WEST UNIVERSITY OF TIMIOARA FACULTY OF LETTERS, HISTORY AND THEOLOGY

Halloween

Subject: American Cultural History

Student: Bumbu Alexandra

Coordinator: Lect.univ.dr. Cristina Cheverean

TIMIOARA, 2014

History and customs

The Longman Exams Dictionary defines the celebration of Halloween as the night of October 31st, which is now celebrated by children, who dress in costumes and go from house to house asking for sweets, especially in the USA and Canada. In the past, people believed the souls of dead people appeared on Halloween. But how did this celebration come to life and what did it mean in the beginning? This is what I will research and present in this essay. I will also try to find out how this holiday is perceived and celebrated in our country. In an article simply entitled Halloween, history.com presents the entire history of this holiday and also how the traditions related to Halloween appeared and how it is celebrated today. This way, we find out that Halloween dates back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, almost 2.000 years ago, when on the 1st of November the Celts celebrated their new year. In their belief, this day was often associated with human death, because it marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter. On this time of year, more precisely on the night before the New Year, they thought that the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred and the ghosts of the dead returned to earth, causing trouble and damaging crops. This is why on this night, when they also celebrated Samhain, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. Around these fires, people attempted to tell each other's fortunes, because they believed that since the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead is blurred, it is easier for the Druids, i.e. the Celtic priests, to tell the future. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter. [www.history.com] But the celebration had to suffer some transformations in order to become the holiday we know today. Thus, after the year 43 AD, when the Roman Empire conquered the majority of Celtic territory, in the course of the 400 years they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead and the second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain

probably explains the tradition of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween. [www.history.com] But these were all pagan festivities, while the meaning of the nowadays celebration is a Christian one. Samhain became the Halloween we are familiar with when Christian missionaries attempted to change the religious practices of the Celtic people. Jack Santino, in the article entitled Halloween: The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows, published on The Library of Congress website tells us how this happened: As a result of their efforts to wipe out "pagan" holidays, such as Samhain, the Christians succeeded in
effecting major transformations in it. In 601 A.D. Pope Gregory the First issued a now famous edict to his missionaries concerning the native beliefs and customs of the peoples he hoped to convert. Rather than try to obliterate native peoples' customs and beliefs, the pope instructed his missionaries to use them: if a group of people worshipped a tree, rather than cut it down, he advised them to consecrate it to Christ and allow its continued worship. [www.loc.gov]

But this was not the end of the process. On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1st. This was the moment when the Samhain celebration really combined with the Christian one. By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and overcame the older Celtic rites, so the holiday celebrated on November 1st became a predominantly Christian celebration, although people did not really give up the beliefs and customs practiced on this day. In 1000 A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead, probably because the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween. [www.history.com] Regarding the way in which the holiday traveled from the territories ruled by Celts (nowadays Ireland, United Kingdom and northern France) to America, we can easily guess that the colonizers were the ones who were responsible for this. The problem was that,

because of the rigid protestant beliefs, the celebration was very limited at first in colonial New England, but it was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups as well as the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included "play parties," public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other's fortunes, dance and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also included the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. But the transformation of Halloween did not stop here. In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. This was the moment when the custom of trick-or-treating appeared, because the colonizers took the custom from the Irish and English traditions and began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money. [www.history.com] This was not the moment where the transformation of Halloween into how we know it today stopped. It still has to become the community and children centered holiday. In the late 1800s, parents were encouraged by the newspapers and community leaders to take anything frightening from the holiday and make it a celebration more about community and neighborly get-togethers. This way, at the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties included games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century. By the 1930s, vandalism began to plague Halloween celebrations in many communities during this time. At the beginning, this type of vandalism was limited to tipping outhouses; removing gates, soaping windows and switching shop signs, but later it had become cruel, with real destruction of property and cruelty to animals and people. Neighborhood committees and local city clubs such as the Boy Scouts then mobilized to organize safe and fun alternatives to vandalism. School posters of the time call for a Sane Halloween. Good children were encouraged to go door to door and receive treats from homes and shop owners, thereby keeping troublemakers away. [halloween.monstrous.com] By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young.

Halloween traditions-history
Trick or treating it is thought to go back to the early All Souls' Day parades in England, when poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called "soul cakes" in return for their promise to pray for the family's dead relatives. This custom was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice when on Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to keep the ghosts away and prevent them from attempting to enter. The practice was called "going a-souling" and it was eventually taken up by children, who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be given ale, food, and money. [history.com] Dressing in costumes is related to the fears people had on the night of Halloween. Because they believed that on this night ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. This is why they began dressing up in costumes: to avoid being recognized by these ghosts, who would mistake them for fellow spirits. [history.com] Jack-o'-lantern originally meant a night watchman, or man with a lantern, with the earliest known use in the mid-17th century; and later, meaning an ignis fatuus or will-o'-thewisp. In Labrador and Newfoundland, both names "Jacky Lantern" and "Jack the Lantern" refer to the will-o'-the-wisp concept rather than the pumpkin carving aspect. [halloweehistory.org] The legend related to the tradition of carving pumpkins has different versions, but all of them tell the story of a man who tried to trick the devil into letting him alive, although it was his time to die. The myth says that Jack was getting chased by some villagers from whom he had stolen, when he met the Devil, who claimed it was time for him to die. However, the thief stalled his death by tempting the Devil with a chance to bedevil the church-going villagers chasing him. Jack told the Devil to turn into a coin with which he would pay for the stolen goods (the Devil could take on any shape he wanted); later, when the coin/Devil disappeared, the Christian villagers would fight over who had stolen it. The Devil agreed to this plan. He turned himself into a silver coin and jumped into Jack's wallet, only to find himself next to a cross Jack had also picked up in the village. Jack had closed the wallet tight, and the cross stripped the Devil of his powers; and so he was trapped. In both myths, Jack only lets the Devil go when he agrees never to take his soul. After a while the thief died, as all living things do. Of course, his life had been too sinful for Jack to go to heaven. However, the Devil had

promised not to take his soul, and so he was barred from Hell as well. Jack now had nowhere to go. He asked how he would see where to go, as he had no light, and the Devil mockingly tossed him an ember that would never burn out from the flames of hell. Jack carved out one of his turnips (which was his favorite food), put the ember inside it, and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place. He became known as "Jack of the Lantern", or Jacko'-Lantern. [halloweenhistory.org]

Halloween in Romania

Nowadays, Halloween is celebrated almost worldwide, and Romania does not make an exception from it. We also borrowed some of the traditions associated with Halloween, like dressing up in costumes and carving pumpkins, although the celebration is not as popular as it is in America. What we have not yet borrowed is the custom of trick-or-treating, but maybe in a few years this will happen too. In the last years, the dressing up has become very popular among young people, who disguise themselves for school gatherings or, the older ones, for parties in clubs. But this custom seems to have upset the Orthodox Church, whose leaders consider that the custom deforms childrens characters and estranges them from God. These opinions have caused a lot of debate, especially because the Church also condemns schools for organizing Halloween parties. These debates remember us of the first protestant colonizers in Americas opinions, who at first did not adopted the holiday, and also about the late 1800s efforts of taking out everything frightening and grotesque from the celebration, so maybe in a few years people will understand that the celebration does not deform childrens characters, but just allows them to play and have fun with their friends.

From what I have presented in this paper, we can see that Halloween was and in some parts of the world still is a controversial holiday, but this did not prevent people from adopting it and even enjoying it throughout the centuries. Although during the 2000 years since it exists, Halloween has transformed and evolved, the main traditions accompanying it still exist, although they do this in a different form. For example, the dressing up in costumes exists in almost the same way as it did at the beginning, although now the costumes are more elaborate and people only do it because they want to have fun, not because they are scared; and the trick-or-treating evolved from the going a-souling custom, when citizens would give poor people food, into a tradition that pleases children, who now receive sweets.

Bibliography:

Della Summers (dir.), Exams Dictionary, Person Education Limited, Edinburgh, 2006 Halloween History, available at http://www.halloweenhistory.org/ Halloween, available at http://www.history.com/topics/halloween Jack Santino, Halloween. The Fantasy and Folklore of All Hallows, available at http://www.loc.gov/folklife/halloween.html Mischief Night, available at http://halloween.monstrous.com/mischief_night.htm Raluca Pantazi, Lupta Bisericii cu Occidentul, faza pe Halloween, available at http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-esential-15934809-lupta-bisericii-occidentul-faza-halloweenmenirea-profesorilor-este-aceea-forma-caractere-nu-deforma-schilodind-sufletele-copiilordupa-masura-unui-pat-lui-procust-impus-puteri-straine.htm