All Hallows: An Entanglement
Today is All Hallow’s Eve, Hallowe’en, with all the sweet treats, riotous good fun, and spooky debauchery that entails. Tomorrow is All Saints Day, All Hallows, a reincarnation of the ancient Irish festival called Samhain, which means “end of summer”.
Samhain is one of the few clear remnants from at least one of the cultures we now name Celtic. The holiday, Samhain, is named in the story “The Wasting Sickness of Cu Chulainn” (Serglige Con Culainn) found in the Book of the Dun Cow (Lebor na hUidre). In that tale, the Ulstermen were said to hold a fair “for the three days before Samain and three days after it and the day of Samain itself”, in which nothing was done but “games and gatherings and pleasure and eating and feasting”. (Of course, I heartily approve.) This book of folklore and myth was compiled in the 12th century CE by Christian monks; however, it describes late Bronze Age and early Iron Age technology and lifeways among the insular Celts — who were ancient even by the time these stories were recorded, though it does seem that oral traditions had preserved the memories, if poorly understood, quite accurately.
We, in modern times, do not have quite so precise a record. In fact, it often feels like everything written in the 19th and 20th century should be taken with a whole shaker of salt. Perhaps, literally? That phrase, “taken with a grain of salt” is first recorded by Pliny the Elder in 77CE, though it was in common usage in his day. It refers to including a bit of salt in antidotes to poison. Over time, salt was seen to reduce the threat of poison, physically and metaphorically. Skepticism, the grain of salt antidote to illogical thinking, thus was seen to make a falsehood less toxic, less likely to spread, less likely to endure.
Of late, we are noticing that we are not so liberal with our salt in many ways, but it seems like this has been an ongoing problem for centuries. In the last few centuries, many things put out there as fact are just not (at least in English). Facts about history, about philosophy, about anthropology, about nature, even science (which shouldn’t readily fall into the falsification pit because of its process of repeated experimentation) — much fails evidential testing. Recently, through a concerted effort to pay more attention to the actual record of things (inspired largely by women and BIPOC folks questioning the lack of representation in print), we are learning that large swathes of what is written and published is misinformed opinion… though it’s also accurate to name it prejudice.
I recently — as in, this week — learned that my concept of Samhain falls into that pit. It is not in the Coligny calendar. It is not the start of a new year. In ancient times, it was probably not celebrated anywhere but Ireland. It may not have even been a festival of the dead, though it could have been a livestock harvest festival in which there is substantial death — and enormous gratefulness for those deaths. The “end of summer” is unquestionably when the herds were brought down from the highlands and the overstock slaughtered. Much of that meat and offal was preserved for winter, but undoubtedly there was “eating and feasting”. Probably “games and gatherings”, too, since herding is a community endeavor. But still, this type of celebration of the death that sustains life is a very different thing from the Day of the Dead and ancestor veneration. (Which is not a common theme in Irish or generally Celtic myth… the Others are true non-humans… fairies, Tuatha De Danann, sidhe, demon-sired wizards, and the like… almost never human ghosts or ancestors…)
Samhain was probably more like a merry Thanksgiving than a modern Hallowe’en.
It was certainly not the “witches’ new year”.
But it turned into a new year’s eve long ago from my perspective…
For almost 150 years, a translation error, or perhaps just wishful thinking, placed the “Celtic New Year” on Samhain, making the eve of Samhain a new year’s eve, with all the traditions attendant to the new year. In the Hibbert Lectures of 1886, Sir John Rhys claimed that the month of “Samon” and “Samhain” were equivalent, despite the former meaning “summer” and the latter meaning “end of summer”. Samon, summer, clearly inaugurates the year in the Gaulish Coligny calendar, a bronze plaque from the 2nd century CE that lays out a 5-year lunisolar cycle. There is much evidence that the Gauls, at least, followed this method of time-keeping as early as Julius Caesar (who seems to have been rather impressed by Gaulish reckoning in his book Bellum Gallium).
There is also some evidence that other Celtic cultures followed a similar system. Many classical writers described the time-keeping of the “Hyperboreans”, commonly interpreted as Irish or Welsh peoples, in terms that closely aligned with the Coligny calendar, and most of these writers were writing long before that bronze was cast in Gaul. Moreover, the names of seasons and solstices in both Irish and Welsh are cognate with the names of the months on the Coligny calendar. Similarly, the modern Irish name for November is Samhain, “end of summer”, while the Classical Gauls named that approximate time Giamon, “winter”.
So, it seems, based on factual evidence, that Sir John had his dating inverted. Samhain was not the beginning of the year. It was the end of the light half of the year, the end of summer. We can’t be certain of when the Irish, the peoples who observed the festival of Samhain, started their new annual cycle, but mythological evidence does seem to lean toward a Beltaine New Year’s Eve, not Samhain. (If they recognized a new year’s eve at all, given their focus on the moon rather than the sun.) The Gaulish calendar clearly starts the year in early summer, also around Beltaine. More precisely, the year commenced with the first visible rising of the Pleiades after that constellation’s conjunction with the sun, the heliacal rising of the Pleiades.
Myths contain references to both the new year and summer beginning with the heliacal rising of the Pleiades, which happens in late May now but, due to precession, occurred around what is now our May Day in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age. This was not merely a Celtic tradition; it spanned the Northern Hemisphere for thousands of years. The Greek and Phoenician sailing seasons, the opening of summer for these peoples, began with the rising of the Pleiades, though at least the Greeks held off on celebrating the new year until the first full moon after the summer solstice. However, many other cultures take this annual heliacal rising of the Pleiades for their New Year. Cultures as far apart as the Māori of New Zealand the Aztecs of Central America began their year at that time. And public works projects from the Egyptian pyramids to the trade houses of Chaco Canyon all preserve alignments to this rising at key points in a cycle of years. It was the new year, as well as the beginning of eras, for the Celts and for many other peoples.
Now, there is one other complication that influenced Sir John’s ideas on Samhain and the new year. From across Celtic cultures and for at least as long as Classical writers were scribbling about their northern neighbors, there is ample evidence indicating a philosophical bent to begin things in darkness. The most well-documented evidence of this is the beginning of the day. Like most cultures who use a moon-based calendar, Gauls and insular Celts reckoned the day from sunset to sunset. Myths such as the hiding of Lugh, Pryderi, and Mabon for a period after their births also evidence a tendency to focus on gestation in darkness, a prolonged womb state after inception. Moreover, if the cross-quarter days broadly corresponded to the beginnings of seasons (as they do today), there was substantial delay between the beginning of the season and the open expression of seasonal weather, a month or so of incubation.
From this, it makes a certain sense to begin the annual round in winter, in darkness. However, it’s not quite that simple. The day is reckoned to start at sunset not necessarily because of the darkness but because this is the easiest time to judge the phase of the moon and, from that, the first of the month. Further, the month did not start with the relatively dark new crescent as in other cultures around the world. Classical writers and preserved mythology all clearly agree that the Celtic month began with the light of the five-day-old moon shining at the zenith while the sun set.
I have to say, this is a rather brilliantly fool-proof system. The waxing half-moon is directly overhead at sunset. There is no subjective debate about whether the crescent is visible. No need for a clear horizon. No need even for stone markers. Just look straight up when the sun is going down. If the moon is shining up there, then the month begins. (Of course, the weather has to be moderately cooperative…)
While we have no idea what they thought, logically this is consistent. Begin earthly things like seasons and growth in darkness, because they do. Obviously, growth does anyway. But truly, I think it feels right to also start the seasons before the weather is seasonal. The peak of seasonal weather is the middle of the season, not the beginning. It takes a long slow time of spring not feeling much like spring before spring really gets going. Further, while it doesn’t feel like spring, it also doesn’t feel like winter. It feels like winter is dying and spring is building. So, these things of the land begin in an occluded state.
However, the things of the sky begin with light. Even the day begins at sunset, when the darkness may be growing but the light is not yet gone. But the day begins at sunset precisely because that is when the moon’s light is growing. The moon cycles begin with the bright moon overhead, strong and still waxing. So, shouldn’t the year begin when the sun is strong? Or, as was probably the case, when the Pleiades were shining after being hidden behind the sun. Not during that dark period, but after.
Well, we don’t know if they had such thoughts, but it does seem a little more logically harmonious than equating the new year with Samhain because that name contains the root word for “summer” and Samon, “summer”, is when the Gauls, hundreds of years later and hundreds of miles to the south, began their annual cycles. Regardless, by now, it is well documented and generally accepted that Sir John had it backwards. Samon, the month that began the Gaulish year, was the beginning of summer not winter. While Samhain, the holiday celebrated by the Irish Celts, did not take place in Samon, summer, but at the beginning of winter.
Now, not being a new year does not mean that Samhain was not a holy festival. It was. In fact, it is the only festival that was so fiercely honored that we still know its name. Not even Beltaine is so named in myths.
Moreover, it still is a holy time. Maybe even more so. Because in the millennia since the Ulstermen were eating and feasting and generally having a good time in true Irish fashion, this holiday has taken on many new aspects. It may not have started as the new year for the Celts, but since Sir John’s error, it has been the de facto new year for peoples who are looking to the past for inspiration on how to live, from Wiccans and druids to the modern Celtic peoples who are trying to find their own path independent of English and French dominance.
Similarly, it also may not have started out as a day of the dead, but the Catholic Church made certain to fully incorporate ancestor veneration into this time. For over a thousand years, we have honored the dead at the beginning of November, which for many cultures is also the beginning of winter, the end of the growth season. So today, peoples from all around the world consider this a time out of time, a time when the veil is thin, a time when the dead walk among us.
Samhain is the beginning of winter, Giamon, and the end of summer, Samon, the end of growth and the beginning of death. But the night in between the old and new, Samhain Eve, All Hallow’s Eve, that is no time at all. As such it is delicate. Not this, not that, a time when the Other can bleed through the cracks in the betwixt. And the Other is generally not friendly. Or at least it has very different priorities from those of the human tribe. These liminal times were dangerous. Some still believe this is true. Many traditions still practiced today are firmly rooted in the precautions my ancestors took to keep harm away from the hearth.
Leaving sweet treats out for the Good Folk (faeries, land spirits, sidhe) morphed into “souling”, which was children going around, singing and collecting “soul cakes” and coins for the recently dead, the faithful who were stuck in Purgatory. Soul cakes were handed out any time from the end of the harvest to Twelfth Night. But the souling attached to Hallowe’en morphed into the ambulatory begging with an edge of menace that we now name Trick-or-Treat — which was exactly what it was millennia ago. Gangsta fae demands… “Deliver the treats or suffer the tricks!”
On these treacherously ambiguous nights, if the Good Folk were not appeased with their favorite treats — sweet cream and cakes — there were very serious tricks played. Spoiled milk. Butter turned rancid. Mice let into the grain stores. Livestock let out of the byre. Candles and hearth fires that spit devastating sparks. Children taken from cradles and replaced with monsters. (Though, admittedly, this last happened at any time of the year and probably reflects our ambiguous relationship with toddlers more so than any fraught time of year… I’m fairly certain I had a changeling for a couple years with each son.)
(I should pause here to say that while many believed in the actual existence of these malevolent beings, that existence was irrelevant to the practice. People made the supernatural true in a certain sense by embodying the traditions. Perhaps they even knew that the cause of such tricks was natural. But in an animist world where every being has agency, natural causes can take on identities such as witches, faeries and demons. Or gods, angels and saints when the cause proved benevolent. And if leaving out cream and cake was coincident with no bad things happening frequently enough, a cause-and-effect relationship would grow. It just “worked”. Nobody much bothered about why.)
Masking and fancy dress — especially cross-dressing and wearing clothes backwards or inside-out — were also common prophylactic traditions at this liminal time. If one had to be abroad in this especially perilous darkness, it was best to do what you could to confuse the night predators. Keeping iron or mugwort in your pockets, placing clover in your shoes, carrying lighted ragwort stalks and candle-filled turnips — all these things were protective measures taken on this night, accompanied by a good number of cantrips muttered while crossing the threshold. Stepping through a door is perilous at the best of times, as it is actually liminal. But on this between night, the risk of inadvertently inviting the unsavory Others inside to bedevil the house was magnified, and with land spirits being discarnate beings, you had no notion of if or when they might be clinging to your garments like fen vapors. Best practice was to take precautions as a matter of course.
Now, it wasn’t all devils and malevolent sprites who could cross over. If there was a thinning to the boundaries on Other worlds, it stood to reason that those who were on the far side of death might also be able to return during this nebulous night. People took precautions against the incursion of the malicious beings, but they didn’t bar the door completely. They left candles burning in western windows to guide loved ones back home, west being the commonly acknowledged direction one travelled to arrive at the Land of the Dead. They prepared altars and feasts filled with all their departed family members’ favorite things. Grandma was seated at the head of the table with a plate of the best morsels, as was her wont when inhabiting a living body. After the supper, the living gathered around the hearth and spent the long night regaling the dead with entertaining song, dance, and all the news of the past year. The recently dead were said to especially want to hear of births and marriages that had happened after they left this realm.
Most of these traditions had been associated with either Parentalia, the central festival of the ancestors in the Classical world, or Lemuria, the Roman festival of the dead that took place around the beginning of May. But Rome spread and Rome fell and things Roman were amalgamated as the meanings of things Roman began to be lost. The tradition of waking the dead became common in the summer months, even in Ireland where the Romans never set a dominating foot. So it was that the early Catholic Church inherited a vibrant tradition of unsanctioned ancestor veneration around May Day. Officials felt obliged to do something to explain these annual celebrations of the numinous and mysterious within the story of the Church.
In the 7th century, Pope Boniface IV set the Feast of All Martyrs to May 13, what was once the last day of Lemuria. This was apparently not a strong enough distinction for lay folk. So, in the next century, Pope Gregory III decided to rip the day out of its traditional time, moving the Feast of All Martyrs to early November. Then Pope Gregory IV fixed the feast day to 1 November and named it All Saints’ Day.
Some folks claim that this specific date was chosen for its relationship to Samhain, but it is unlikely that Samhain was still celebrated at this point in history, several hundred years after St Patrick kicked the druids out of Ireland. It is also unlikely that Pope Gregory would have known what Samhain was, nor is it likely that he would have endorsed such a holiday if he did know of it. Finally, the object was to disassociate the Feast of All Martyrs from the pagan celebrations of Beltaine and Lemuria. It would hardly satisfy that objective to then turn around and link the day to another pagan holy time.
But whatever happened in the 8th and 9th centuries was probably long forgotten by the time Catholic monks were recording the Book of the Dun Cow in the 12th century. In those long years, things changed and things stayed the same, and All Saints’ Day repeatedly reverted to form, especially the association with the familiar dead. Time and again, the Church tried to excise the celebration of the longed-for dead, those with personal ties to the living, from this night. But Grandma would insist on coming to call… and the faithful balked.
They refused to leave the hearthside on the one night of the year when it was possible to talk with loved ones who had passed on. They did not go to Mass. They did not light votive candles (one of the principal sources of revenue for small parishes in the Middle Ages). They did not even call it All Saints’ Day. In the vernacular it was All Hallows’, Hallowmas. (Apparently, Grandma was not always a saint, though she was hallowed…) And so, the night before All Hallows’ Day became All Hallows’ Eve, Hallowe’en.
Eventually, Rome relented and gave the pagans their own day of the dead — All Souls’ Day — but Rome insisted that All Saints’ Day took precedence. It came first in the calendar, on the First of November, while All Souls’ Day was fixed to the Second. This worked out quite nicely. The peasants could feast with their former loved ones and yet still go and honor the Holy Ones. As a further enticement (and an even larger parish revenue stream), it became customary for the Church to sell indulgences for souls languishing in Purgatory during Hallowmas. One could go to Mass on All Hallows’, buy off some purgatorial time, and then deliver this joyful news during the All Souls’ wake.
The peasants happily embraced this transformation. Hallowmas became so central to the year that in the early fifteenth century Pope Sixtus IV extended the combined festival to eight days, calling it the octave of Hallowtide. Interestingly, this 8-day festival resonated both with the liminal seven days of Samhain and the 7-day liminal new year festival of Saturnalia. I doubt Pope Sixtus was motivated by these correspondences, but these linkages were probably not lost on the pagan faithful. It was certainly annoying enough to some that a century later, when many of these customs were falling out of favor (yet again), Martin Luther chose Hallowe’en, out of all the nights in the year, to publicly express his dissatisfaction with the avarice and heathenry he saw in the Catholic Church.
This obviously had dire effects on the Church and on Western history, but it also tainted All Hallows’ Eve with tangible whiffs of ancient paganism, perhaps even resurrected a dim memory of the forgotten holiday of Samhain, interpreted through the lens of the Renaissance. It is interesting to note that by the time Luther made his stand, the full octave of Hallowtide had been abandoned and the holiday was back to two days and an evening. Even All Souls’ Day was dwindling in popularity as people lost their connections to place and ancestry in the upheavals of enclosure and the rising urban mercantile culture. One wonders what might have happened to All Hallows’ if Luther had never singled out the day as one of infernal infamy.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, a further entanglement was added. Many Central American Indigenous peoples celebrated a day of the dead, complete with ritual games, music and feasting with their former loved ones; and it, too, seems to have been observed around May Day. However, in addition to honoring the dead, the day was dedicated to deities that were substantially less than Church-sanctioned. The Mexican Church quickly imposed their own Day of the Dead upon the conquered people. And to sever the connection with the native festival — as the Gregorys did nearly a millennium before — the Mexican Church moved the date of the festival to the, by then, largely forgotten Day of All Souls, 2 November.
This, by the way, is one imposition that probably didn’t bother many of the indigenous common folks too much. Their former overlords required rather taxing sacrifice on the native day of the dead. Following the Church allowed the peasantry to retain their holiday without sending their young folks off to the ofttimes literal slaughter.
(Though… I have to take a break here to again say that rumors of human sacrifice are greatly exaggerated, coming as they do from those with the clear intention of demonizing those they would subjugate — for their own good, of course. For one thing, where are the piles of bones associated with sacred sites? For another, any group of humans that routinely kills large numbers of its breeding population and labor force is going to run itself extinct in short order. So, it doesn’t make sense and is not very evidence-based. However, it is a titillating tale that still accords with that original agenda… so it will persist… And again, much of what is in print is fact-deprived willful ignorance.)
In Hispanic lands, the ancient end of summer in Northern Europe took on another layer with grinning skeletons and bright flowers. And the exchange flowed both ways. In the 18th and 19th centuries, some of the ancient European traditions that were once again growing in popularity — like masking and mischief — were incorporated into the Central American Day of the Dead. The result became a conflagration of color and light and spectacle — and of course fantastic food.
And here we are back to the deep roots of Samhain, pleasure and eating and feasting!
While this was going on down south, the Germans and Irish and Scots brought their All Hallows’ Eve to the northern colonies, much to the chagrin of the Puritans (who seem mainly to have been anti-happiness). For the Protestant immigrants, this holiday incorporated the new element of Bonfire Night, a night given over to denigrating all things Catholic, represented by the unfortunate figure of Guy Fawkes who was burned in effigy — along with the pope, cardinals, witches, priests and just about any other deplorable. Bonfire Night was a blazing night of mischief, though somewhat sanctioned by the Elders, being nominally anti-papist.
But there were worse things happening on the Eve of All Hallows’.
Even as early as the 17th century there are laments about the antics of dissolute youth on Hallowe’en and much sneering at candles lit for the ancestors. Now, yes, there was reason to complain about the mischief. Young folks could inflict quite a lot of damage on their elders and the generally despised rich. (And, make no mistake, the Puritans were wealthy. They stole how many thousands of square miles of prime real estate…) The kids would pull pranks and run off laughing into the night and then blame it all on the Devil — at least as motivating force if not acting completely on his own. However, much of the puritanical rancor was not directed at the broken fence posts, wandering livestock, and wax-filled locks. The thing that really irritated the Elders was that the hoi polloi were taking time off from their Puritan-directed labors (enriching Puritans) to go have a bit of fun. Most hated of all was the tradition of divination that was tied to this holiday.
Divination was, indeed, a relic of Bronze Age Samhain. Classical writers uniformly note that the druid holy days observed at the beginning of winter were a time of official soothsaying. Predictions were made for the year, for the era, for ruling houses, for whole tribes. This tradition never did die out. It may be human instinct to peer into the mists of time when the mists of autumn are thick. It is, in any case, widely believed that liminal times allow the living and mundane to see into hidden time — the past and the future. So, the druid tradition carried on even while the druids themselves were largely forgotten. By the 17th century there were numerous methods of foretelling associated specifically with Hallowmas.
Hallowe’en came at the end of the harvest season. Apples, nuts, cabbages and potatoes were abundant, and these things — symbols, in their own right, of good fortune — were used heavily in divination. Nuts, in particular, were so firmly tied to Hallowe’en that the night was called Nutcrack Night. One widespread method of foretelling marriage prospects — by far the most common concern with popular fortune telling — was to place two nuts in the hearth fire. If the two stayed together, then love would be constant. If they split, then love would fail.
Many other foods were also used. An apple skin might be peeled in one continuous piece and then tossed over the shoulder. If the shape of the peel resembled a letter, then this was the initial of one’s future husband. Young girls would scurry out to the cabbage fields at midnight and pull the first kale stalk that they saw. In the light of morning, the shape of the stalk was interpreted. If it looked like a hoe (as I’m sure most did), then you would likely marry a farmer. If it resembled a boat, then you’d marry a sailor. (Not sure how a cabbage stalk would look like a boat… but you get the idea.)
Traditional Hallowe’en foods like the mash o’ nine sorts and oat bannocks served forecasting as well, most commonly through coins and trinkets hidden in the mash or dough. This could foretell your true love much like the kale stalks. Whatever you bit down upon at supper would represent the kind of person you would marry. But it could also represent a more general fate. A coin might mean riches in your future. A ring could mean an upcoming marriage offer. A small doll indicated a baby.
There were also many ways to predict your demise. As fire featured in the Hallowmas celebrations, it was frequently used in divination. You could read the colors and shapes of the dancing flames. You could try to jump a candle without putting it out, in which latter case you were doomed in the coming year. Young people would choose stones and place these in the bonfire. The next morning, they would search the ashes for the stone. If the stone was cracked or spat out of the fire ring, there would be death in the coming year.
The Protestants firmly objected to all of this. The sects that came to this continent believed in a fixed fate written in the hand of their deity — one in which they were the most-favored Chosen, of course. Any attempt to gainsay god by divining — literally, “being god” — was a deplorable sin… Not least because the lesser souls were questioning the Puritan hierarchy.
Worse, in the eyes of the Elders, much of the divination was practiced by young women who were anxious about their future. Having no control over their mundane lives, they turned to the supernatural from time to time to try to be prepared for the path laid before them by their male kin. Fathers had utter control of their daughters’ bodies, and as such used them as property, trading on their procreative potential and labor to increase familial wealth — which of course accrued to fathers and husbands. In fortune telling, they were tacitly challenging the order imposed upon them. And, of course, any sign of feminine disobedience was harshly quashed. So the Hallowe’en attempts to see into the future — just to see, mind you, not affect their fate — were dealt with swiftly and ruthlessly.
There are reasons to believe that the Salem “witch” fiasco began with a group of bored teen girls engaging in folk magic to learn the names of their future husbands. It may be that they were using the trance-inducing activities of hair brushing in front of a mirror, or staring into a candle flame, or spinning wool in the darkness. But their divining came to the attention of the authorities (because they were stupid enough to include a daughter of the local preacher in their illicit activities…). Upon being discovered, they covered up their deviant divining with terrible and surgically precise lies, lies their male elders were predisposed to believe with little questioning or rational logic, lies that these girls knew would be met with swift violence. Many of these girls paid for their lies with a lifetime of severe mental illness. Their victims paid with their livelihoods and lives. All because they tried to learn a bit about their fate in the early winter darkness.
(Most of the men suffered no consequences except perhaps a few sub-par meals, if recorded accounts can be believed.)
Still, Hallowe’en divination survived even in darkest Massachusetts. By the 19th century, tea leaves were being read even by the wealthy, more for the thrill of it than to gain information — though there was still a desire to know matrimonial futures, a constant agony for young women throughout the ages of patriarchy.
But the pranks! The pranks became epic! My favorite tale — which is probably apocryphal as it seems to have taken place in communities from Ireland to Missouri — was moving a carriage indoors by taking the contraption apart and reassembling it in the middle of the room while the rest of the household slept. Can’t say that I’d sleep through that level of disturbance in a one-room house, but it makes for a fun tale. There are also stories told of cows being lifted onto rooftops and locks being filled with molten metal and whole fields of corn transplanted miles away overnight. Makes the modern toilet paper and egg pranks seem distinctly lacking in ambition.
In reaction to these pranks, a new chapter was written in the origin story of Hallowe’en. Concerned elders — this time the mothers — sought to redirect all this destructive energy. Now, logically one might have thought that cutting the sugar would have been a good first step… But no, they went the other direction. The night was, instead, given over to the treat-begging that had evolved in the Middle Ages as souling for purgatorial relief.
Anoka, Minnesota, claims to be the first community that put on a Hallowe’en celebration to divert the kiddies from their pranking. In 1920, Anoka held a costume parade and gave out treats to all comers. It was so popular that it became an annual event. Kids quickly cottoned on… Dress up as an adorable witch or ghost and get candy.
The mothers thought that the tricks would end if the treats were guaranteed.
As you are, no doubt, aware, this did not work out exactly as planned.
And how could it! Every miscreant child knows that tricks are part of the fabric of Hallowe’en.
However, following Anoka’s lead, American culture has centered Hallowe’en on two themes: the treats that originally served as bribes dissuading malevolent beings from their tricks and the malevolent beings themselves, now including humans. The benevolent parts of the story — thankfulness, communing with dead loved ones, even fortune telling — have been lost in the welter of plastic Hallowe’en. We only see the darkness, dressed up a good deal of snide camp. There are miniature vampires and werewolves stalking the streets. Zombies and aliens and ghosts are in the check-out lines at the supermarket. Witches and goblins cavort on porches. Disturbed men with all manner of deadly implements play upon our fears. (Of course, this is also true in real life…)
But Grandma is largely absent in body and spirit…
Still… some of us do remember our dead. Those of us, who come from or live within cultures that claim descent from the original Central Americans, have incorporated Día de los Muertos into our Hallowe’en. It’s common in New Mexico, for example, to set up a magnificent ofrenda with marigolds and papel picado, burning candles and tres leches cake, even as the kids go door-to-door begging for chocolate and sugar. It’s not uncommon to share a solemn candlelit meal with the dead before trooping off to the Hallowe’en costume party.
Even the secular aspects of the holiday tend to be more flavorful and non-denominational than in other parts of this country. Mariachi music and Tim Burton movies play simultaneously. La Llorona stares balefully out from book covers alongside favorite cuddly characters wearing bedsheets and pointy black hats. Open your door to trick-or-treaters and, among the Spiderman costumes and wizard cloaks, the empty, alien eyes of the Chupacabra will jump out at you (and haunt your dreams all night…). It’s a truly multicultural festival with deep roots on both sides of the Atlantic.
However, here in New England, Hallowe’en is confusing and bland. There are plastic costumes and obligatory yard decorations and bags of overpriced candy in the grocery stores. But the roots aren’t there. There is no story under the spectacle, which makes it all rather inexplicable.
It’s not even the right weather. Too cold and wet for bonfires and trick-or-treating. All the trees are bare, and even the apple harvest is over by Hallowe’en. Winter has already begun.
So, Hallowmas has become a muted holiday in my home — though none the less meaningful for me. In fact, now that there aren’t as many distractingly adorable beggars, I am more at leisure to enjoy a spooky book and a mug of warm cider, while listening to Liszt and Verdi and Mussorgsky. This year I am reading We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad. Ivy League MFA students of varying degrees of dilettantism and psychosis with a rather bloody creative process and a fixation on rabbits. An ax is a central character… Good light reading…
This year, November beginning on the weekend, I am also free to celebrate the rest of Hallowmas as I wish. All Saints’ Day will be given over to remembering those who are inspirational to me. I will read and write, perhaps watch a movie about someone I admire. I will listen to music with my full attention, to hear what the composer and musicians are saying. Late in the day, I will light a candle in my western kitchen window and prepare my own Dumb Supper in silence. I will make a veg stew in place of the traditional mash o’ nine sorts since I am not partial to mush — and neither was my grandmother. I will set the table in her honor, using her silver and the tablecloth she embroidered (even though it’s decorated with trailing ivy and poinsettias for Christmas).
At sunset, which is so very early this time of year, I will eat by candlelight. When my meal is done, I will set Grandma’s portion on the back steps for the fae… who will likely be embodied as the raccoons who live in my jungle. If they don’t like stew, the remainder will go into the composter in the morning.
The morning will bring the biannual kerfuffle of changing the clocks, which will shift the sunrise back one hour, giving me an hour more of morning light — but an hour less in the evening. Sunset on All Souls’ Day will be 4:37pm which makes me sleepy far too early in the day. But I will try to stay awake in the darkness so that I’m not awake by 2am on Monday morning.
During the foreshortened day, I will do the things that need doing but think on my dearly departed ones. It may seem that I am talking to myself, but I will really be telling them what has been going on in my life. I’ll probably cut some chrysanthemums and the last of the asters for a bouquet on my meditation altar, which has my representations of the Mothers, the Hunter’s Moon (which is full on Wednesday), and the season of Samhain. If I have the time, I might start to put my campy Hallowe’en things away and dig out the frosty sparkle of Early Winter. Because the snow is already falling in the dark hours, and it won’t be long before it sticks around all day.
And so… we come back to the beginning. It is Samhain, the beginning of winter, the time of darkness and rest. It is the festival of the dead. And it is my lunar new year. Many tangled traditions created this holy day. I do my best to honor the time and remember.
And so… I wish you all a blessed Hallowmas…
©Elizabeth Anker 2025
By My Solitary Hearth 