Samhain, the history of Halloween you wish you knew before

As October 31st approaches, people around the world have begun carving pumpkins, choosing spooky costumes and filling buckets with sweets and chocolate. Though the holiday is celebrated with tricks and treats, there is over 2000 years of history that make up the day.

Starting with the festival of Samhain.

A pagan religious festival originating from an ancient Celtic spiritual tradition, the Samhain festival is usually celebrated from October 31st to November 1st to Harvest and usher in “the dark half of the year”.

The barriers between the living and the dead break down during Samhain, resulting in easier interactions between humans and soles of the non-living. Celtics around Europe have celebrated the festival since the 18thcentury, founding the traditions of what we now know as Halloween.

Ancient Celts marked Samhain as the most significant of four quarterly fire festivals, gaining its fire festival name from the tradition of leaving fires within homes to burn out whilst the harvest was gathered. Once the harvest work had been completed, celebrants would join Druid priests within their community to use a wheel to course friction and flames to ignite a fire for all to see. Once the communal fire was lit and prayers had been made, participants of the festival would take a flame and return it to their homes to relight their burnt-out fires.

The historic meaning of the fire is no longer related with Halloween and instead associated with guy Fawkes, highlighting a piece of history lost.

Though the festival is a religious view, those who did not participate in the celebration were believed to be punished from the gods, usually in illness or death. It has also been noticed that anybody who was seen to be using a weapon or committing any form of crime during the celebration would be sentenced to death. A gruesome end to a festival ‘celebrating life’ that no longer bares weight in the events of today’s society.

In preparation for the breach in the vail between the living and the dead, Celts would prepare offerings that would be left outside of their villages and fields, these would be intended for the fairies and or the Sidhs.

Turning a blind eye to the history of Halloween, children now find pleasure in imitating characters from a sinister background, with little to know further knowledge on where it came about. However, the tradition of dressing up is not one that was invented for entertainment purposes, but one that traces back to the beginning of Samhain.

It is rumoured that the Celts would dress as animals and monsters in an attempt to prevent the temptation of kidnapping by the fairies. Other monsters are also associated with Samhain, including a shape-shifting creature called Pukah (often referred to as Púca) that would receive harvest offerings from the field.

The Lady Gwyn, a headless woman dressed in white who chases night wanderers and was seen assisted by a black pig. Pretending to be a lost soul, she was known to chase the journeymen caught wondering in the night.

Other monsters included the Dullahan, headless men on horses, armed with their heads, and Stingy Jack, a manipulating drunkard with a silver tongue. Rumour has it, Stingy Jack once met acquaintance with Satin, requesting for alcohol before entering hell.

Costumes, including dead witches, green monsters and ghosts are al mimics of a sinister history that fail to take into consideration the route of the horror.