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.

@DeanElderberry I went to RC schools so we had a day off for holy days of obligation, this meant that we only got two days for half term.

One year we had Monday and Tues day for half term and then back for 1 day and then a day off for All Saints and then back for the Friday.

To this day I cannot think why they didn't make the half term the Wednesday and Friday.

@WellOwlBeDamned I may add a spud and birthday candle to my traditions.

I wonder was the school still being being run by nuns who were going to be there all week anyway. I can imagine the lay staff fuming.

Nope, I recon the nuns all had a lie in.

I genuinely thought the Halloween celebrations of old died off because the church wouldn't allow it. My Mum said they were never allowed celebrate it (other than mass on All Saints Day). In the 80s I remember one nun telling us it was pagan and evil etc and we would be in big trouble if she found out any of us had dressed up or went to a party. She was the outlier at the time in late 80s, most teachers were relaxed about it but no way were we allowed dress up on school. Trick or treat wasn't really a thing, we knocked on a few doors and some people didn't know what we were talking about. I heard it was becoming a thing at the big housing estates. We did a few times have a party with traditional games at home. By mid 90s my younger sister was having school dress up days and everyone was out trick or treating, it was totally different.

That was in Cork, a county town. We also didn't have bonfire night. Never heard of it til I moved away. It seems these traditions were very parochial.

@DeanElderberry in Cork that weekend is just known as 'the jazz', I sometimes forget when talking to friends from elsewhere!

I don't remember anything about halloween or anything else being regarded as pagan or evil in the 1970s and I wonder was the nun in the 1980s being influenced by backwash from the American 'satanic panic' which was in full pomp by that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satanic_panic

These things are always a bit baffling in the way they suddenly appear and people who seemed quite rational don't just adopt them, but also imagine that they always believed them. See genderism.

Why do we blame other cultures for how we do things here? Are we not responsible for our own choices? And what is it about being human that leaves us struggling to accept there can be a variety of ways of being without casting all but one out as being incorrect or tasteless?

Indeed, but our insular culture has always been influenced by stuff coming to us from other islands or continents, and we read and hear things that then get absorbed. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, often strangely unchallenged as though the mere fact that they are from abroad gives them a glamour and a potency that something dreamed up by Patsy down the road wouldn't have.

I certainly remember very clearly the sudden adoption of the idea of 'the satanic' in the early 80s.

@Dontlletmedownbruce
Bonfire night in Cork city is on 23rd June. That's St John's Eve, but originally it was a pagan festival celebrating the solstice I'd say. I don't think the tradition extends too far beyond the city today?

Also lots of bonfires for Halloween where I am. The bonfire night at the start of Nov isn't celebrated in Ireland for obvious reasons, not as far as I know anyway. Not sure about NI.

Alright, '"celebration" then.!

It was 2am. And besides, US Halloween doesn't celebrate anything.

Some people in NI have English-style November 5 bonfires but obviously it's a protestant thing, and their biggest bonfire night (and biggest bonfires) are on July 11th. I'm told that here in the mid west there used to be St John's eve bonfires but the tradition died out - my kinsfolk in Mayo still have them.

@Slidesclipsandbobbins you're right it is very much a city thing. Never extended the few miles to my home town. It's also only certain parts of the city too. I'm in a newish suburb and it doesn't happen here at all, never spoken of even.

I’m from Dublin and we used to dress up as witches when I was a child and I’m 60. My grandmother used to buy us witches hats and masks and we’d make the rest of the costume with a black bin bag as a dress usually. So witches were a thing even then.

It was definitely more about fruit though. I lived in a housing estate and lots of us children were similar ages and all went out knocking on neighbours’ doors. We never said trick or treat. We used to say “Help the Halloween Party”. We’d hold out our plastic bag and be given an apple or some nuts. A few times grapes or an orange. One neighbour used to cut up a few coconuts and we’d get a piece of that. We were made up if we got a lollipop.

Always colcannon for dinner followed by barmbrack.

There was always a bonfire that night organised by older boys from the area. They would have gone round collecting bits of wood from people for a few weeks before. Usually lit near our house which used to drive my Dad mad. One year he managed to intercept them as they were starting to build the base of the bonfire - right under the electric cables.

We did occasionally have starlighters bought from Moore Street or Henry Street.

We have Hop-Tu-Naa on the Isle of Man. Songs in Manx Gaelic, English and the cross-dialect I was brought up with (I'm an old gimmer!).

Turnip lanterns (i.e. the orange swedish turnips) and the special songs are really important. As a child, we would sing for money (a couple of coppers) on doorsteps, and never for sweets, in our regular anoraks and shoes, with the town's chimney smoke heavy in the air and the sea salt and brewery hops lingering into the dark evening.

That's very evocative@BenFoillan

It's actually my favourite bank holiday weekend. There is just something lovely about it.

It's not that far off from Samhain in that it still focuses on many of the same elements and at least it's fun. I think the imported and commercialised pagan holiday of Xmas is by far the dumbest and most meaningless of holidays, at least for me. To each his own.

St John's Eve was celebrated in parts of the west too, Sligo/Mayo that I know of. I'd never heard of a Halloween bonfire until this thread

The solstice celebrations seem to have survived in pockets across the country so 😊
I think in Cork they put on other celebrations on St John's Eve too now. They're trying to distract people away from the bonfires which aren't the best from safety and environmental points of view.

Lovely to hear about that, thank you BenFoilann. Really interesting.

@Peridot1 similar childhood experience to me. I grew up in Dublin too, but what were starlighters?? Is it another name for sparklers??

yes (starlights sounds so much more exciting)

If people are simply dressing up in cheap polyester and going around to houses for sweets then it doesn't really reflect the ancient pagan celebrations because it isn't done with meaning.

Same with Christmas.

I'm not Christian (or pagan) but many people still give meaning to the period by focusing on family & loved ones, giving to / helping charity. I despise the increased commercialisation of Christmas when it is divorced from any meaning, it is reduced to nothing but an exercise in greed & spending money (much like Halloween when ppl participate without any consideration as to what its marking)

And actually, we have very little evidence for how the pagan festivals were celebrated before Christianity came to Europe.

What we do have are remnants of christian-influenced regional folk traditions and a romanticised idea of what we think pre-Christian peoples might have done.

Which isn't to say that there isn't value in those folk traditions, they are a wonderful part of our cultural history.

We went round chanting 'Any apples or nuts!' door to door. Brack of course and silly games. We had tiny fireworks called squibs and the odd rocket 🚀 snuggled from Belfast by a Protestant playmate.

Then I attended secco in England. I remember asking another kid what he was doing for Halloween. What's that he asked. Nobody in the class had a Scooby what I was on about ! Fast forward to the Friday 13th films etc and here we are. It goes on all month now. The only real spooky bit is ppl lighting lamps and candles on the graves I feel. Which is very touching too.