It all began long ago with fire – and it’s happening again, if COVID-19 doesn’t interfere. But chances are, we’ll still be able to get out the black fabric, stack some firewood and make a pumpkin pie. Oh, and fill a bowl with candies.
It goes back into the mists of time where it all began with fires lit against the dark nights, to bar the prowling shadows of the dead and to cook the crops brought in for winter. Around the world people have festivals to mark the harvest, to honour the dead and all combine masks, costumes, food and fire. In Canada, our festival is on October 31st and we call it Hallowe’en.
Customs of these ancient festivals have been passed from one society to the next, including us in the twenty-first century. In Canada, most of our families originated somewhere else, so the borrowing and mixing of traditions is natural. And it occurred even in the oldest places. The parades and harvest celebrations of the ancient Egyptians used ideas passed to them from the Babylonians. The Babylonians borrowed theirs from the Sumerians, who flourished 5,000 years ago. And, so it goes, back to times before there was a written history.
Our own Hallowe’en melting pot includes the bones and skulls of Mexico’s Day of the Dead, bonfires of the Celts and the Druids, firecrackers of the Chinese and the harvest food of the Iroquois and Mohawk nations.
Most of our Hallowe’en customs came to North America with Scottish and Irish immigrants. Their ancestors were the Celts. Even after the Roman conquest of the British Isles in 60AD, the Celts were partying up a storm to celebrate their form of Hallowe’en. It was almost 700 years after the Romans left Britain before Pope Gregory decided to make the local holiday into a day honouring saints of the church. The festival day of the Celts became All Saints Day and the evening before, October 31, became Hallowed Evening, or Hallowe’en.
In Europe, parades have always been part of the harvest tradition. Churches everywhere were encouraged to organize their flock into processions, and important citizens would dress up as famous saints or well-known patrons of the church. Our tradition of dressing up as famous people began that way.
Handing out Hallowe’en treats (love those caramels!) in exchange for tricks is also a gift from the past. Among the Celts celebrating their festival 2,000 years ago, people believed the dead returned to earth on Samhain at the end of October. On that sacred night, people gathered to light bonfires, offer sacrifices and pay homage to the dead. People dressed in skins as ghosts, demons and other malevolent creatures, performing antics in exchange for food and drink. This custom, known as mumming, dates to the Middle Ages and is known today as trick or treating.
As for the trick part, that’s another European custom, which is carried on here with the playing of pranks. Scamps ringing our doorbells until the middle of the night and begging for candy and treats are not signs of our declining civilization; they are traditional parts of harvest and “day of the dead” festivals. So, wash the soap off your windows, sweep up the eggshells and toilet paper and put it all down to tradition.
Fireworks at Hallowe’en are part of festivals from China to Mexico to England. Invented in China, they are used to scare the dead and drive away evil spirits at the beginning of the dark season. In ancient times, the noise to scare the ghouls was a drum, a horn or a gong. In England, they used “poppers” in the fall festival. Even today, groups of men gather in an English field or yard next to a cemetery. Using two anvils, a handful of gunpowder and a long fuse they set off “poppers” loud enough to wake the dead!
Those explosions are also a reminder of more recent English history; the fifth of November 1605. That was the date on which traitor Guy Fawkes was to blow up the Houses of Parliament as King James I was visiting the Lords and Commons. Fawkes had been recruited by a small group of Catholic fanatics to be the man who would set off the gunpowder. The plot was betrayed, and Fawkes was arrested on November 4th. Hallowe’en parties in England and North America often include the burning of an effigy of Guy as part of the bonfire.
Hallowe’en today is also a commercial event increasingly important to retailers. We spend money on everything from costume rentals and party supplies to fireworks and candy. Money aside, it could also be that the interest and affection for Hallowe’en has less to do with advertising than with our ongoing enjoyment of having a place in the natural cycle of the year.
So, go ahead, pick up that space helmet or sword, don a cape or a leopard skin bikini. Be sure to make enough noise to scare the dead, and use the old Babylonian phrase, “Party on!”
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