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.

I agree it would be unwise to complain about anything in private property, but it's worth saying something to shops and businesses. All plastic tat too, we're getting told to reduce, reuse and recycle (quite right too) but the country is then festooned with this stuff.

Good grief! That's horrible. Like some torture scene from Abu Ghraib. It reinforces the point the OP is making for sure.

Re-reading this https://historyforatheists.com/2021/10/is-halloween-pagan/ which contains (either in the body of the text or in the comments) reference to St Martin's day (November 11th) being the big children's event in and around Germany reminded me that it was important in Ireland too, and that any 11 day gap between tings requires a close look back at what was happening in the late medieval /early modern periods.

And that in Ireland not only was St Martin's day a big deal for feasts and market gatherings, people also used to

daub blood on their doors and on the corners of the house. Maybe I should go back to the village shop and tell them to put their gory display back up. Admittedly it would have been animal blood and not the result of crime.
https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2023/1111/1089533-martinmas-blood-sacrifice-rites-ireland-november-11th/

St Martin was believed in medieval Ireland to be St Patrick's uncle (brother to his mother). Which in not provable but also not impossible.

I'm glad to find so many posters share my feelings about Halloween. I don't know why it gets to me so much that it has been changed beyond recognition into a mess of plastic tat and gruesome horror that is not part of our tradition, but it really does get to me. I suppose it's seeing a tradition that continued for millennia disappearing in just a few years.

I visited somebody in a nursing home in Dublin last Halloween. It's a very nice, well-run place, I've heard nothing but good about it.

I saw purple garlands and swags and things like that all around the entrance, which was puzzling - what's purple got to do with anything? then when I got into the main part of the building, it was all black and purple decorations, with huge black spiders on the walls [terrifying! and I don't have dementia, like many of the residents], skulls, skeletons, tombstones..

It was beyond belief that [a] anybody thought that the decorations had anything to do with Halloween in Ireland, where most of the residents had grown up and [b] anybody thought it was appropriate in a setting where the residents are not a million miles away from passing over to the other side themselves and [b] that nobody thought that this nightmarish setting might be very disturbing for someone with dementia.

I noticed one women slumped in a chair, I guessed she was dozing, but after a long while I got worried and discreetly checked that she was actually still breathing! She was. But over her head was a banner with a skeleton and the words DEAD AND BREAKFAST.

I said something to the staff about how weird it all was, and how it had nothing to do with Halloween, but they seemed to think it was great fun.

I should’ve invited you to our Halloween event, might help you feel a bit better that not everyone is on a horror fest! Thefairylandtrust.org

There are some amazing photos and accounts of halloween in the Scottish islands 90-odd years ago, with children describing scraping sheep's skulls to create their costumes- it's well worth a google. The BBC did an article on it.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2eq89vd6qmo

To be totally honest, it looks like the stuff of nightmares- so there certainly has been an element of terror/horror/gruesomeness in some of the traditional versions of the festival!! (Though broadly I take your point, it has turned into a sugar and plastic fest which is a horror thing on its own right!!)

In Australia, it is "celebrated " at the same time as the Northern hemisphere - and it's all mass produced plastic crap and chap nasty lollies.
The parents and kids are often very rude and demanding.

Not a pleasant experience.

My favourite thing about a real Halloween is the all souls remembrance. I put a candle in the window for loved ones to find their way home.
I found the new Halloween particularly difficult when a parent has died and I was trying to remember then like that, meanwhile all around was gore and blood and death.
I prefer the traditional Halloween

I am Irish and old enough to remember dressing up (a mask and a black sack) and going from door to door asking for apples and nuts, but I like modern Halloween, it's fun. Anyone who wants to carry on the old traditions can do so, but some of us like shop bought costumes and buckets of sweets.

Halloween festivities for children 2024-style:
As screaming children chased by blood-soaked clowns spill out of a north inner city hall shrouded in gloom, some look thrilled and some look terrified.
“You’re not so brave now, are ya,” one mammy says good-naturedly to her little boy as she wipes the tears streaking down his ashen face.
“And if you’re bold I’ll bring you back in,” she continues before she sees the profound impact the words are having on her traumatised toddler and brings him in for a hug instead.
Screaming children chased by blood-soaked clowns spill out of Dublin city hall – The Irish Times

Have a fun Oiche Shamhna. Little callers to my door will get sweets and money, and a lovely shiny polished apple

When buying kale I remembered that my father said they used to put sixpences in colcannon. Anyone else do that?

It will also be drink-up day because I'm going off the gargle 'for the holy souls' and I certainly won't be able to finish the bottle, it's only been open a couple of days, so I'll be making and freezing a batch of boeuf bourgignon tomorrow.

I also have two tiny bottles, one of comforting red, one of celebratory fizz. I have a birthday coming, but rather than cracking either then I'll wait until the US election results come in and open whichever seems appropriate.

I might need a bottle of gin if that Halloween Horror is elected 😱

I was trying to find news on the recent Ballaghadereen incident/candlelit march/protest and came upon this wonderful posting on a local Facebook.

Lucky old souls, unless the cats get there first.

I think he sat in the fire instead 👻

Ah, I see it, it does look like a figure in the fire!

There was a really good documentary on RTE called 'Na Féilte Tine (The Fire Festivals) on the Bank Holiday Monday (28th October). I caught it by accident and found it really interesting. It might be on the Player.