Samhain is the Celtic festival to mark the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter. It takes place on 1st November, but celebrations begin at sunset on 31st October.
The festival, like Imbolc, Beltaine and Lughnasa, was widely celebrated throughout the British Isles until the Romans, and then the Saxons, invaded England. It remained an important festival in the remaining Celtic areas of Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Cornwall until the arrival of Christianity.
During Samhain burial mounds were open to enable contact with the dead. It was a time when the boundary between this world and the next would weaken and spirits from the ‘otherworld’ would appear. The spirits were appeased with offerings of food, and places would be set at feasting tables to welcome dead ancestors. Purifying bonfires were lit, and divination rituals enacted.
The festival was adapted by the Christian Church as a time to remember the dead, particularly the saints and martyrs, and was named All Hallow’s Eve and All Hallow's Day – hallow meaning to make holy. Although the Christian festival involved the lighting of candles in church graveyards, most of the rituals associated with Hallowe’en originate in pagan religions. The lighting of bonfires, divination games, the carving of root vegetables into scary faces, apple bobbing, ‘guising’ (wearing masks and costumes and visiting houses asking for food or money) all have their roots in pre-Christian rituals.
In England ‘souling’ was popular. Groups of villagers would visit local farms and houses singing ‘souler’s songs’ which would request apples, ale and soul cakes. In modern times Hallowe’en has been influenced by the United States, and trick-or-treating, a development from the original ‘guising’, is now the central focus of the festival.
As Hallowe’en follows the apple harvest the fruit was plentiful and so was used in its games and rituals – the most common of which is apple bobbing. Apples are placed in a large bucket filled with water. The object of the game is to ‘catch’ an apple with your teeth without the aid of your hands.
Another variant of the game is to tie apples to long pieces of string and hang them up from the branch of a tree or suspended pole and, again, with only the teeth, try to get the apple from the string.
Because Hallowe’en is a festival where the world of the living and the world of the dead intermingle it was thought to be an ideal time to foretell one’s future – particularly if you were a young woman wanting to know whom she would marry. An apple would be peeled into one long strip and the peel thrown over her shoulder. When the peel landed, its shape would indicate the first letter of her future husband.
Unmarried women were also encouraged to sit in front of a mirror in the dark. If they stared into the mirror long enough the face of their future spouse would appear in the mirror behind them.
Saucers were provided each with an item representing a possible future: a ring for marriage, a coin for wealth, a bean for poverty etc. The participants would be blindfolded and asked to point to a saucer – their choice would indicate their future.
The central focus of Hallowe’en today is the American ‘trick-or-treating’. This originated in the guising and souling of earlier times. Instead of providing sweets for visiting trick-or-treaters, make soul cakes and toffee apples. I also make Fat Rascals which have a scary face. I tend to find that the parents of the trick-or-treaters are more enthusiastic about these treats than their children, however!
It is thought that the carving of root vegetables into scary faces, especially skulls, originates in the Celtic Samhain. It has now become an important part of the festival, and carving tools are available in most supermarkets along with the pumpkins. If put outside your front door they can be a useful signal to trick-or-treaters that it is worth ringing the bell. Once your ‘treats’ have run out simply remove the pumpkin.
