I was grumbling to a friend a while ago about the commercialisation of Halloween and was picking on the ubiquitous pumpkin, a rather lurid American import in my opinion. She reminded me that the origins of Halloween are Irish and then a few days ago she sent me a photo of the turnip she’d carved “in honour of” her “Irish roots”.
The pagan celebration from which Halloween originates is Samhain (pronounced Saw-when or Sow-whin), a Celtic festival marking the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter.
At this time of year people believed that the veil between this world and the land of the dead (the celtic Otherworld) was thin, so spirits and the souls roamed freely between the two. And so, ghoulish carved lanterns were used to ward off evil spirits and protect from harm.
In the name of research and authenticity I carved my first lantern from a gnarly old turnip, pictured above and below. He manages to look sinister in both photos and is surely scarier than a garish pumpkin? Singed turnip is not an aroma I appreciate, so his ghoulish glow comes from a battery tea light and an electric drill bit might have aided the “hallowing” process!
My husband carved turnips as a child and apparently the process kept him and his siblings out of trouble for most of a day, as for safety reasons the only tools they were allowed were a butter knife, spoon and apple corer. In centuries past, Irish/Scottish settlers abandoned their traditional root vegetable lanterns in favour of north American pumpkins, the flesh of which was much easier to carve. That could start a whole other rant about the scourge of convenience versus reward, but I will refrain…
I grew up in a rather puritan home and yet strangely my parents did not object to us celebrating some of the traditions of Halloween. I remember a series of church sermons against Santa Claus and Christmas trees, but none against Halloween. My church was an evangelical Protestant one and did not recognise All Hallows’ Day (1st November), introduced in the 9th century by Pope Gregory VI.
However, every afternoon of the last day of October (unless it fell on a Sunday!) animal face masks were rummaged for in the the cupboard under the stairs and donned by my brother and I. The excitement began as dusk arrived and we crept up the lane to scare Dad, as he finished up on the farm for the evening. This tradition of disguising oneself probably comes from an attempt to confuse any malcontent spirits, faeries and souls who had crossed over from the Otherworld.
As darkness fell, we had fun with sparkers and then the fire in the living room was lit and we bobbed for apples. Later, we gathered around the kitchen table to enjoy the apple tart my mum baked each year, with coins hidden inside. Interestingly the apple has an important place in Irish mythology, representing the food of the Otherworld as well as love and fertility. Did you know that the pentagram can seen when an apple is cut across its width, revealed in the formation of pips?
The transient nature of Samhain meant that divination was believed to be especially powerful at this time. Halloween has been known as Snap-Apple night in the past and various divination rituals (including bobbing for apples) were used to predict romantic futures for the unmarried.
Samhain is also a fire festival and as the Celts gathered their harvest in for winter, hearth fires in homes dimmed and were allowed to extinguish. Symbolic communal bonfires were lit and their burning was probably hugely significant in various rituals. It is believed that hearth fires in homes were then restarted from this ‘pure’ fire. We had sparklers which I loved, but they seem very tame by comparison!
I still enjoy marking the changes of the seasons, learning more about old traditions and have a curiosity to taste mead – a honey wine that would have been drank at this time of year by our ancestors. A local very old and mostly forgotten graveyard is one of my favourite places for a flask and cup of tea. This year I also attended a Samhain feast, where the theme was fire and the food delicious.
There is a lot more I could write, but I have limited it to a bit of what we celebrated in 80’s and early 90’s in our rural Co. Armagh home. There was very little money or plastic involved…
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