Some of my best childhood memories revolve around Hallowe'en. My mother's youngest sister, the "crazy" aunt who came to our church Halloween party (this was when I was just barely too old to wander the streets at night with the "children"), put on makeup to look like a corpse in a coffin, and then joined us to bob for apples (probably the first time I'd done that, and I found out what hard, wet work it is. And what absolutely foolish fun.). Or just the freedom of wandering the streets at night without my parents in tow, joining all the neighborhood kids of the Baby Boom as we walked from house to house in clumps that gathered and broke again, passing stories of where to get the best candy, or the homemade stuff like popcorn balls and caramel apples, stuff always gone by the time you got there, or always from a house several streets over of undetermined location or ill-defined description. And the story always included that house being "out" by the time you heard of it. It prepared us for Christmases when we'd have to find the "IT" toy for our kids in an unforeseeable future. A future that included my wife dressing up in black tights and leotard she wore in high school, to costume herself as a "cat" for our daughter's first Hallowe'en....oh, wait. You don't need to hear about that one.
That aunt is gone this year, leaving me with the Peanuts Hallowe’en card I can’t send. For some reason I started sending her one in high school, and I kept it up as best I could year after year. Now last year was the last year. Oddly, this year, I remember that Hallowe’en falls exactly three weeks after my brother’s birthday: October 10. He’s been gone…5 years now? I should remember, you’d think…and for the over 6 decades I knew him, I never seem to have made the connection between the holiday and his birthday. I remember going out on Hallowe’en evening when we were both young enough, but old enough to escape parental supervision. But his birthday, in my mind, was connected to Columbus Day. I remember childhood Hallowe’ens with him, now more than ever. But I never made that 3-week connection before. Maybe this year it will be the return of my loved ones, as the days shorten and the nights deepen.
All the internet bluster about Hallowe'en and Samhain from years back seems to have faded now, as well as the business of Hallowe'en being "stolen" from "ancient practices." Most of that is echoing remnants of the early 19th century, Romanticism turning into Victorianism. It was the Romantic movement that began to preserve "folklore," as it came to be called. "Came to be" not because it was illegitimate, but because it was ignored and despised before the Romantics, who saved it but didn't revive it. The Victorians then supercharged it, along with fuzzy memories of medieval Europe. Most of the ghost stories and "monsters" we know now (vampires, werewolves, ghosts, goblins, even witches) are products of the Victorian imagination, not remnants of stories told around campfires 3 millenia ago. The Victorians tried to link them to an imagined past in order to make them "authentic" in a risingly scientific age, but the connections are horseshit. Most of those stories are distinctly "modern." Frankenstein was a product of the Romantic beginning of the 19th century; Dracula came out of the late Victorian era, and is a novel at great pains to place itself in its contemporary setting by including what was then cutting edge technology to tell the story. But it’s told in the epistolary style of the novels of the…late 18th century. The 19th and early 20th centuries are the great era of our most prized ghost stories including, of course, the stories by Edgar Allan Poe (a man under-appreciated for his narrative gifts, and over-appreciated for his few poetic ones).
Poe's stories were “modern,” most of them conveniently set in a Europe of an indeterminate age when people dressed in what is now costume and ran around in castles and buildings that look more like something from a Disney theme park than reality. (We hadn’t yet come to Twain’s Realism.) And Poe was writing those in the mid-19th century, in America. Again, the connection to an imagined past gave the stories the verisimilitude they required.
So most of our Hallowe'en is a matter of memory and conjecture, and the stories we tell ourselves. But it isn't rooted in some "truth" we destroyed with our "enlightenment" or our "progress." That Romantic nostalgia prompted by the Industrial Revolution which drove us to protect “folklore” became the “truth” we imbued those stories with, the “wisdom” our “modern” era lost. As with most things, our "truth" about these matters is what we say it is.
Hallowe’en began as the vigil for All Saints Day, making it the most well-known vigil for a feast day outside of Christmas Eve. Holy Saturday is the vigil for Easter, still the proper day of the Great Vigil, which can be the most powerful liturgy in Christianity. Literally speaking, Holy Saturday is Easter Eve. But popularly, we know only two vigils, and the only service widely known now is the Candlelight Christmas Eve Service, itself moved back from midnight to evening, the better to get us home early and away from church on Christmas Day, even on Sunday.
Don’t get me started.
So Hallowe’en is actually the vigil for All Saint’s. But we’ve forgotten that.
All Saint's Day, per New Advent, started in...well, here, let me just give you the whole magilla:
In the early days the Christians were accustomed to solemnize the anniversary of a martyr's death for Christ at the place of martyrdom. In the fourth century, neighbouring dioceses began to interchange feasts, to transfer relics, to divide them, and to join in a common feast; as is shown by the invitation of St. Basil of Caesarea (379) to the bishops of the province of Pontus. Frequently groups of martyrs suffered on the same day, which naturally led to a joint commemoration. In the persecution of Diocletian the number of martyrs became so great that a separate day could not be assigned to each. But the Church, feeling that every martyr should be venerated, appointed a common day for all. The first trace of this we find in Antioch on the Sunday after Pentecost. We also find mention of a common day in a sermon of St. Ephrem the Syrian (373), and in the 74th homily of St. John Chrysostom (407). At first only martyrs and St. John the Baptist were honoured by a special day. Other saints were added gradually, and increased in number when a regular process of canonization was established; still, as early as 411 there is in the Chaldean Calendar a "Commemoratio Confessorum" for the Friday after Easter. In the West Boniface IV, 13 May, 609, or 610, consecrated the Pantheon in Rome to the Blessed Virgin and all the martyrs, ordering an anniversary. Gregory III (731-741) consecrated a chapel in the Basilica of St. Peter to all the saints and fixed the anniversary for 1 November. A basilica of the Apostles already existed in Rome, and its dedication was annually remembered on 1 May. Gregory IV (827-844) extended the celebration on 1 November to the entire Church. The vigil seems to have been held as early as the feast itself. The octave was added by Sixtus IV (1471-84).
So, mid-9th century, it got set as a date on the Church's calendar. That led, later, to All Soul's on November 2. The connections to Ireland, especially jack o' lanterns (turnips in Ireland, only after a long period exclusively pumpkins, which are as American as corn and tobacco) didn't really come until the 19th century. Attempted connections between the Irish Samhain and All Saint's are all pretty much retrojection, especially as an attempt to connect Hallowe'en to Irish practices it supposedly overtook. Gregory was a long way from Ireland in the 9th century and Christianity only reached the island in that century. It's a pretty small tail wagging a pretty large dog to imagine Gregory picked the date for the entire church just to appeal to an Irish pagan festival. I think Patrick was the better evangelist to the island.
The vigil that became Hallowe’en appears in the literature as early as Shakespeare, where the practices of the Roman church were slowly being turned Anglican; but that's another story. Curiously, most of the literature on Hallowe'en begins in the late 18th century with Robert Burns in Scotland (call it Pre-Romanticism. Burns was just writing about what he knew, but accepting it and recognizing it, was down to the Romantics). Hallowe’en literature continues in the early 19th century with Walter Scott. It jumps the pond to Washington Irving's story of Ichabod Crane, where Disney (?; or someone before them) transforms the pumpkin into a jack o' lantern, which made the tale into a Hallowe'en story. It’s a grand irony that the persecution of single women and elderly widows in 16th century Puritan Salem became inextricably connected to Hallowe’en by Disney, too (“Hocus Pocus”). Thus do we domesticate our worst history and invent our monsters. 👹
And then we get Poe. The iconic black cat 🐈⬛ of Hallowe'en decorations arguably stems from Poe's story of the same name. By Poe's time, of course, especially in Puritan tinctured America, the holiday has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic vigil. Poe never set any story at Hallowe’en, and as late as 1937 Edith Wharton sets her last ghost story (she wrote several) on the eve of All Saint’s without ever mentioning the word “Hallowe’en.” But we’ve found great value ($) in doing it in the past half-century, so that now it rivals Xmas Eve and whets our consumer appetite for the year’s end.
Interestingly, the Aztecs and Mayans (and even less remembered groups in Mexico) had festivals honoring the return of the dead. I can't say for sure the dates of the observances didn't shift after Christians changed the culture, but George Frazer found the Irish expecting the return of the dead around the end of October, which makes sense as people left the fields (farmers first, herdsman as it got too cold finally for the herds) and went indoors to survive the winter. Thinking of those lost is a likelier custom as winter sets in, especially in Europe. It seems to be have been as true in tropical Mexico, where the current Dias de los Muertos has very distinct roots in the culture of Mexico. Many of the practices of the days extend into pre-colombian times, including the idea that the children who have departed return on November 1, the adults on November 2. Did they adopt the Catholic dates? Maybe. It is certainly a festival that is far more "pagan" than it is "Christian." Not that there's anything wrong with that!
I noted one year long ago now, that there's still no concerted "War on Hallowe'en," even as Hallowe’en has become more and more an adult celebration. (I’ve also had reason to notice that Hobby Lobby starts selling Xmas and (less so) Thxgiving merchandise in September; but ignores Hallowe’en altogether. It’s an interesting lacunae for a store that sells Marvel superhero merchandise, and jigsaw puzzles with scenes from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation.” Their tolerance for Xmas merchandise makes up for the dearth of Hallowe’en merchandise. I suspect the owners refuse to truck with demons and devilry. Even if it only means selling Spider-Man costumes for little kids.) The idea that the vigil marks the “thin place” where the dead and the living can meet and walk together is, in this post-Victorian world, sadly turned into a time of terror, not comfort. Dias de Los Muertos is a time of celebration because the dead, the loved ones we have lost, are again close to us. Hallowe’en is a time of terror, because the dead are again close to us. We used to visit graveyards and put them near the churches we’d visit at least once a week. Now we avoid cemeteries because they remind us our death is inevitable.
I doubt the vigil of All Saint’s started as a night of deepest darkness to be dispelled by the light of day, as in Fantasia’s “Night on Bald Mountain.” (The roots of modern Hallowe’en show in that depiction of Walpurgisnacht. The “thin time” from Irish culture that brought back the beloved ancestors, now brings back the demons. And corresponds to the Ancient Greek idea of the balance of opposing forces: chaos and logos. It’s truly superstition, and ironic because the Puritans denounced such ideas, and now their religious descendants are terrified by them all over again. Such, as Carroll observed, is human perversity.) I’m sure like Christmas Eve, the vigil was looking forward to the feast day, anticipating one of the joyous feast days of the year. There’s a reason it’s one of two popular vigils, even as both are now almost wholly divorced from their religious roots. The popular explanation today is that we like to be scared at least once a year. But scared of what? The dead? The reminder of our mortality? Of the evil people (and only people) do? Of the memories of our loved ones? Or the example of the saints?
I have lamented the changing face of Hallowe'en. (Pro tip: when you can link to posts that are over 15 years old, you've been at this too long.) I have layered Hallowe'en into the more important rituals/holy days of our modern American calendar. I still think some reasonable connections can be made there. But I’m more inclined to see Hallowe’en as the gateway to Advent, making it the first of the many “eves” that line up as gateways to the days after, from October to February. Our dreary months, that we learned long ago to find reasons to lighten. I've commented on the "razor blades in apples" stories, though I think the reference there (to a Salon article, of all things) is less reliable than other information I have which provides a more specific date to the origin of all those stories.
As I said, one of the earliest full mentions of Hallowe'en and its attendant celebrations is the poem by Robert Burns that I've posted before on October 31. I'll continue that tradition this year. Consider this just prelude, as Hallowe'en itself is prelude to All Saint's which, I would argue, is prelude to the end of Pentecost (the season of, I mean), and in that way preparation, itself, for Advent. And then Christmas and Epiphany, the preparation for Lent; which is the preparation for…
But there I go, getting ahead of myself again.
Mostly, Hallowe'en is for fun.
