🎃🐈‍⬛ 👻 🌾🥮

 Well, yeah, kinda:

No social plans tonight but I might head out onto the balcony in a bit and start screaming "DID YOU KNOW HALLOWEEN IS IRISH ORIGINALLY?" as loud as I can

The connection between Samhain and All Hallow’s Even is a tenuous one,  at best. I’ve already quoted the history of All Saints Day. The idea was floated as early as the late 4th century.  Well, again, I’ll just quote the pertinent language:

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

Alright, three things there. 1 May in Ireland was Beltane, about 6 months prior to (or after; either way) Samhain, on 1 November.  These were the two most important holy days on the Irish Celtic calendar. And yet no one ever argues that dedication anniversary was connected to Ireland. Mostly because no one remembers it anymore, but the connection is as solid as the connection to All Saints. Which is to say, not solid at all. Besides, All Saints displaced Samhain to the vigil, or eve. And Gregory III set the date on November 1, but Gregory IV made it a date for the entire church almost 100 years later. At which point is it clear when the Church acted in response to the Irish holy day? Which was important in Ireland, but not really in Europe? 

The best information I can find indicates observance of Samhain was connected to stories of gods and heroes not dissimilar from the tales in the Elder Edda. But we don’t associate those stories with ghoulies and ghosties and things that go bump in the night, so, again, the connection to contemporary Hallowe’en is suspect. Well, except for the date.

I’d read this book before*, so I must have forgotten this reference from the late 16th century. The reference is to the “Lord of Misrule” being chosen on All Hallow’s Eve, for a celebration that extended to Candlemas (February 2nd, observance of the presentation of the Christchild to Simeon at the Temple). This connects more with the reason the Puritans banned Christmas in the New World than with Ireland per se. The “Lord of Misrule” indicates a raucous Christmas celebration probably like the “Feast of Fools” on the Continent. You may have noticed this makes Hallowe’en the gateway to Advent and Christmas, as well as nearly a month of Epiphany. (Candlemas was not a small thing. The tradition in England persisted for centuries that the Yuletide greenery could not be removed until Candlemas, lest demons beset you). Raucous celebrations may have Irish roots, but especially at year’s end, they’ve been popular in many European cultures that long ago abandoned the Feast of Fools.

Is Hallowe’en still Samhain? Except for the dates, it’s hard to say so. Some think Gregory III set the date to take over Samhain. But it was almost 100 years later before Gregory IV made the date “universal.” Was the church indifferent to Ireland and its holy days before then? Well, maybe; but there’s no record of it. Gregory III was probably looking at the Church Calendar, not the Irish one. Gregory IV was just as likely thinking of the Church, not Ireland alone. So the date is as likely to be coincidental as intentional. Besides, Samhain didn’t disappear; it just changed dates (unlike Brigid, who became a saint of the Church, and as a Celtic goddess disappeared until the recovery of Irish folklore in the 20th century).

Samhain also became more associated with the Lord of Misrule than ghosts or Celtic heroes. The Feast of Fools was finally banned in England (and on the Continent) in the 1600’s (the Puritans, but also just a tiresome thing). Hallowe’en persisted as the Eve of All Saints, though Henry VIII and Elizabeth I both tried to suppress it because it was a “papal holiday” (they had their own, non-Puritanical, reasons). But it was a witch trial under James I (the same fervor that jumped the pond to Salem), linked to an alleged incident on Hallowe’en night, that connected the day to witches thereafter. And then the Victorians using the Romantics interest in folklore (as the Industrial Revolution swept that world away) to take new interest in ghost stories, well…

So, is that Irish? It’s more a series of accidents of history, but it didn’t wipe out the celebration, as the Burns poem shows. It just added witches to it; and other thing later on. The celebration of the holiday, mostly along the lines Burns memorialized, continued in the British Isles, mostly excluding England; but the festivities in England and Europe shifted to Michaelmas (12 November) and the slaughter of livestock as part of the festival, for the winter. No candy, though. The Scots and the Irish did bring Hallowe’en to America in the second half of the 19th century, with the diaspora brought by the potato famines. But it was received as a celebration for children, which probably explains how we ended up with the holiday we have today.

Hallowe’en does have an Irish origin, but the celebration we observe today (and, ironically, sent back to Europe), wouldn’t be recognizable in pre-Christian, or even Christian, Ireland. Which is not to discount the Celtic connection; but it’s hardly an observance that’s come down to us unchanged through the ages. Though I am intrigued by that reference in New Adventures to the vigil being attached to the feast day almost from the beginning. Was Ireland that influential in Europe in the 8th century? And for the centuries between the 8th century and the 12th (when the Feast if Fools began to appear), what was that vigil like? 👻

*Aside from the link, I relied on Trick or Treat; A History of Hallowe’en, Reaktion Books, 2019, by Lisa Morton, for most of this post.