Today, Halloween conjures up images of young children and pre-teens congregating and roaming the streets after dark, knocking on neighbours doors wearing white sheets to impersonate ghosts, going from house to house, demanding sweet treats. For those in their later teen years however, and young people generally, Halloween is often seen as an excuse or even an invitation to get drunk whilst dressed as a superhero at a friend's fancy dress house party. This spooky yearly occasion is generally seen in the UK as a relatively recent American cultural import, however, the truth is much closer to our British homes, and is actually longer-standing than many other annual celebrations and occasions dotted in our calendar. What we can see as the proto-Halloween though is actually Samhain - a Harvest festival celebrated by the ancient Celts. 

Evidence of a Celtic ceremony can be traced as far back as 5,000 years ago, in the form of passage mounds that align perfectly to the point of sunrise on 1st November, being the dusk of and the ocial beginning of the Celtic new ‘dark’ year. The general Celtic pagan worldview of this time viewed the year as split into two halves; one light (spring & summer) and one dark (autumn & winter), so Samhain marked the ending of the light year, and the beginning of the new dark year. Traditions of ancient ‘Halloween’ then, or Samhain, mostly revolved around the idea of warding against evil spirits of the ‘night’, or the ‘dark’, which were metaphors for the colder, darker months of autumn and winter to come. As Samhain was the start of a new year, the last of the harvest would be collected. Consequently, surplus crops were harvested and then used and processed to make mead and beer. Because the beer could not be refrigerated to preserve its shelf-life, there was an incentive to drink a LOT of it in the lead up to and on the festival of Samhain. As we can imagine, plenty of alcohol would most likely make for quite a loud and eventful celebration, of which teenagers and young adults of today seem to honour and enjoy reviving this element of Samhain, often at halloween themed house parties, where getting ‘shit-faced’ was common. 

So how did Halloween become so closely connected with ghosts, ghouls and gargoyles, and honestly, anything spooky? History suggests that Samhain had always been directly connected to the Celtic beliefs relating to the spiritual realm, so there was always an element of spookiness when it comes to this particular harvest festival, more so than most. An ancient Celtic belief was that the material (real) world and the spiritual realm were only separated by a single veil, and that this veil could be thinned or even erased entirely at certain times and places. Samhain was believed one of these times, due to the Pleiades star cluster rising to its highest at midnight, coinciding with the arrival of supernatural beings who would wander the material realm after sunset. It was even believed that a human could temporarily cross over to the spiritual realm at this time also. Furthermore, it was also believed that during this time, fairies would travel between their summer hills and their winter burrows. Other beings such as malevolent creatures and ancestral ghosts also filled the ’night’ adding to the even still spooky nature of halloween celebrations, imagination and ephemera. When Samhain is held, as there would be surplus harvest at this time of year, feasts were often put on for people in the area. This element of offering to others I think has been kept intact over time, but today’s manifestation of a Halloween feast is the offering of a handful of sweet treats to the neighbourhood children passing by. Maintaining the theme of Samhain being revolved around the spiritual realm, at these feasts, plates and cutlery would be laid out and set aside for spirit ancestors, who were granted an honorary place at the table. In addition to this, apples had religious pagan significance to the Celts, holding magical and prophetic properties, so were linked to love and fate, perhaps this is why we see candy apples during Halloween today. In Celtic society, Druids were leaders of spiritual and scholarly life, and had the responsibility of performing the rites of Samhain, such as lighting great bonfires, thought to ward off evil spirits. Another rite the Druids would perform was animal sacrifice, in addition to displaying ancestral skulls to protect against ‘evil spirits’. Although bonfires are now more likely to be thought of a few days later (Guy Fawkes Night on 5th November), the decorative placement of skulls outside houses is a common sight during the modern Halloween period. Another aspect of Celtic folklore was to wear masks and costumes, intended to ‘trick’ the spirits that would emerge on the night of Samhain, thus allowing Celts to roam freely, without risk of interference from such spirits. If a spirit was encountered though, belief had it that a simple ‘treat’ would bribe the spirit to let the person go about their business free of harm. This history closely aligns with what happens today on the 31st October, the elements of ‘trick or treat’ and the aspect of masking and costuming.