27th September, 2024 in Folklore

What makes a Halloween?

By Brice Stratford

Prepare for spooky season by learning more about the historic origins of Halloween. Extracted from the new book Halloween Folklore and Ghost Stories out this Autumn.

What is Halloween?

First, the name. The general presumption is that the word ‘Halloween’ is simply a shortened form of All Hallows Evening, and so should properly be written as Hallow e’en. This may not be the case. The word ‘Hallow’ comes from the Old English ‘Halgan’ (holy), and many older, provincial forms of the word Hallowtide (referring to the wider season) retained the ‘n’, as Hallantide or Hollandtide – in some examples, it is called Hallowen, and Hallowen Eve and Hallowen Day are referred to. The Halloween spelling, then, likely developed as a continuation of the linguistic Halgan/
Hallan/Hallowen shift, rather than as a specific contraction of ‘evening’, or as a reference to a single day.

Originating in the dialects of northern England and southern Scotland, today the word ‘Halloween’ refers both to the night of All Hallows Eve (31st October), but also to the wider halo of the Halloween period – the word ‘Christmas’ is used in a similar way: for both the day and the broader season. The preference for this specific form (where before there had been many local variants) began after the Scottish poet Robert Burns published a verse of the same name in 1759. It became hugely popular during the 1800s, and ubiquitous across the English-speaking world over the twentieth century. All Hallows Eve is, of course, followed by All Hallows Day, which is then followed by All Souls Day.

Known together as Allhallowstide, this triptych is a 1,000-plus-year-old Christian festival season, maintained still by the Catholic Church, to honour the saints without committed feast days, and to pray for them to intercede on behalf of souls in Purgatory. Continental Europe still observes it fervently, as do most other Catholic countries globally, and it is
still defined for them today by church services and religious custom. So. How did the Catholic All Hallows become the semi-secular, folk spiritual, pseudo-pagan season of Halloween?

Contrary to popular belief and much misinformation, it was not invented by or imported from America, nor does it really originate in a pre-Christian ‘Celtic’ festival called Samhain (pronounced Sowen) or a pre-Christian Roman festival for the goddess Pomona. When the English Reformation tore Catholicism from the state, and the Anglican Church divorced from the Pope, the official and authoritarian observance of All Hallows in England ceased. But All Hallows did not die. Instead, it forked off into a second form of observance.

The rituals and the practices continued, still celebrated and performed by the common folk, but without the guidance or control of any church authority, and withourestrictive interpretations or rigid explanations. It folkified into strange and distinctive, organic paths that were powered by The People, and which resulted in broad and beautiful divergences from region to region. Country lore and rustic superstition began to blossom, without any form of officialdom to uproot it when it sprouted; strange practices not sanctified by any Church started to spread.

The customs around the dead crystallised and developed in instinctual folkways, varying from village to village and, truly unleashed from the religion that birthed and bound it, the British rewilding of All Hallows there commenced. Over the 500 years that followed, so formed our modern Halloween. I do not mean that our modern Halloween is only 500 years old – the secular British Halloween is not a separate holiday to the historic Catholic Allhallowstide, any more than the modern Catholic Allhallowstide is.

Both have direct continuity with the historic version, and both can claim those roots as their own. English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh emigrants to America eventually took Halloween with them, of course, and (as often happens in America) the holiday became genericised, simplified and commercialised; covered in candy and nylon and popularised through Hollywood. But it is not American. In this book I will try to prefer Hallowmas and Allhallowstide when referring to the wider Halloween season, and All Hallows Eve/Day when referring to the specific dates. I’ll use other names as the mood takes me, however, so keep your wits about you…

As the practices of Halloween vary from region to region, it is this inclusive, expansive Hallowmas season that I’m writing my book about – late October to mid-November, from around 28th October until 13th November. This, in England today, is the secular or folk season of Allhallowstide, within which we, of course, find All Hallows Eve itself, as well as All Hallows Day, All Souls Day, Bonfire Night, Martlemas, St Brice’s Day and more. If any of these names are unfamiliar, fret not. All will be revealed.