Halloween /Samhain isn't a ghoul-fest

[MarieDeGournay]

I was worried that it was a bit early for my annual rant about the replacement of the traditional Halloween/Samhain festival with an irrelevant import, but I've already spotted pumpkins in shops so here goes!

Halloween as a festival goes back millennia. It marked the gathering in of the harvest, the end of summer, the preparation for the dark time of year. One element of it was the loosening of boundaries between the living and the dead, but it was also a time of celebration, feasting and fun.

The harvest celebration element was preserved for millennia by the practice of children going for house to house asking for 'Any apples or nuts?', the fruits of the autumn, and then having lots of fun eating and playing games with them. One of the traditional games was 'telling the future' using hazelnuts designated 'yes' or 'no' placed near the fire, the first to burst answering questions about the coming year.

Ghost stories were part of the entertainment, but only part of it. It was about fun and the future as well.

The fact that we kept those traditions alive from the time of the Celts was amazing. But in the space of a few years, bang! Trick and treat. Pumpkins. Zombies. Severed heads. Cobwebs. Bats. Giant spiders. Witches. Witches, which are not only derived from Wicca, i.e. a different tradition, but misogynistic as well.

'We' as a society abandoned, without a murmur, distinctive traditions that go back to the Celts, and replaced them with cheap plastic tat derived from american interpretations of Halloween, with a nasty emphasis on horror, zombies, ghoulishness, death and decay.

We allowed Halloween/Samhain to be replaced, in the space of a decade or two. I think it's such a shame we let go of such ancient traditions that were alive and well and enjoyed up to recently.

Yup.

Divination games, ghost stories, apples and nuts

NO WITCHES

for Dubs, colcannon, wine apples and coloured starlights.

Witches are not derived from Wicca. Samhain has been entwined with witchcraft long before men invented Wicca. I'm with you on the old traditions being commercialised but pumpkins are part of autumnal harvest and have been used in Britain (it started in Britain and Ireland) and used as wards.

Hallowe'en is an Irish thing, and there were no witches in Ireland, except for one incident in medieval Kilkenny among the English inhabitants, one episode on the Antrim coast among Scots settlers, and in the late 19th century legal arguments in the Bridget Cleary case.

Fairies, yes, women with powers, yes. No witches or witchcraft.

Bonfires - that's a hallowe'en thing. Barmbrack, turnip lanterns.

No witches, no pumpkins.

Though to be fair, while pumpkins are ruled out as 'traditional' by being America, it is also true that turnips large enough to hold lanterns are a relative newcomer to the agricultural scene, having not been around until the mid 18th century.

I would also say that to 'get' the Hallowe'en experience properly you need to go to Mass on All Saint's day and on either All Soul's day or whatever praying for the dead roundup has been arranged in your locality, give up alcohol for the month of November, and pray in at least one graveyard.

Entirely agree with you
the horror/zombie/ace murderer aspect is completely abhorrent

Thank you! I feel the better for getting approval of my annual rant
It's one of the few things that really really hacks me off! When the local nippers come around 'trick or treating' it takes all my diplomacy to smile and give them sweets and a couple of euro - it's not their fault, and I'm not a grinch.. but I always give them an apple as well and tell them 'It used to be apples and nuts you know'. Obvs no nuts as I might be responsible for an allergic reaction!

One good thing about the pumpkin recently supplanting the turnip is - do you remember how hard it was to carve out a turnip? Lethal!

And thanks Deano for reminding me about the starlights [never had coloured ones though] which were the nearest we had to fireworks. Which were banned completely after a young woman was killed an explosion in the 1930s in a shop near where my mother lived.
And colcannon, where you could make a complex canal system to move the melted butter through the potatoes...or was that just me?

In other words, Halloween was a lot of fun for the little ones, the scary stuff was separate.
I know the traditions varied around the country - mine were mostly Dublin but with a lot of East Galway thrown in, and a bit of North Wicklow.

Not just you with the butter in the colcannon; 'coloured' starlights were a total swizz, no colours at all (except in a 'white is all the colours combined' way), but that was how the women on Henry Street referred to them.

I've managed to carve a turnip quite successfully in recent years using a Parisian cutter/melon baller, but admit it was far from such an implement either parent was reared (Dublin and east Mayo), so knives must have been used. Presumably ones with short blades firmly attached to their handles.

Traditions do change. And I remember Halloween decorations, although homemade, in the very early 90s. I had some 'witches fingers' which were glow in the dark nobbly ones which fitted over mine when I was about 3 so mid 80s - which apparently is 40 years ago now!

Bonfires to me are more 5th November and Guy Fawkes than All Hallows Eve. But toffee apples are still definitely popular and appear in the shops mid October like they used to. My dad used to carve turnips or swedes, his parents were from the highest of Scotland. He admits that pumpkins are far better!

We still have kids coming around for trick or treat dressed up and go away with some sweets. We go to a really nice pumpkin walk and there is apple bobbing, crafts and very geared towards children.

Rant away OP. I remember carving turnips and wearing a plastic bag which we had decorated so I remember when it was much simpler. I don't like the gorey element to it and like absolutely everything it's become overly commercialised.

I remember Halloween in the early 60s . Apples and nuts Barmbrack...bonfires. And some fireworks as we had a Protestant friend who visited family in the North. No pumpkins but sometimes a ghost story. My grandad was born on Halloween but would tell ppl he was born on Nov 1st. Lots of piseogs but no witches as you say. We must get together for St Pats OP. Join my annual campaign for real Leprechauns. Not the daft Yank version!

You had bonfires at Halloween? We just had them in June.
What Halloween games did you all play? We had bobbing for apples and the apple hanging in the door way, the 'Hill' of flour with a grape in top and you had to cut away flour without moving the grape

Well said Op. Hate all the plastic tat.
I shall be having a fire in the garden,burning some incense and chatting to those beyond the veil.

One of the divination games that terrified my mother when she was young involved being led blindfolded to a tray with various thing. You had to reach out to touch it and the first of the various things there you contacted predicted what would happen in the next year. Most of them I can't remember but they included a ring for early marriage, soil for early death, water (presumably in a cup or glass) for travel, something (a coin?) for wealth, something for being an old maid.

She said she always seemed to get death or spinsterhood - it never occurred to her that her siblings might have cheated. A very shortsighted child in a house with no electricity would have been easy to trick.

Bracks used to have lots of things that also had messages, but in this sad age they only have a ring - if that.

https://www.fairylandtrust.org/real-halloween-event-overview/

although not in Ireland

I get what you are saying but the problem in Ireland is that many of our ancient traditions were destroyed by the British occupation.

Halloween has evolved. We exported the tradition and now imported back an Americanised version.

I always do one turnip in a non to tradition but those feckers are hard to carve, I think the Irish Americans were on to something with the pumpkins.

We dressed up as witches as small children in the 70s...with bin bags and hats made of newspaper rolled up and painted...I seem to remember doing this in school! Hard plastic masks with elastic stapled on bought at the local supermarket.
So witches have been around longer than a decade or two!

I like the pumpkins. They're colourful and much easier to carve than turnips!
I'm not from Dublin and have no idea what a starlight is.

I hate the ghoulish axe-murderer, skeleton hand out of the ground, gore-fest it has become in some places now. Hate all that type of 'decoration'. Bats and spiders and witches and friendly looking ghosts are my limit. Don't mind trick or treating, maybe because we did this too...much have been late 70s, early 80s by then.

I agree with @DeanElderberrythat barmbrack seemed to have more bits in it in the past too. Now you still get the ring, but I remember when it also had a stick, rag, pea etc.

I agree, op. Imported-American Halloween is the most meaningless of holidays.

One good thing about the pumpkin recently supplanting the turnip is - do you remember how hard it was to carve out a turnip? Lethal!

I'm old enough to remember them too.

I thought the dressing in costumes went back a long way? Because the vail between worlds was thin so you didn't want the demons to be able to tell you were human.

I grew up in Yorkshire and then Lancashire. In Lancashire you would get 'Mummers' but not like I have heard about Mummers from other places. You would answer the door and the Mummers would enter, not say anything and start polishing anything they could see, usually the banister, you had to pay them to get them to go away.

I used to work with a man from Mexico who did 'day of the dead' so my tradition now includes thinking about my departed relatives.

I don't have a bonfire or any livestock so I carry the cat around a lit candle.

It's not a holiday though.Its a celebration.

I'm not sure why anyone can get worked up about how Halloween/Christmas is celebrated... It's all made up stories and NONE of it is real.

So if you want to plunk a turnip on your doorstep, go for it...bit if Aaron wants to dress as a zombie and go trick or treating...so what?

It's like people who insist on rules for Christmas..."oh no you HAVE to put your tree up on X date, and no, you can't use baubles
... Stocking has to be downstairs.... No wrap"

It just doesn't matter.

Halloween is now like Christmas in that it's a mush of different traditions all merging into one celebration. It's okay to do things differently to others ... Because none of it is real or makes any difference to the dead people.

All Saint's day is a holy day, and the last Monday in October is a bank holiday in Ireland - the weekend always gets described as the hallowe'en weekend even when it doesn't quite coincide. It's a lovely time for a long weekend, there is usually still lovely autumn colour and a chance to get out in nature before the dark closes in for the next three month (1st November is the start of winter).

American witches have been part of the Irish hallowe'en dressing up tradition for a long time - I remember ever about 50 years ago cheap paper witches hats and grotesque masks made out of some kind on thin stiff plastic used to appear in shops at the same time as the bracks and monkey nuts and pomegranates and curly kale showed up.

And speaking of American halloween, one of my favourite movies is Meet Me In St Louis and I love the halloween sequence with poor terrified Tootie walking alone through the dark (though I also love the Christmas scenes). It does a great job of presenting children winding each other up and enjoying being scared and wild and daft.

I don't have a bonfire or any livestock so I carry the cat around a lit candle

<wheezes trying to catch breath from laughing>

reminded me of a v lovely ex from Belfast who was helping my DC carve a pumpkin and turnip and explaining one year all he had was a large spud with a birthday candle

Thank you for both the visual image & the memory prompt!

I have view of amazing firework display but every year I have a yearning for the wee indoor ‘fireworks’ from yesteryear

the little smoke ring volcano, the tablet that grew into a worm…

<nips off to google to try & fulfil childhood dreams this year>

Halloween was a poor second to Bonfire night in Wales when I was a child in the early 70s. We’d have a party at brownies with apple bobbing and apples on strings and throw the peel over our shoulders to see the initial of our future husband or look in the mirror at midnight. Our poor mums might carve out a swede.
But the main event was making a guy out of tights and newspapers and taking it round the streets in a go cart.

DD is 31 now and I don’t remember trick or treating when she was small but 5 years later with DS it was a much bigger thing.

Completely agree. Every time I see or hear “Happy Halloween”, I cringe and rage inside

I loved the indoor firework that grew into an uncontrollable worm that always went in the least desirable direction.