, and each man publicly declared the fights he had fought, one man of them after the other. And they did this also: they laid their swords over their thighs when they related their combats, and their own swords used to turn against htem when the strife that they declared was false, nor was this to be wondered at, for at that time it was customary for demons to scream from the weapons of men, so that for this cause their weapons might be the more able to guard them.
Again, pretty typical pagan festival experience — lots of feasting and drinking, followed by games. I think it’s really interesting that the warriors also give an account of their deeds at Samhain, like Samhain is the deadline for them to prove that they measure up to the standard of manliness. There’s a mention of “demons screaming from the weapons of men,” reinforcing the presence of spirits at Samhain. The full story is about Cú Chulainn’s affair with a fairy-woman while he’s dying of an illness, so that further reinforces the theme of the Otherworld being open and accessible on Samhain. While the men are waiting for two more people to arrive, they entertain themselves in the meantime with chess, juggling, and hearing the druids sing.
The best source concerning Samhain that we have from medieval Irish manuscripts is Echtra Nerai, a story that is more about Samhain as opposed to just being set on Samhain. It begins with Queen Medb (yes, that one) and her husband Ailill in their fairy-mound on Samhain. Outside are two prisoners hanged on the gallows, and Ailill dares his underlings to go and put a withe around the ankle of one of the dead prisoners. Why is that a difficult and scary thing to do? Because it’s Samhain:
Great was the darkness of that night and its horror, and demons would appear on that night always.
The night is dark and full of terrors! Clearly, the association between Samhain Eve and dangerous night-wandering spirits existed.
Nera takes the dare. He goes and tries to put the wight on the dead prisoner’s ankle, but it springs off. The dead man speaks, and asks Nera to take him into a nearby house because he’s thirsty. Nera agrees. The nearby house has a lake of fire around it, so they go to the next house over, which has a normal lake of water around it. The prisoner tells Nera not to go into that house, because it doesn’t have any bathtubs or chamber pots in it. So they go to the next house. The dead man takes a drink from the basins in it, and spits the water on the occupants of the house, killing them all. (This apparently explains why one should not keep basins of water in one’s house after going to sleep.)
Nera brings the dead man back to the gallows, and returns to the fairy-mound, only to find that it’s been razed to the ground by a mysterious army. He follows the army and talks to their king, who tells him to visit a woman in a distant house. Nera goes to the house, and the woman welcomes him. He lives there with her, and takes firewood to the king every day. Every day, he sees that a blind man and a lame man visit a certain well every day. He asks the woman why, and she tells him that there is a golden crown in the well, and the king trusts the two men to keep watch over it because the blind man can’t see it and the lame man can’t run away with it. Nera tells the woman (who’s now called his wife — you do the math) about his adventures, and about how he returned to find Ailill and Medb and their entire household were destroyed. His wife tells him that no time has actually passed — it’s still the same night, Ailill and Medb are fine and still gathered around their cauldron in their hall, but their mound will be destroyed in this manner if Nera doesn’t warn them. He goes off to warn them, taking “the fruits of summer” with him — garlic, primrose, and fern. The next year, Ailill, Medb, and company go to destroy the mound that Nera magically found himself at that night, but Nera gets his wife and son out, first.
There’s already fairly abundant mentions of Samhain in Old Irish literature, but this particular story is a gold mine. It involves speaking with the dead, a supernatural venture to a fairy mound, and a lot of weird and specific details like the mention of the “fruits of summer.” I’m not sure what the exact significance of that is, but it has to be significant because Samhain marks the end of the harvest season. There’s so much going on there. I’m not going to analyze this story in full, since I don’t really have the background to be able to do that, but it’s nice confirmation of the big idea around Samhain — that fairies, the dead, and other weird supernatural stuff is more accessible.
Along those same lines is a Scottish story, “The Ballad of Tam Lin.” It concerns the woods of Carterhaugh, which are supposedly haunted by a fairy called Tam Lin, who will take the virginity of any woman who enters the wood unless she leaves a ring or cloak or something. A woman named Janet interprets this as an invitation, and goes to the wood on purpose, hoping to meet Tam Lin. (Honestly, me too, girl.) She picks a rose by a well, which causes Tam Lin to appear. Tam Lin demands to know why she has come to steal his roses, and she claims that Carterhaugh is hers because her father gave it to her. The story abruptly timeskips, and Janet goes home, only to discover later that she is pregnant. Her father asks her which one of his lords the baby’s father is, and Janet tells him that the father is a fairy. So, it can be deduced that she got what she wanted from her encounter with Tam Lin. Janet returns to Carterhaugh and asks him if he was once human, by asking “If eer ye was in holy chapel, / Or christendom did see?” (Directly tying humanity to Christendom, one of many sources to state or imply that fairies are inherently pagan.) Tam Lin reveals that he’s not a fairy, but a man, who got lost while hunting and was claimed by the Queen of the Fairies.
Fairyland is a nice place to live, except for one thing: The fairies have to pay a blood tithe to Hell, once every seven years, no points for guessing on which day. Tam Lin fears that this year, he’ll be the sacrifice. He tells Janet how to win him from the fairies. He tells her to drag him down from his horse when he processes by with the fairies. The Queen of the Fairies will turn him into a variety of scary animals (like a snake and a bear), but Janet has to hold him there no matter what he turns into. Tam Lin assures her that, as the father of her child, he would never hurt her. Finally, he will turn into a burning coal, which she is to throw into the well, after which Tam Lin will become a naked man and be free of the fairies’ influence. Janet manages to accomplish all this. The Queen of the Fairies is very angry at having lost her pretty knight, but Janet won him fairly, so she concedes and lets them go — but not before telling Tam Lin that had she known it would end like this, she would have put out his eyes.
Tam Lin is one of the “Child Ballads,” a set of 305 British folk songs, most of which are from the seventeenth century and later. “Tam Lin” is one of the older ones, with the first version of it being from 1549. It rehashes a lot of the same ideas about Samhain that we’ve seen crop up throughout the Irish sources, namely, that fairies and other such spirits are more present or more active on Samhain, and that someone must pay a blood tithe. It also includes the very old trope of someone needing to restrain a supernatural being while it progresses through a series of scary transformations, which appears throughout European folklore. (For example, in The Odyssey, Menelaus and Telemachus have to restrain the sea god Proteus as he changes shape to get him to answer their questions.) Therefore, I think it’s likely that “Tam Lin” is based on much older folklore. That would make sense, since it’s part of a living tradition of oral storytelling that still exists in Scotland and Ireland to this day.
Another Scottish source that reinforces the idea of fairies and other such spirits being most active on Samhain are these lines by Alexander Montgomerie, from the sixteenth century:
In the hindered of harvest, on alhallow evin, Quhen our gude nychbouris rydis if I reid rycht Sum buklit on one bwnwyd and some on ane bean Ay trippard in troupes fra the twilycht; Sum saidlit on a scho-aip graithit in grene, Sum hobland on hempstalkis hovand on hicht The King of Phairie and his court with the elph-quene, With mony elrich incubus was rydand that nycht. (At the hind-end of harvest, on Hallowe’en, when our ‘good neighbors’ ride if I think right Some mountain on a ragweed and some on a bean All tripping in troupes from the twilight; Some saddled on a she-ape all arrayed in green, Some riding on hempstalks rising on high, The King of Faerie and his court with the Elf-Queen With many [an eldritch] incubus was riding that night.) —qutd. in Hutton, The Stations of the Sun
None of the material I’ve presented here actually predates Christianity, since most of it is from the High Middle Ages and later, but it’s the closest we’re going to get to paganism. We have more to work with here than almost all the other “Wheel of the Year” festivals (including Yule); I haven’t even cited every mention of Samhain in Irish literature! From what we’ve got, we know that the basic ideas of the festival are there: Samhain was a real pagan festival that marked the end of summer and the harvest season, it is an auspicious day in general, and supernatural beings (mainly fairies, but also spirits of the dead) are more active on that day. Why is this the case? I’m guessing because Samhain is liminal — it’s the point between summer and winter, so the edges between the human world and the Otherworld (and later, the living and the dead) also become blurred. It’s supernaturally significant because it’s auspicious, not auspicious because it’s supernaturally significant.
What’s missing from these sources is the specific Halloween traditions that we’re familiar with: trick-or-treating, jack-o-lanterns, costumes, etc. Nera’s story gives us a talking corpse, but there’s not a lot of emphasis on the spirits of the dead, as opposed to fairies. So, where did all of that come from?
*Note: The mentions of “All Hallows” or “Hallowe’en” in these quotations are the translators using the modern name of the festival instead of “Samain.” The Irish manuscripts call it Samain.
The Spirits of the Dead
The evidence for the ancient Samhain being a feast of the dead just isn’t there, which surprises me, because I’ve seen that claim repeated even in scholarly sources. So where did the association between Samhain and the spirits of the dead come from? Well, I think we can thank Catholicism for that one. All Saints’ Day is a Catholic festival that acknowledges and honors all the saints who don’t have a separate designated day elsewhere in the year. The next day, All Souls’ Day, is for saying prayers for the souls of the dead who are still stuck in Purgatory. “Halloween” is a contraction of “All Hallows’ Eve,” and the word “hallow” refers to a soul that has been honored as holy. Rituals during these festivals consisted of saying prayers for the dead and ringing church bells to help them out of Purgatory. Why is All Saints’ Day on November 1st? Well… it’s kind of unclear, actually. It was originally on 13 May, but shifted to November overtime in northern Europe. One possible reason for the shift is that Pope Gregory III dedicated a church to all the saints on that day in 731. Later versions of Bede’s Martyrologium Poeticum put All Saints Day on 1st Nov:
Kalendis Novembris. Natale St. Cæsarii martyris et festivitas Omnium Sanctorum. (First day of November. Birthday of the martyr St. Caesarius and the festival of All Saints.)
We know that this date couldn’t have come through pagan Ireland, becuase the oldest Irish calendar of saints’ feast days is Félire Óengusso, and it puts the date of All Saints’ on 20th April:
20. With the suffering of Herodius, a presbyter who crucified desire, the feast in Rome — right noble stead ! — of the saints of the whole of Europe.
So, All Hallows’ Eve being at the same time as Samhain is a total coincidence, as far as we know. It’s not a deliberate attempt to convert pagans. (That seems to be a running theme, doesn’t it?) Anyway, all of our source for Samhain were written long after the 1st Nov. date was established, so there’s no way to be sure of what influence (if any) pagan festivals in Ireland had on All Hallows’ Eve.
What’s more likely is that the superstition that the doors to the Otherworld are thrown open on Samhain got mixed in with the prayers for the dead on and around All Saints’ Day, becoming a single belief — that the spirits of the dead return on that day. Ireland has always been very Catholic, after all, and all of Britain was also Catholic in the Middle Ages. Contrary to popular belief amongst modern pagans, this is how most pagan superstitions and practices get mixed in with Christianity, and it’s also how they get preserved. “The Church” did not “steal” our holidays; pagan and Christian practices/superstitions assimilated organically via normal syncretism. People kept their own beliefs and practices alive by simply keeping them around and adapting them to fit the new context. That’s how religion typically works.
If you think that any spooky belief must necessarily be pagan, you clearly aren’t that familiar with Catholicism. Actually, wait, let’s stay there for a minute: A lot of the things that may seem inherently “pagan” to American Protestants are actually just Catholic. If you’ve seen Catholic art or know anything about saints’ relics, you’ll know that Catholics are no stranger to the macabre. Saint worship — sorry, “veneration” — is at least figurative if not literal veneration of the blessed dead, which is exactly why 1st Nov. is called “All Saints’ Day.” Therefore, having a festival of the dead isn’t actually that weird. Even masking and wearing costumes is Catholic; they do the same thing around Easter before Lent, which is what the Carnival season is all about. Protestants, especially those who exiled themselves to the hinterlands of North America, rejected these practices as being too “Popish”; they effectively treated Catholicism and everything related to it as if it were pagan. (I have been asked, in all earnestness, whether I am “Catholic or Christian,” as if these are different things. Rectangles/squares, people!) To what extent Catholicism borrows its praxis from paganism is a whole separate subject which I’m not going to tackle in this essay, but most of the pagan survivals and other weird folk practices that existed in Catholicism got intentionally stripped away by Protestants, which leaves a lot of American Protestant traditions bereft of those folk traditions. Halloween was one of these traditions, since the entire point of it was based around the doctrine of Purgatory, which most Protestants rejected. Christmas got through, though, and eventually, so did Halloween.
Halloween arrived in America with the influx of Irish and Scottish immigrants, who brought their folk traditions with them. Once those traditions entered the generally Protestant religious landscape of the United States, though, they lost their religious significance. Therefore, the modern Halloween (which is thoroughly defined by American culture, even in the rest of the world) is secular.
Guising
Guising or souling is the ancestor of both trick-or-treating and caroling. As I said, the entire religious point of the Halloween season was to pray for the souls of those who were stuck in Purgatory, so, people would go from house to house and sing prayers for the dead in return for “soul cakes.” The tradition of wearing costumes to do this seems to be pretty old, late medieval at least. One fifteenth-century proclamation in England forbids people from wearing costumes around Christmas, which is evidence that people were doing it: “…that no manere persone … duryng this holy tyme of Cristemes, be so hardy in eny wyse to walk by night in eny manere mommyng… with eny feynyd berdes, peyntid visers, disfourmed or colourid visages in eny wyse” (That no manner of person, during this holy time of Christmas, be so bold in any way to walk by night in any manner mumming… with any false beards, painted visors, disfigured or colored faces in any ways.)
This is supposed to represent Shrove Tuesday in February, and it’s from the Netherlands, but it should give you an idea of what mummer’s costumes were like.
I’ve heard it claimed many times that these costumes are supposed to imitate the spirits that are out and about on Halloween. That just seems like it would make sense, right? Unfortunately, I can’t find any sources that say anything about that from before the twentieth century, which is a red flag. (Even Ronald Hutton doesn’t question this assumption in Stations of the Sun, but that was published in 1996, so, I’m not going to take him at his word on that one.) The real purpose of the masks seems to be anonymity, protecting one’s identity while one goes out and causes mischief. People didn’t really dress up as anything, they just made themselves look uncanny using whatever they had on them. And it’s also worth mentioning that the mumming tradition is associated with several holidays, including Christmas, Lent, and Shrove Tuesday, which wouldn’t make sense if it were specifically tied in with the lore around spirits at Halloween.
That said, there’s a lot of folklore in Europe that concerns supernatural beings who come to people’s doors requesting hospitality, who will react badly if turned away. My favorite example is, of course, the story of Philemon and Baucis in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, who receive Zeus and Hermes when no one else will. Odin does something similar in the Grímnismál, and a lot of fairy lore suggests leaving food offerings out for them on certain nights (lest they sour your milk and destroy your stored crops). The use of the actual phrase “Trick-or-Treat” was not a thing in America until the 1930s, but I’m not surprised that people associate the threat with all this older folklore. I would even go as far as to suggest that the idea that one of the costumed children might be a spirit is legitimately a new piece of folklore, if it weren’t for the fact that, as far as I know, few people actually believe it.
Divination Games
This is another tradition that gets held up as evidence of paganism just because it happens to exist. I remember that I accepted the idea of divination games at Halloween as an inherently pagan custom without question; after all, it was a thing that people used to do in the days of yore (read: the early twentieth century) that degraded into silly games like apple-bobbing overtime. Well, the idea that “this custom was once meaningful, but now it’s just silly” is straight out of the Frazer playbook, so I’m less willing to accept that at face value.
Just as Charles Dickens had a huge influence on the modern Christmas, Robert Burns had a huge influence on the modern Halloween. His poem “Halloween,” from 1785, describes several different divination games:
Then, first an' foremost, thro' the kail, Their stocks maun a' be sought ance; They steek their een, an' grape an' wale For muckle anes, an' straught anes. Poor hav'rel Will fell aff the drift, An' wandered thro' the bow-kail, An' pow't, for want o' better shift, A runt, was like a sow-tail, Sae bow't that night. […] The auld guid-wife's weel-hoordet nits Are round an' round divided, An' monie lads' and lasses' fates Are there that night decided: Some kindle couthie, side by side, An' burn thegither trimly; Some start awa wi' saucy pride, An' jump out-owre the chimlie Fu' high that night.
The first stanza quoted here describes pulling kale out of the ground and observing the shape of the root, and the second describes burning nuts as a way of determining whether a relationship will be harmonious or not. This means that divination games were associated with the holiday at least as far back as the eighteenth century. They seem to have been mostly associated with love and romance. Halloween cards from the early twentieth century reference some of these divination games:
Regarding apple bobbing specifically, the Wikipedia page says that it dates all the way back to the Roman invasion of Britain, and that the Romans merged their own traditions with local Celtic customs. What does it cite? One sentence in a listicle, and Silver RavenWolf. I didn’t even need to look at the citations to know that claim is bullshit. Where does apple-bobbing actually come from? Wikipedia also lists an eighteenth-century source, Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis by Charles Vallancy. It describes apple-bobbing and relates it very shakily to “Druid” rituals as part of Samhain, and also to… I think a Roman story about searching for a human head in the Tiber? I don’t trust anything Vallancy says about its pagan origins, but it’s possible that Vallancy himself provides the oldest record of the custom. What I can say for sure is, if he’s commenting on it, then it was being practiced in Ireland and Scotland in the eighteenth century.
There’s also a few nineteenth-century sources that describe apple-bobbing, such as Chambers’ Book of Days. Robert Chambers (not the same as Robert W. Chambers) also takes for granted that secular Halloween customs must have pagan origins, simply because they don’t have any Christian significance, and he can’t imagine where else they might have come from. (I swear, 90% of the blame for the “[holiday] has pagan origins” claims can be pinned on nineteenth-century scholars.) But he does give us a nice account of Halloween games involving apples:
As to apples, there is an old custom, perhaps still observed in some localities on this merry night, of hanging up a stick horizontally by a string from the ceiling, and putting a candle on the one end, and an apple on the other. The stick being made to twirl rapidly, the merry makers in succession leap up and snatch at the apple with their teeth (no use of the hands being allowed), but it very frequently happens that the candle comes round before they are aware, and scorches them in the face, or anoints them with grease. The disappointments and misadventures occasion, of course, abundance of laughter. But the grand sport with apples on Halloween, is to set them afloat in a tub of water, into which the juveniles, by turns, duck their heads with the view of catching an apple. Great fun goes on in watching the attempts of the youngster in the pursuit of the swimming fruit, which wriggles from side to side of the tub, and evades all attempts to capture it; whilst the disappointed aspirant is obliged to abandon the chase in favour of another whose turn has now arrived. The apples provided with stalks are generally caught first, and then comes the tug of war to win those which possess no such append-ages. Some competitors will deftly suck up the apple, if a small one, into their mouths. Others plunge manfully overhead in pursuit of a particular apple, and having forced it to the bottom of the tub, seize it firmly with their teeth, and emerge, dripping and triumphant, with their prize. This venturous procedure is generally rewarded with a hurrah! by the lookers on, and is recommended, by those versed in Halloween aquatics, as the only sure method of attaining success. In recent years, a practice has been introduced, probably by some tender mammas, timorous on the subject of their offspring catching cold, of dropping a fork from a height into the tub among the apples, and thus turning the sport into a display of marksmanship. It forms, however, but a very indifferent substitute for the joyous merriment of ducking and diving.
Illustration of apple bobbing from Chambers’ Book of Days
He also confirms that the kale tradition that Burns describes is still a thing in Scotland at the time of his writing.
Chambers doesn’t relate apple-bobbing to divination, though. His description suggests that it’s just a silly game. However, this poem from 1833, accompanying a painting called “Snap Apple Night, or All-Hallow Eve,” describes it as a divination game:
There Peggy was dancing with Dan While Maureen the lead was melting, To prove how their fortunes ran With the Cards could Nancy dealt in; There was Kate, and her sweet-heart Will, In nuts their true-love burning, And poor Norah, though smiling still She'd missed the snap-apple turning.
The painting that goes with the poem.
So, there you have it — divination games on Halloween were mostly a thing in the eighteenth-thru-early-twentieth centuries, and died out after that. That’s kind of a shame. I love the idea of Halloween being a spooky Valentine’s Day, but with divination! We should bring that back!
The only divination practice that might actually have pagan origins is the one about putting stones in a fire. There’s this account from John Ramsay of Ochtertyre’s Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, Vol. 2:
On the evening of [Samhain] the young people of every hamlet assembled upon some eminence near the houses. There they made a bonfire of ferns or other fuel, cut the same day, which from the feast was called Samh-nag or Savnag, a fire of rest and pleasure. Around it was placed a circle of stones, one for each person of the families to whom they belonged. And when it grew dark the bonfire was kindled, at which a loud shout was set up. Then each person taking a torch of ferns or sticks in his hand, ran round the fire exulting; and sometimes they went into adjacent fields where, if there was another company, they visited the bonfire, taunting the others if inferior in any respect to themselves. After the fire was burned out they returned home, where a feast was prepared, and the remainder of the evening was spent in mirth and diversions of various kinds. Next morning they repaired betimes to the bonfire, where the situation of the stones was examined with much attention. If any of them were misplaced, or if the print of a foot could be discerned near any particular stone, it was imagined that the person for whom it was set would not live out the year. Of late years this is less attended to, but about the beginning of the present century [i.e. the eighteenth] it was regarded as a sure prediction.
That sounds an awful lot like the description of putting stones in a Samhain fire from Togail bruidne Da Derga, and it maintains the superstition regarding the cairn, that whichever stones are missing indicate who has died or who will die. So maybe that was a real pagan custom, but it was already on its way out in the eighteenth century. I don’t know if anyone does it anymore.
Jack-O’-Lanterns
It’s well known at this point that jack-o’-lanterns used to be carved from absolutely terrifying turnips, called “neep lanterns,” and that Irish and Scottish immigrants switched to pumpkins when they came to America because they’re much easier to carve. But what are they actually supposed to be? Spirits of the dead? Severed heads? Scary faces to scare off evil spirits? My initial guess is that they’re apotropaic, intended to ward off the fairies and other spirits that are supposed to be present on Halloween. Let’s see if I’m right.
Well, jack-o’-lanterns might come from a similar-but-different holiday, “Punkie Night,” celebrated on the last Thursday in October in Somerset. The word “punkie” refers to the turnip. The story associated with it is that it commemorates an occasion on which people who traveled to Chiselborough Fair got lost in the dark, and had to make lanterns out of turnips to light their way back. I can’t find too much on the tradition beyond that, so, it may really be that simple.
A much more dramatic folktale associated with the lanterns is, of course, the Stingy Jack legend: Jack is a cunning sinner who tricks the Devil into promising never to take his soul, but because he’s too sinful to be let into Heaven, he’s doomed to wander eternally with his lantern after he dies. Hence, “Jack-o’-[the]-lantern.” There’s lots of versions, but one of the earliest written versions is from The Dublin Penny Journal in 1836, so it’s modern folklore, not medieval folklore. However, although the story itself isn’t that old, the roots of it may be: Last year, Spencer McDaniel put forward a convincing argument on her website that this story does have pagan origins (to my complete shock). It’s one of a long series of similar European folktales in which a clever human outwits a powerful supernatural being, usually Death or the Devil. They extend their life or get what they want, but are usually somehow punished for their sinfulness or attempt to avoid the inevitable. The oldest variant of this type of story is that of Sisyphus. So, the folkloric concept associated with jack-o-lanterns is very old.
Ronald Hutton writes that both “punkie” and “jack-o-lantern” originally referred to marsh gas, bright lights that flare up whenever methane produced by decaying matter in bogs spontaneously combusts. They’re extremely spooky, and there’s so much folklore associated with them because of how uncanny they are, and because people risk mistaking them for campfires or lights on buildings and follow them straight into bogs. It’s a very short step from that to malevolent spirits like will-o’-the-wisps and hinkypunks, who are believed to lure humans into bogs on purpose. Or wandering spirits like Jack and his lantern. The real lanterns are meant to imitate the marsh gas, and since the marsh gas is associated with spirits anyway, the lanterns imitate the spirits by proxy.
The modern American Halloween occupies a unique place in the festival calendar in that it isn’t really recognizable as anything Christian or pagan, and yet it stands out among other secular holidays because of the amount of rich folklore, specific traditions, and aesthetic associated with it. Most of what we associate with the modern Halloween — ghosts and ghouls, witches, pumpkins, skeletons, vampires, werewolves, slasher films, and kids dressed as superheroes and Disney princesses — is all less than a hundred years old. I’m not surprised that a lot of the modern Halloween is, in fact, modern. But some of the underlying ideas and traditions associated with it are at least as old as the Middle Ages, maybe even older, and it preserves a lot of weird and interesting folklore, while building off of it into something unique. In short, Halloween accidentally evolved into a holiday to celebrate all things spooky, and now that’s just the nature of it. I can’t express how much I love that that’s the case — not just because I like being able to dress up in costume with other adults and buy a ton of spooky stuff around Halloween that I keep up for the rest of the year, but also because societies just need a day to release the pressure valve of propriety and Halloween is one of the only not-specifically-Catholic holidays that allows one to do that. I think that’s part of why people love it so much.
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