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.

Glad to see letters in the Guardian challenging yet another uninformed back-of-a-fag-packet article from Zoe Williams.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/oct/18/halloween-isnt-some-frightful-us-import-its-origins-are-celtic

Glad to see some people are sticking up for the cultural origins of Halloween. A lot of posters on this thread are saying it's original little Irish. I am Scottish. Forgive me if I d

Aargh please ignore my post! I was trying to edit it and I posted accidentally. Growing up in the west of Scotland in the 80s, we called it 'guising'. Guising came from disguising as children would dress as something different to disguise themselves from evil spirits frolicking on the eve of All Saints day. This old cultural tradition has sadly been appropriated due the dominance of American culture. I doubt a single child trick or treating this year in England has the foggiest clue of the origins.

I agree with @BlackOrangeFrog Although I also think too many people have gone completely overboard with the murder scene type decorations in my local area (Dublin) - crime scene tape, bloody hand print streaks and smears on the windows, plastic bones/ skulls/ severed limbs strewn around the front lawn…Someone even has a headless “corpse” in a old fashioned dressing gown slumped in an old armchair. There’s just too much of it, it’s horrible. I’d take a giant spider, bat or pumpkin over that stuff any day. I actually quite like a bit of kitsch/ tackiness. It’s in particularly bad taste as there has been a fair few people actually murdered in the area over the years.
There are pop up Halloween shops in town and shopping centres that are so scary most of the small kids come out bawling crying!

On the other Halloween thread I commented last week on the inappropriate crime scene tape and bloodstain decorations in the village (Spar) shop. So this week I told the owner how I felt, and blow me, he immediately took them down! I didn't expect him to, and didn't put any blame on him, but hey - it's obviously worth saying something.

@Abhannmor that book by Máire MacNeill sounds very interesting.

Have we had the annual 'Halloween is a tacky American import' thread yet?

I don't think so. So far I've seen this one, the one on the philosophy and religion forum https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/philosophy_religion_spirituality/5179823-navigating-halloween?page=1 and a brief flurry on the Archers board, but there's more than a week to go.

Whilst I agree with you from your perspective, it's not up to you what other people do. See also Christmas, Bonfire Night, Valentines Day etc etc.
you can enforce your beliefs on other people.

I grew up in England with Irish parents. My mother used to do tea for me and a friend and then make games for us to play, like "Bob-an-Apple" and it was very low key but great fun and we loved it. No pumpkins nor dressing up and definitely no going from house to house demanding sweeties with menaces! Of course , the next 2 days we went to Mass for the Holy Days but often the school brought us as it was a Catholic school and very near the Church. Halloween wasn't really a thing the English bothered with in the 60s, so my Tipperary mother brought a little bit of the traditions she grew up with into the house on All Hallows' Eve. We couldn't get barmbrack in England then, which was a shame because who doesn't like barmbrack? I still buy one for the day that's in it and wonder will I get the little brass ring!
The Irish brought the All Hallows celebrations to America, where it got commercialised and Americanised, then it came back over the Atlantic to Ireland and Britain in it's Americanised form. I don't bother with it anymore, except to pray for the dead!

There used to be bonfires around here but hasn't there been some sort of crackdown on them because people were burning tyres causing toxic fumes or something. There are still fireworks being let off for Halloween and it starts well before. Sure I heard a few go off in the village only last week. I'm not keen on them myself and think they should be kept for formal, organised displays only, with strict safety measures in place and First Aid and ambulances near at hand. I had a near-miss with a Jumping Jack as a child so I'm very wary of them!

Sorry, @Abhannmor, this dropped off my radar - too many hoolies to worry about lately!

Yes, Manx is most similar to Irish, really. If you look at my username BenFoillan (pronounced ben foil-yan) which is Manx, and you'll probably be able to work out it means 'gull woman/girl'. In Irish it would be 'bean faoileán', I think?

Culture Vannin has this on its website, as an old Manx gimmer I can't disagree with any of it:

Hop tu Naa is the oldest continuously-existing tradition in the Isle of Man. Celebrated on the 31st of October, Hop tu Naa is the Manx equivalent of Halloween, with some very important differences. Unmistakably, one of the key features of Hop tu Naa is the "moot" (turnip), which is hollowed out and decorated; there is also a range of popular folk songs with regional differences, in both English and Manx; there is a traditional folk dance still practiced across the Island today; and there are some unusual customs and superstitions which link back to the ancient Celtic beliefs about this time of year

Note: a "turnip" on the Island is a Swedish turnip, i.e. big, purple and orange.

There are lots of Manx phrases on the website, with pronunciations.

My childhood 'English' was very dialect-laden. But I started to learn actual Manx gaelic during the great revival among younger people in the mid 1970s, and carried on from there. I met and know some great characters. I also had 'correct' English impressed upon me at secondary school, and to some extent by my parents. I now live and work between 'home' and England, but will go back for good soon - as James Taylor sang, 'my body's aching and my time is at hand'.

Where are you @Helpnifoseeker ?
Fireworks are banned in Ireland except in the sort of organised events you mention. Officially anyway.

Turnips (swedes) were commonly hollowed out and used in Ireland too @BenFoillan.
Pumpkins are used now mostly because they’re easier.
Hop Tu Naa sounds brilliant!

Fireworks are banned in Ireland but I heard some yesterday evening.

@Slidesclipsandbobbins We're in the rural Mid West- the fireworks have been starting in early October for years around this area, but it starts with just the odd one or two and builds up until the night itself. Of course, a fair few times it's teenagers acting the maggot!

Probably teenagers all right. Where do they get them though? NI?

It is comprehensive @Taytocrisps She lists the traditions and rituals associated with Lughnasa in each district. Divided into themes like Assemblies or Patterns on Lakes , Rivers , Hills and Mountains. There is therefore a bit of repetition- it is an academic thesis or reference work really. Fascinating though.

Thanks for your lovely reply @BenFoillan Your name makes sense....though I had wondered if it was some craggy hill! Slán abhaile to Mann. The sea god will guide you home. 🌊

Thank you for spotting those letters in the Guardian, BenFoillan, they are so well-informed and to the point.
One of the letters was so close to my feelings about the topic that I think I should declare that in real life I am not Kathleen Macpherson of Thornhill, Dumfries and Galloway, but fair play to you Kathleen, a woman after my own heart when it comes to Halloween!

As a child growing up in Dublin in the late 60s I used to love Hallowe'en. My late Dad was great craic and would get up to all sorts of shenanigans to frighten his three daughters out of their wits (no malice intended). He would come into our room (three beds, one room like a hospital...) draped in a white sheet with a torch somehow attached to his collar underneath to make him look ghostlike.

OMG we screamed and screamed. He was a man who had little time for the rules of the CC either, so in defiance, he stuck his thumb in the back of the grate on Ash Wednesday and put the ashes on his girls' foreheads. The nuns would think we were all virtuous having received them early that morning in the church before school. Not a chance. Like other reminiscences we had bob the apple and the apple on a string, a barmbrack and colcannon, and we did "dress up" and go round the houses. Never trick or treat, just "help the Hallowe'en party" and I recall that monkey nuts were quite prolific donations.

The big memory I have is the terror of All Souls Day, when the dead apparently rose up and came back as ghosts. Us girls never slept a wink in case Granny would come in the door - she had died recently.

I'm enjoying reading the thread, brings me right back. I have nothing to do with today's Hallowe'en now and think it's an abomination, but to each their own and all that.

I love these stories! Thank you.

Did anyone else see this news report of inappropriate ‘Hallowe’en decorations’ in Cirencester in England? At a young children’s soft play, for goodness sake.

https://news.sky.com/story/childrens-soft-play-centre-apologises-over-body-bag-halloween-decorations-13237681

People go way over the top with those gruesome decorations now, I hate it!
They don’t seem to stop and think of the effect it might have on small kids or others.

Complain.

I have complained to stores and such about it. Harder to do when it’s someone’s private property and you don’t know them though. I haven’t complained in those cases.

I am older now too. I don’t think I’d have had the confidence to complain to stores about it when younger.

Also complained mad to Tesco about the Panti Bliss ads last Christmas but I think the young lad on the other end of the phone just thought I was a mad auld one. They didn’t rely to my email either🤔