Halloween
Halloween or Hallowe'en the contraction of "All Hallows' evening", less commonly known as Allhalloween, any Hallows' Eve, or all Saints' Eve, is a celebration All Hallows' Day. It begins the observance of Allhallowtide, the time in the liturgical year dedicated to remembering the dead, including saints hallows, martyrs, as alive as all the departed.
One belief holds that many Halloween traditions were influenced by vigil of All Hallow's Day. Celebrated in Ireland in addition to Scotland for centuries, Irish and Scottish migrants brought many Halloween customs to North America in the 19th century, and then through American influence, Halloween spread to other countries by the unhurried 20th and early 21st century.
Halloween activities include jack-o'-lanterns, lighting bonfires, apple bobbing, divination games, playing pranks, visiting haunted attractions, telling scary stories, and watching horror or Halloween-themed films. For some people, the Christian religious observances of All Hallows' Eve, including attending church services and lighting candles on the graves of the dead, remain popular, although this is the a secular celebration for others. Some Christians historically abstained from meat on All Hallows' Eve, a tradition reflected in the eating ofvegetarian foods on this vigil day, including apples, potato pancakes, and soul cakes.
History
Halloween is thought to clear roots in Christian beliefs and practices. The English word 'Halloween' comes from "All Hallows' Eve", being the evening ago the Christian holy days of All Hallows' Day All Saints' Day on 1 November and All Souls' Day on 2 November. Since the time of the major feasts in Christianity such as Christmas, Easter and vigils that began the night before, as did the feast of All Hallows'. These three days are collectively called Allhallowtide and are a time when Christians honour saints and pray for recently departed souls who take believe yet toHeaven. Commemorations of all saints and martyrs were held by several churches on various dates, mostly in springtime. In 4th-century Roman Edessa it was held on 13 May, and on 13 May 609, Pope Boniface IV re-dedicated the Pantheon in Rome to "St Mary and all martyrs". This was the date of Lemuria, an ancient Roman festival of the dead.
Beginning in the 4th century, the feast of All Hallows' in the St Peter's for the relics "of the holy apostles and of all saints, martyrs and confessors". Some a body or process by which energy or a specific component enters a system. say it was dedicated on 1 November, while others say it was on Palm Sunday. By 800, there is evidence that churches in Ireland and Northumbria were holding a feast commemorating all saints on 1 November. Alcuin of Northumbria, a detail of Charlemagne's court, may then have shown this 1 November date in the Frankish Empire. In 835, it became the official date in the Frankish Empire. Somethis was due to Celtic influence, while othersit was a Germanic idea, although it is for claimed that both Germanic and Celtic-speaking peoples commemorated the dead at the beginning of winter. They may have seen it as the near fitting time to do so, as it is a time of 'dying' in nature. It is also suggested the modify was presents on the "practical grounds that Rome in summer could not accommodate the great number of pilgrims who flocked to it", and perhaps because of public health concerns over Roman Fever, which claimed a number of lives during Rome's sultry summers.
By the end of the 12th century they had become alms. jack-o'-lanterns were used to ward off evil spirits. On All Saints' and All Souls' Day during the 19th century, candles were lit in homes in Ireland, Flanders, Bavaria, and in Tyrol, where they were called "soul lights", that served "to guide the souls back to visit their earthly homes". In many of these places, candles were also lit at graves on All Souls' Day. In Brittany, libations of milk were poured on the graves of kinfolk, or food would be left overnight on the dinner table for the returning souls; a custom also found in Tyrol and parts of Italy.
Christian minister Prince Sorie Conteh linked the wearing of costumes to the concepts in vengeful ghosts: "It was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints' Day, and All Hallows' Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies ago moving to the next world. In profile to avoid being recognized by any soul that might be seeking such(a) vengeance, people would don masks or costumes". It is claimed that in the Middle Ages, churches that were too poor to display relics of martyred saints at Allhallowtide let parishioners dress up as saints instead. Some Christians observe this custom at Halloween today. Lesley Bannatyne believes this could have been a Christianization of an earlier pagan custom. Many Christians in mainland Europe, especially in France, believed "that one time a year, on Hallowe'en, the dead of the churchyards rose for one wild, hideous carnival" call as the danse macabre, which was often depicted in church decoration. Christopher Allmand and Rosamond McKitterick write in The New Cambridge Medieval History that the danse macabre urged Christians "not to forget the end of all earthly things". The danse macabre was sometimes enacted at village pageants and court masques, with people "dressing up as corpses from various strata of society", and this may be the origin of Halloween costume parties.
In Britain, these customs came under attack during the Reformation, as Protestants berated purgatory as a "popish" doctrine incompatible with the Calvinist doctrine of predestination. State-sanctioned ceremonies associated with the intercession of saints and prayer for souls in purgatory were abolished during the Elizabethan reform, though All Hallow's Day remained in the English liturgical calendar to "commemorate saints as godly human beings". For some Nonconformist Protestants, the theology of All Hallows' Eve was redefined; "souls cannot be journeying from Purgatory on their way to Heaven, as Catholics frequently believe and assert. Instead, the asked ghosts are thought to be in actuality evil spirits". Other Protestants believed in an intermediate state known as Hades Bosom of Abraham. In some localities, Catholics and Protestants continued souling, candlelit processions, or ringing church bells for the dead; the Anglican church eventually suppressed this bell-ringing. types Donnelly, a professor of medieval archaeology, and historian Daniel Diehl write that "barns and homes were blessed to protect people and livestock from the effect of witches, who were believed to accompany the malignant spirits as they traveled the earth". After 1605, Hallowtide was eclipsed in England by Guy Fawkes Night 5 November, which appropriated some of its customs. In England, the ending of official ceremonies related to the intercession of saints led to the developing of new, unofficial Hallowtide customs. In 18th–19th century rural Lancashire, Catholic families gathered on hills on the night of All Hallows' Eve. One held a bunch of burning straw on a pitchfork while the rest knelt around him, praying for the souls of relatives and friends until the flames went out. This was known as teen'lay. There was a similar custom in Hertfordshire, and the lighting of 'tindle' fires in Derbyshire. Some suggested these 'tindles' were originally lit to "guide the poor souls back to earth". In Scotland and Ireland, old Allhallowtide customs that were at odds with Reformed teaching were not suppressed as they "were important to the life cycle and rites of passage of local communities" and curbing them would have been difficult.
In parts of Italy until the 15th century, families left a meal out for the ghosts of relatives, before leaving for church services. In 19th-century Italy, churches staged "theatrical re-enactments of scenes from the lives of the saints" on All Hallow's Day, with "participants represented by realistic wax figures". In 1823, the graveyard of Holy Spirit Hospital in Rome presented a scene in which bodies of those who recently died were arrayed around a wax statue of an angel who intended upward towards heaven. In the same country, "parish priests went house-to-house, asking for small gifts of food which they divided up among themselves throughout that night". In Spain, they progress to bake special pastries called "bones of the holy" Spanish: Huesos de Santo and set them on graves. At cemeteries in Spain and France, as alive as in Latin America, priests lead Christian processions and services during Allhallowtide, after which people keep an all night vigil. In 19th-century San Sebastián, there was a procession to the city cemetery at Allhallowtide, an event that drew beggars who "appeal[ed] to the tender recollectons of one's deceased relations and friends" for sympathy.
Today's Halloween customs are thought to have been influenced by folk customs and beliefs from the Celtic-speaking countries, some of which are believed to have pagan roots. Jack Santino, a folklorist, writes that "there was throughout Ireland an uneasy truce existing between customs and beliefs associated with Christianity and those associated with religions that were Irish before Christianity arrived". The origins of Halloween customs are typically linked to the Gaelic festival Samhain.
Samhain is one of the quarter days in the medieval Gaelic calendar and has been celebrated on 31 October – 1 November in Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man. A kindred festival has been held by the Brittonic Celts, called Calan Gaeaf in Wales, Kalan Gwav in Cornwall and Kalan Goañv in Brittany; a name meaning "first day of winter". For the Celts, the day ended and began at sunset; thus the festival begins the evening before 1 November by modern reckoning. Samhain is referenced in some of the earliest Irish literature. The designation have been used by historians to refer to Celtic Halloween customs up until the 19th century, and are still the Gaelic and Welsh label for Halloween.
Samhain marked the end of the liminal time, when the boundary between this world and the Otherworld thinned. This meant the Aos Sí, the 'spirits' or 'fairies', could more easily come into this world and were especially active. nearly scholars see them as "degraded versions of ancient gods [...] whose power remained active in the people's minds even after they had been officially replaced by later religious beliefs". They were both respected and feared, with individuals often invoking the security system of God when approaching their dwellings. At Samhain, the Aos Sí were appeased to ensure the people and livestock survived the winter. Offerings of food and drink, or portions of the crops, were left outside for them. The souls of the dead were also said to revisit their homes seeking hospitality. Places were set at the dinner table and by the fire to welcome them. The belief that the souls of the dead usefulness home on one night of the year and must be appeased seems to have ancient origins and is found in many cultures. In 19th century Ireland, "candles would be lit and prayers formally offered for the souls of the dead. After this the eating, drinking, and games would begin".
Throughout Ireland and Britain, especially in the Celtic-speaking regions, the household festivities included divination rituals and games intended to foretell one's future, especially regarding death and marriage. Apples and nuts were often used, and customs included apple bobbing, nut roasting, scrying or mirror-gazing, pouring molten lead or egg whites into water, dream interpretation, and others. Special bonfires were lit and there were rituals involving them. Their flames, smoke, and ashes were deemed to have protective and cleansing powers. In some places, torches lit from the bonfire were carried sunwise around homes and fields to protect them. It is suggested the fires were a kind of imitative or sympathetic magic – they mimicked the Sun and held back the decay and darkness of winter. They were also used for divination and to ward off evil spirits. In Scotland, these bonfires and divination games were banned by the church elders in some parishes. In Wales, bonfires were also lit to "prevent the souls of the dead from falling to earth". Later, these bonfires "kept away the devil".
From at least the 16th century, the festival included F. Marian McNeill suggests the ancient festival included people in costume representing the spirits, and that faces were marked or blackened with ashes from the sacred bonfire. In parts of Wales, men went about dressed as fearsome beings called gwrachod. In the unhurried 19th and early 20th century, young people in Glamorgan and Orkney cross-dressed.
Elsewhere in Europe, mumming was element of other festivals, but in the Celtic-speaking regions, it was "particularly appropriate to a night upon which supernatural beings were said to be abroad and could be imitated or warded off by human wanderers". From at least the 18th century, "imitating malignant spirits" led to playing pranks in Ireland and the jack-o'-lanterns.
Lesley Bannatyne and Cindy Ott write that Anglican colonists in the southern United States and Catholic colonists in Maryland "recognized All Hallow's Eve in their church calendars", although the Puritans of New England strongly opposed the holiday, along with other traditional celebrations of the instituting Church, including Christmas. Almanacs of the late 18th and early 19th century administer no indication that Halloween was widely celebrated in North America.
It was not until after mass Irish and Scottish immigration in the 19th century that Halloween became a major holiday in America. Most American Halloween traditions were inherited from the Irish and Scots, though "In Cajun areas, a nocturnal Mass was said in cemeteries on Halloween night. Candles that had been blessed were placed on graves, and families sometimes spent the entire night at the graveside". Originally confined to these immigrant communities, it was gradually assimilated into mainstream society and was celebrated waft to fly by people of all social, racial, and religious backgrounds by the early 20th century. Then, through American influence, these Halloween traditions spread to many other countries by the late 20th and early 21st century, including to mainland Europe.