Halloween is now a common holiday in Germany. More and more children (and drunk teenagers) parade through the streets on October 31st. Some organize their "Trick or Treat" and collect sweets, others try to get even more drunk as quickly as possible. Only twenty years ago things were very different. It wasn't until the 1990s that this festival slowly spread across Europe, and if you ask around today, it's clear to everyone who is to blame. The Americans of course! Halloween is like Coca Cola and Harley Davidson in that way. A terrible Americanization of our lifestyle! ... At least that's what many older people said back then.
But if you then want to learn more about the history of Halloween on the Internet, you quickly come across a completely different explanation. Halloween isn't supposed to come from America at all. At least not originally. Rather, the celebration goes back to an old Irish-Celtic festival called Samhain, which then migrated to the USA with Irish emigrants in the 19th century and became what it is today. At first glance, that doesn't sound all that unbelievable. We Europeans have known for a long time that old European customs are being defaced in America! But it's not that simple after all...
What was Celtic Samhain?
In its origin, Halloween is nothing other than the old Iro-Celtic festival of Samhain. At least if you can believe the countless websites on the subject (for example this one). Then of course the question arises:what was this Samhain and how could it find its way from Ireland to the USA in the 19th century? Well, as far as we can tell for sure (and we can't tell for sure) Samhain was one of the four great Celtic festivals of the year. As in almost all cultures, Celtic societies divided their year into different phases, which were then often started or ended with a festival. In addition to astronomical events such as the equinox or the solstice, climatic reasons usually also played a role. After all, the year was primarily geared towards the harvest times.
In Celtic Ireland, in addition to the astrological holidays that probably also existed, there were four major festivals a year. Samhain was one of them and, according to our calendar, took place on November 1st, or the evening before it, if we can be so precise. The remaining three festivals, Imbolc, Beltane and Lughnasadh then followed quarterly on February 1st, May 1st and August 1st. It is also sometimes said that Samhain was the most important of these four festivals because it was also considered the festival of the New Year. But like everything else, that's hard to confirm. All assumptions about the role of Samhain are based exclusively on the so-called Coligny calendar, which was found in France in the 19th century and is said to represent the annual celebrations of the Celts. And this Celtic calendar is not as easy to decipher as one might imagine. Clear-sounding statements like the ones mentioned above are often nothing more than pure speculation.
But apart from that:what kind of festival was Samhain and how was it celebrated? Like the other three festivals, it was most likely a festival of the dead. Samhain was considered a time when the gates to the underworld were opened and there was no clear boundary between the world of the living and the dead. And that sounds pretty much like Halloween in terms of the basic mood, doesn't it? So is there something to the theory? Could it have happened that Samhain survived in Ireland at least in its basic form, was only slightly Christian overlaid and then came to America in the 19th century as Halloween?
A rather unlikely story
Unfortunately, this beautiful tale of continuity between Samhain and Halloween has a catch. And a very powerful and obvious one at that. Ireland is one of the earliest Christianized countries in Western Europe! Long before today's Germany was reached by Christianity missionaries or the Anglo-Saxons finally joined the Church in England, large parts of Ireland were already Christianized. After all, St. Patrick was already active there in the 5th century and only a little later Irish wandering monks were already at the forefront of missionary work in Europe. Such a country is really a very bad candidate for preserving a pre-Christian holiday for centuries...
Another explanation is more likely. The date of Samhain was not exactly a fancy date for a feast of the dead. In late October and early November, harvest time was over and preparations for winter began, in Ireland as elsewhere. The Romans also had very similar holidays around this time, to name just one example. So it is not so improbable that at some point a new Christian custom simply pushed its way into this place and coincidentally collided with the date of Samhain. A candidate for this is also quickly found:All Saints' Day. This festival has existed in the Christian Church for a long time. A holiday dedicated to all Christian martyrs already existed from the early 7th century. In the 8th century, All Saints' Day was officially celebrated for the first time on November 1st.
From Samhain to Halloween
That was the end of the matter within the Christian world of faith. November 1st was the day on which first all saints of Christianity, and later all the deceased in general, were commemorated. The Irish festival, which was then transmitted to the USA as Halloween in the 19th century, was nothing other than the eve of this very All Saints' Day. And actually this realization is obvious. Halloween is just an abbreviation of the name "All Hallow's Eve" - the evening before All Saints' Day. The fact that the inhabitants of Ireland could have celebrated a festival of the dead around this date before Christianity spread does not mean that Halloween must therefore be a continuation of the old festival.
Incidentally, up until the 19th century nobody asked themselves where the Halloween festival came from. In fact, that would probably have been a pretty stupid question. Only after the discovery of the Coligny calendar was this connection slowly established. And the reason for this is – as so often – an old friend of this blog:good old nationalism. Halloween was then Samhainized in the course of the so-called "Irish Renaissance". The emerging Irish nationalists wanted to differentiate themselves from England. An old Iro-Celtic root for a holiday fits perfectly into the picture. And the trick obviously worked until today.
If you are now interested in how this relates to other holidays and customs and whether Christianity has not only appropriated older customs for itself, I would like to recommend the podcast episode for this article. There I speak in a more general way about the origin of our Christian customs today and look at a few examples. In addition to Halloween, there is also Christmas and Easter, which I have already written about on the blog. Click here for the article about the story of Christmas, here for the story of Easter. If you would like to have such a dose of history delivered on a regular basis, the Déjà-vu History Newsletter is also an option. To start with, I'll tell you a little history of humanity. That's right:nothing less than that. Sign up!