Do you love Halloween? It may be in your genes – if you have Irish ancestors. Of course, not everyone of Irish descent loves Halloween, and many people that have no Irish ancestry whatsoever celebrate Halloween in a major way. The holiday itself does have its origins in Ireland’s Celtic past.
Each year, four major festivals were celebrated by the Celts. On the Celtic calendar, October 31 marked the eve of the Celtic New Year, and the beginning of the Celtic festival of Samhain. The association of this holiday with ghosts and goblins is easy to see when you consider that the Celts believed that as the year ended, the spirits of the dead would return to visit their former homes and humans could see evil spirits from the Otherworld.
Samhain was still celebrated as a pagan holiday in Ireland after Christianity arrived, and the Christians came up with a competing celebration in an attempt to discourage people from participating in the pagan holiday festivities. The Pope declared that All Saints Day would be celebrated on November 1. All Saints Day was commonly known as All Hallows Day, and so October 31 became known as Hallows’ Eve, and later as Halloween.
What about all of the costumes, and the general mischief that is commonly associated with Halloween? These things were actually a part of the original Samhain festivities because as I mentioned earlier, the end of the year was a time where the boundaries between the human world and the Otherworld were a bit fuzzy. Fairies (of the good and evil varieties), banshees, shape shifters, and other spirits could make an appearance in the human world during this time and the Celts tried their best to appease them. Some people put out little meals complete with tiny silverware for the fairies to enjoy, and others put out hearty meals for their deceased ancestors in case they came by for a spell. (sorry, I could not resist!)
Sometimes, the spiritual visitors from the Otherworld could not be appeased and defense mechanisms had to be implemented. For example, people took to wearing ugly masks in an attempt to confuse the visiting spirits of the dead so that the spirits could not identify people that they did not like and harm them. To prevent unwelcome spirit guests, they carved menacing faces on turnips and placed the turnips on their doorsteps with lit candles inside. People were also encouraged to make a lot of loud noise throughout the evening to drive the spirits out of the villages and back to their homes in the Otherworld. These traditions have been carried on and enjoyed by young and old alike for many generations with a few changes such as substituting pumpkins for turnips.