On the night of October 31 to November 1, on the eve of All Saints' Day, the streets of cities and towns are filled with witches, devils and ghosts. A pumpkin with a candle burning inside becomes the emblem of many parties. Halloween has long reached both Japan and Guatemala. Whom are the children dressed up with evil spirits trying to scare?
As is often the case, Halloween is the result of a strange mixture of Celtic pagan rites with later Catholic traditions. In the pre-Christian era, the ethnic composition of the population of Europe was somewhat different. Since ancient times, Celtic tribes have lived in what is now France and Germany. Gradually, the Celts moved to the east and west of the European continent, settled in Ireland and Britain.
Sweets and Passions
The Celtic lunar calendar divided the year into two halves: summer and winter. Harvesting, and with it the summer season, ended at the end of October. With November came the dark time of a cold winter. For a whole week, farmers saw off the old year and welcomed the new one. The middle of the holiday was considered the apogee of the holiday, conventionally it is defined as October 31. This day was called "Samhain", which means "end of summer."
The Celts considered Samhain a special and mystical holiday. In Samhain, they not only rejoiced at the harvested harvest, but also honored the dead. It was believed that on the night between the last and the first day of the year, the doors to the other world open and the souls of the dead come out to people.
In order to confuse the spirits and not be dragged away to the afterlife, the Celts put on animal skins and left their homes at night, leaving rich offerings at the doorstep. The holiday itself took place away from the village by the two-row bonfires made by the druids. To cleanse themselves from the filth accumulated over the year, people passed between these fires, jumped over those that are smaller. Then they slaughtered the sacrificial animals, and the druids threw their bones into the fire and predicted the future from them.
At the same time, the tradition of making lamps from turnips developed. Leaving the night feast, everyone took with them a hollow vegetable with the coals of a festive fire put in it. It was believed that such a lamp drives away evil spirits until morning.
Promotional video:
Samhain Gospel
The entry into a new era radically changed the life of the Celts. First, the Celtic tribes fell under the rule of the Romans, then their active conversion to Christianity began. It can be assumed that with the adoption of Christ's faith, pagan holidays have sunk into the past, but this is not so. Customs that have deep sacred roots under them, as a rule, do not just disappear, but are transformed, mimicked under new beliefs.
In the 7th century, Pope Gregory I put forward the idea of tying pagan holidays to important Christian dates, thereby stimulating the Christianization of Europe. By the 8th century, Samhain became All Saints Day, celebrated on November 1. Now honoring the deceased fit well within the dominant religion. The Eve of All Saints Day, referred to in English as Hallows-Even (literally "holy evening"), eventually acquired an abbreviated name: Halloween - and became Halloween.
The main attribute of the festival was the Jack-lantern. The Christianized Celts did not invent the bicycle. They used as a festive symbol the same lamp, carved from turnips, that scared away evil spirits hundreds of years ago. True, the legend explaining the appearance of the vegetable lantern has changed slightly. Now she told about the drunkard and deceiver Jack, who deceived Satan himself. Sly Jack lured the unclean into a trap and in exchange for freedom demanded a promise that after death he would not go to hell. However, the victory over the devil unexpectedly came out sideways. The fact is that God did not want to take a drunk and a swindler to heaven. Since then, the unfortunate Jack has been forced to wander the earth forever, illuminating his path with a turnip lamp.
In the 16th century, a tradition of begging for holiday sweets arose. On the night of November 1, children and adults put on cloth masks and walked to neighboring houses, demanding refreshments from the owners. In essence, it turned out to be autumn carols, but it suited everyone.
New masks of the New World
Halloween entered the century of steam and railways, undergoing a kind of modernization. Strictly speaking, the holiday gradually passed from the category of sacred symbolistic to the category of carnival shows. The first use of role-playing costumes was recorded in Great Britain, in 1895, when local kids went to their neighbors' homes to collect treats and small coins, dressed up in costumes of fairy-tale heroes.
At the same time, with a wave of emigrants from Ireland and Scotland, Halloween began to spread rapidly across North America. In the New World, Christianized Samhain came to the court. In 40 years, Halloween has become extremely popular, although it has undergone a number of changes. Turnips are a thing of the past. The American pumpkin jack lantern was much cheaper and more presentable. The costumes of evil spirits also fell in love with both children and adults. The show was gaining momentum.
In the 1930s, the phrase "Trick-or-treat", which has become a classic for the Hello-Wien extortionists, appeared. The expression is translated as "prank or treat", "sweetness or nasty". If in the 16th century the poor were begging for "spiritual cakes", promising to pray for the dead, then in the century of scientific and technological revolution, the sweet tooth demanded refreshments, officially frightening them with dirty tricks. The threat, alas, was not always figurative. In ancient England, reluctance to feed little beggars meant, at worst, a doorknob smeared with soot, now such a refusal is fraught with the fact that your house will be pelted with eggs or toilet paper. Therefore, US residents prefer to buy more sweets on the eve of All Saints Day. In preparation for Halloween, Americans are spending more than $ 2.5 billion on candy purchases. If you stick together all the sweets bought by October 31,you get a giant ball the size of six "Titanics" and weighing 300 thousand tons. The trade in role-playing costumes also brings tangible profits, because thousands of people want to dress up as devils, witches and the dead that day.
Today, All Saints' Eve ranks second after Christmas in the ranking of the most profitable holidays in the United States. The recognized capital of Halloween is the American city of Salem, which is notorious for witchcraft and bloody crimes. However, it cannot be compared with New York or Los Angeles for the splendor of the processions and carnivals held there. Thousands of "ghost rides" in amusement parks are calling out customers who want to get scared.
With a pumpkin around the world
Initially, Halloween was celebrated only in countries that were somehow connected with Celtic traditions. In the second half of the 20th century, the large-scale expansion of American culture led to the fact that the holiday began to actively spread throughout the world.
South America, due to its geographical position, has always been closely associated with North America. It is not at all surprising that All Saints' Day in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua or El Salvador has many similarities to similar celebrations in the United States. Residents of Latin America devote Day of the Dead to visits to the graves of their ancestors, rewards and a grandiose carnival.
Halloween is celebrated in Vietnam, Korea and China. And the exalted Japanese liked the holiday of aliens from the underworld so much and immersed them in its atmosphere so much that zombies parading along the avenues can scare even a professional make-up artist to hiccups.
In Russia, Halloween appeared in the 1990s and still remains in the category of exotic. Our compatriots do not march with carnival processions, do not require sweets, dressed up as leprechauns, but they are happy to arrange merry costume parties, make Witch's Finger cookies and carve Jack-lanterns from an orange pumpkin.
Magazine: Mysteries of History №43. Author: Victor Stern