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The Origins of Halloween

Celtic Samhain, Roman Pomona Day, Christian All Hallows'

Oct 11, 2006 Katrien Vander Straeten

The roots of Halloween run deep, all the way to the ancients Celts, and have been nurtured and altered by the Roman and Christian cultures.

Halloween, All Hallows’ and Samhain each focus on the dead and are celebrated at the beginning of winter. All these festivals (and no doubt some other, minor ones too) are so consistent because there is a straight historical line of parentage and assimilation between them.

This line goes back all the way to the Iron Age (around 600-800 BC), when the Ancient Celts or Gauls ruled parts of Great Britain and Northern France (some of them probably built Stonehenge). Like all agricultural people who rely on the cycle of the seasons, they lived by astronomical events. They accurately divided the year into a “light” half (starting around May/April) and a “dark” half (starting in October/November). When the year pivoted from the light into the dark, on or around 31 October, The Celts began the three day harvest festival of Samhain.

Because their year began with the dark half, Samhain was the “Celtic New Year” as well as the most important festival. It was believed to be a spiritually powerful time for magic, divination and communion with spirits and the dead. Samhain is still celebrated today by Neopagans and Wicca: it is one of the sabbat feasts in the Neopagan Wheel of the Year.

In the 1st century BC the Romans invaded Gaul and Britain. They were adept at drafting cultures, and Samhain was assimilated to the Day of Pomona, the goddess of fruits and gardens who was celebrated around 1 November, the time of the apple harvest.

Then Christianity slowly overcame the “Dark Ages”, and Samhain-Pomona Day survived this second “invasion”, again by being assimilated. Christian churches used to solemnize or assign special days for the formal commemoration of their chosen martyrs and saints. In 609, Pope Boniface IV dedicated 13 May to Mary and all the martyrs, and a century later, Pope Gregory III included all the saints. He also moved the day to November 1 and it officially became the solemnity called All Hallows’ (literally, “all the holy ones”) or All Saints’ in 835. The choice of 1 November was astute: the holiday effectively absorbed the “pagan” Samhain-Pomona feast and its customs into the Christian faith and calendar.

The next transformation was into Halloween, when in the 1840s Irish immigrants brought the Samhain-Pomona-All Hallows’ complex into the United States. It is interesting that in this modern, secular Halloween many of the original pagan elements are allowed to surface again and that it is now reconquering Europe as a feast distinct from All Hallows'.

Other articles on Halloween in Customs and Holidays:

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Photograph of candle flame, Julie O'Donoghue Photograph of candle flame
   
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