The Origin and History of Halloween
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- Опубликовано: 28 окт 2022
- Halloween, a spooky time of the year when we’re all carving pumpkins, putting on our scary costumes and going out to trick or treat. Halloween is one of America’s favorite holidays, yet, you might be surprised to know, Halloween actually has its roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. So how did we adopt this spooky Celtic celebration?
The Origin and History of Halloween
#history #halloween #halloween2022 #halloweenspecial
I think the documentary of the Real story of Halloween would fit well with this program.
My favorite's are dressing up , trick or treating , telling scary stories, and the little Halloween games. 🍂🍁🎃⚰️🕷️🕷️🍭🍫🇺🇸🇮🇪
I'm so glad I found your channel! Very well done! I subscribed to see more ^-^
Thanks for subbing!
Who else loves Halloween???
Good morning, this was an excellent video. Will be looking forward to more content from you guys. Your voice is excellent for this content. Happy samhain your friendly witch from scandinavia
Thank you so much!
Beautiful just Beautiful you got it right, happy Halloween to you.
Thank you! You too!
The Celtics “Seltics” is a basketball team; while the Celtics “Keltics” were a very ancient culture that propagated through the British Isles, especially Ireland and Scotland, but also throughout parts of Europe. They had a nature based religion essentially, worshipping the Spirits of Nature but also believing in the Fey Folk, Fairie People of numerous kinds. Also there was belief in powerful gods, and the Otherworld
Interesting well researched video, looks plenty more on the channel, subscribed and Happy Halloween
Thanks for the sub!
Halloween and November 1st The Day of the Dead is in remembrance of the great flood. When else in history has so many people perished at one time in one event? It is now something far different. Blessings to you
Celtic is pronounced “Keltic” not “seltic”
Unless you're talking about the paedo football team. Then it's pronounced Glasgow Sellik.
Right😬
Yes that's correct, still hear seltic used, for the celtic football team, I live in Ireland
According to meriam-webster, the original pronunciation was "seltic" because of the word's French origin but was later changed to "keltic" by language historians to reflect Greek/Latin origins. Current pronunciation is with the hard C but still an interesting history!
Also, Nova Scotian is not pronounced "Sko- tee -an". It is pronounced "Sko-shun"
Let’s delve into the world of historical fact…
Completely contrary to what many would have one believe, Halloween is _not_ a holiday that has close ties to the ancient past, nor does it have some ‘pagan’ antecedent, nor is it a continuation of several ancient customs.
It is a relatively new phenomenon, originating from right here in the USA from about the 1920’s or so, and represents a mix of cultures, capitalism, and accommodation.
Many people tend to associate modern Halloween with three things: The old Celtic celebration of Samhain (asserting that most of Halloween’s customs originate with ancient Samhain celebrations); Satanism (asserting that Halloween’s origins are Satanic, as evidenced by the many Satanists who use this day to promote their beliefs); and All Saints Day (asserting that the early church established the holiday to “Christianize” Samhain).
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of researching these various origins, traditions, and assumed ‘truths’ about Halloween, is sifting through all the data and separating what is historical _fact_ from the myth, legend, and religious paranoia of what is historical _fiction._
It’s not an easy task. Indeed, what makes this task even more difficult, is that so many of these ill- researched ‘’facts’, suppositions, and assumptions have been repeated for so long, they have essentially become accepted as truth. One can find these asserted ‘facts’ in everything ranging from various educational websites, to entries in dictionaries and encyclopedias, and even in (some) scholarly articles.
What we find after close examination and scrutiny, however, is that the accepted origin of most Halloween traditions/beliefs comes from the latter (historical fiction), rather than the former (historical fact).
Contrary to what many believe, or were taught, all three holidays; Halloween, All Saint’s Day, and Samhain, developed _completely independent_ of each other. They *do* however, all share a common date and perhaps a “feeling”….but that’s really about it. Indeed, so much of Halloween “feels” Pagan that attempts to connect those things to ancient Samhain simply “feels right”.
The truth is, to say Halloween’s connections to ancient Samhain are, at best, extremely tenuous, would be grossly overstating the facts.
Halloween just does not have the “pagan precedent” so many people seem to desperately want it to.
It might also be mentioned that until the middle of the 20th century, anthropologists typically assumed that any festival, however new it actually was and no matter where it came from, had ancient pagan roots, even if the people celebrating it gave a different story and were therefore thought to be ignorant of its origins. There was a romantization of rural cultures such that it was thought the rural folk were holders of ancient wisdom, but simultaneously ignorant that they held wisdom or that it was ancient, so they needed academics to explain it to them, based on theories that have long been discredited.
Hmm, sounds like you've been taking modern Evangelical propaganda at face value (your obsession with "Satanism" kinda gave you away, there). While there are a lot of myths surrounding Halloween (particularly black cats), it's not at all true that Halloween is modern. All Saints Day and All Souls Days are certainly medieval, particularly in Spain. It sounds as though you are misunderstanding what Halloween is. It's not a day celebration. It's the night (the eve) before All Saints Day and has probably been so since All Saints Day was officially established in the early 7th century (it may have been unofficially celebrated as early as the 4th century). Technically, it's a vigil, albeit a popular one because ordinary people were engaging in apotropaic activities prior to sunrise. The Protestant Church did eventually stop celebrating All Saints Day as an official holiday, but that was before you Evangelicals even existed. The Catholic Church still celebrates it.
It's straight-up silly to claim that Christians didn't co-opt pagan holidays when there is plenty of history to that effect. Not only did Christians actively co-opt pagan holidays during the early Middle Ages to gain new followers, but Christianity itself was born and formed in an empire that co-opted other people's religious stuff all the time. It was expected, and considered a sign of honor and respect for local traditions. It would be weird if Christianity *didn't* do that. So, the fact that All Saints Day and Samhain are so close together in the calendar is very unlikely to be a coincidence, especially with All Souls Day on the other side of them.
Your claim that they're three separate holidays is a strawman argument. People don't really argue that they're not separate. It's just that because these holidays are right next to each other, people tend to run them together, but no one really argues that, say, evil spirits roam the earth on November 2. The rituals and atmosphere for the eve and the two days are quite separate.
@@paulastiles5507 Propaganda, probably, as people seem to be trying to get rid of it. I've been researching it for over fifty years and wrote a book about it, follow the avatar. I know it is incredulous, even the doctorates are ignorant, it is about world destruction and Impact Winter that used to be the ancient New Years of the Five Days of Dread when crossing the pre-perihelion of the Taurid Meteor Stream and if the calamity didn't happen and the Sun rose afterwards it was a Happy New Year. This world has cyclic bombardments as one of the oldest ideals of The Destroyer, The Creator, and The Sustainer which are The Four Ages of Man or Suns in the Americas. By the way the four ages correlate from isolation with oceans between the New and Old Worlds. As for Christianity absorbing ancient traditions, it is without doubt as the whole basis is founded on the above cyclic system of the Sun being killed by the Impact Winter that blots out the sky for long periods of time and after the Armageddon clears the Sun is Resurrected and a new world is regenerated, except it was personalized as we as individuals live again not the planet. Everyone knows of The End of the World, yet are ignorant that it repeats itself. It all started when a huge comet dropped into the inner solar system ~20ka and when it was coming our way at night it seemed to come out of the Pleiades as demonstrated in cave art with the Bull associated with the seven dots (and more), then there is Gobekli Tepe, Enclosure D, where two adversaries are surrounded by the twelve constellations (disciples), one has a bull (The Constellation of Taurus with its cloven hooves, horns, and tuft tail.) on its chest and the other in loincloth (the Sun) has a dragon in its arm, as did Gilgamesh with a lion, and stands domineeringly on seven birds, the symbol of the Pleiades radiant. The same, as Christ and the Devil, Good vs. Evil, or the ubiquitous Shinning Hero slaying the Dragon (comets and superbolides) that saves the maiden (Mother Earth). It is universal in Comparative Mythology and Religion around the globe as The Festival of the Dead and all but one has lost its true timing of the crossing of the Taurid Stream, Halloween with its Halloween Fireballs, The Taurids. We all fight for whom think their own interpretation is correct of the same cosmic / terrestrial events and it seems the misguided are pushing to call the hand of cards alike sympathetic magic to bring on Doomsday so we can get on with the better life, cough. Just the other day the leader of the Great Bear of the North said that if the button is pushed only they will go to Heaven... It is amazing, the denial of ancient paradigm shift.
@@andyc4295
What you’re seeing repeated on things like RUclips are the same “facts” rehashed in different ways. Everyone’s essentially using the same sources and copying from everyone else. It’s misinformation that gets repeated so many times over such a long time, that it begins to be accepted as ‘fact’.
As I mentioned, for a serious researcher, perhaps the most difficult aspect of researching these various origins, traditions, and assumed ‘truths’ about Halloween, is sifting through all the data and separating what is historical _fact_ from the myth, legend, and, frankly, religious paranoia of what is historical _fiction._
It’s not an easy task. Indeed, what makes this even more difficult, is that so many of these ‘’facts”, suppositions, and assumptions are so ill-researched and have been repeated for so long, that they have essentially become accepted as truth. As I previously noted, one can find these asserted ‘facts’ in everything ranging from various educational websites to entries in dictionaries and encyclopedias, and even in (some) scholarly articles.
What we find after close examination and scrutiny, however, is that the accepted origin of most Halloween traditions/beliefs comes from the latter (historical fiction), rather than the former (historical fact).
Many times, to get right down to it, you have to go to as original a source as available. This means bypassing many of the usual sources.
Older sources come from the writings of Caesar (who never witnessed an actual Samhain celebration), a few Greek sources, and many of the texts from the Ulster Cycle (e.g. Tochmarc Emire and Táin bó Cuailnge).
The books o the Ulster cycle are probably the best source.
The Roman and Greek sources are not eyewitness accounts, but rather third party accounts.
With respect to the older Gaelic texts, Samhain is discussed; however, so too are the myths and legends that surround the celebration - yet, despite this, if we detach the myth and lore, we can glean a bit of historical truth about Samhain.
Medieval Irish literature too, is full of references to Samhain; however, these are almost entirely mythological and not at all historical. It’s many of these that have been carried to modern times and given as “fact” in many sources.
So where did ideas like Samhain as a “feast of the dead”, or (though now _finally_ becoming somewhat passé) Celtic “Lord of the Dead” come from? Where did the idea of people dressing up in costumes (animal pelts) to ward off evil spirits, using hollowed out root vegetables as beacons or lanterns to guide or house spirits, a time when the dead roamed the earth, appropriating evil spirits by offering them “treats”, i.e. the typical trappings of Samhain one hears year after year, come from?? As I also mentioned, these ideas have been repeated year after year to the point where they have become accepted as historical fact, rather than the historical fiction that they are. They are often quoted by scholars and appear in various educational sources including dictionaries and encyclopedias.
The two main sources are the notoriously slipshod Scottish anthropologist Sir James Frazer, and
British military surveyor sent to Ireland, Col. Charles Vallency who, in about 1770, wrote a 6 volume set of books which attempted to prove that the Irish people once came from….. Armenia!! It was Valency’s work that gave us Samhain as the “Celtic Lord of Death” which was picked up by many Christian preachers in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and has been perpetuated by the like-minded ever since. Both Frazer and Vallency’s works have been disproven and both of these works (Frazer wrote The Golden Bough) have been rejected by scholars and recognized for their lack of any sound research. Vallency’s work was discredited even in his own time.
Unfortunately, it is from these two sources that the majority of Samhain’s inaccuracies stem from and where the Halloween-Samhain connection begins in earnest.
Here’s a short except from Frazer:
“The principal fire-festivals of the Celts, which have survived, through in a restricted area and with diminished pomp, to modern times….were two in number, and fell at an interval of six months, one being celebrated on the eve of May Day and the other Allhallow Even or Hallowe’en, as it is now commonly called, that is, on the thirty-first of October, the day preceding All Saints’ or Allhallows’ Day…the Feast of All Souls at the beginning of November which under a thin Christian cloak conceals an ancient pagan festival of the dead…Hallowe’en, the night which marks the transition from autumn to winter, seems to have been of old the time of year when the souls of the departed were supposed to revisit their old homes in order to warm themselves by the fire and to comfort themselves with the good cheer provided for them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinsfolk…But it is not only the souls of the departed who are supposed to be hovering unseen on the day ‘when autumn to winter resigns the pale year.’ Witches then speed on their errands of mischeif, some sweeping through the air on besoms, others galloping along the roads on tabby-cats, which for that evening are turned into coal-black steeds. The fairies, too, are all let loose, and hobgoblins of every sort roam freely about.”
Sound familiar? Halloween is the “ancient pagan festival of the dead”-the liminal night when the dead walk, when the witches ride, when the goblins roam, etc., etc.
As one historian put it, “The irony of _The Golden Bough_ (Frazer) is that its theory is completely rejected by scholars yet embraced by the public (particularly certain religious denominations). Frazer’s work is generally, if not universally, dismissed today by anthropologists, but they are nonetheless saddled with the reality that _The Golden Bough_ is the most popular and influential book in the history of the discipline in terms of its wider cultural impact.”
And yet another historian - “Frazer’s description of Samhain in _The Golden Bough_ anachronistically projected medieval traditions onto the past - there is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship.”
The earliest Halloween celebrations in the United States were cultural holidays, celebrating Scottish and Irish Culture. Early Halloween cards featured tartan and the words “Auld Lang Syne”, yet another example of how holiday traditions mixed and took a while to settle into their now comfortable spots.
As Halloween became more and more popular in the 1970’s and 80’s a backlash began, and as the Evangelical Right grew in power, that backlash become louder. Certain Christians began to actively campaign against Halloween, proclaiming it a “pagan holiday,” and pushing to have it removed from public schools in the name of separation of church and state.
What’s so weird about the Halloween backlash is that very little of Halloween is actually pagan or ancient.
To be fair, the fall activity (not always associated with, nor just limited to Halloween), bobbing for apples, comes from about the 1300’s or so and originates as a British woman’s courting custom. So it is indeed quite old (but not pagan). Its alleged associations with the Roman Pomona are not at all historically attested. Indeed, there is much conjecture amongst scholars whether a Roman celebration of Pomona even existed. There was one for her consort, at which times she was often associated with, but it was in August, not October.
Indeed, most of the traditions we associate with Halloween are early modern in their origin-not “pagan”.
Yet this one idea surfaces again and again, recycled _ad nauseum_ on websites and in culture war books, assuring us that Halloween is “pagan”.
Of course "Halloween" is a newer label for the holiday that most Americans celebrate. You are presenting information, but arguing (without much evidence) against what we can trace back. It seems like you are just saying "Halloween as we know it today was made in the 1920s." That could be true, but you are missing the point- the whole holiday's roots. This video, and others, do a great job at providing evidence that Halloween *is* rooted in ancient Samhain traditions, which evolved through different cultures over time.
Your statement is like saying "the traditions that we have for Christmas today arose in the last century, but the deeper reason why we do those traditions doesn't matter."
@@andyc4295
The roots of Halloween do not tie back to anything ancient.
To say that Halloween’s connections to ancient Samhain, or anything “ancient” for that matter, are, at best, extremely tenuous, would be grossly overstating the facts. A direct connection between Halloween and Samhain has never been proven. Least of all with any legitimate satisfactory historical evidence to back such a claim.
As historian Ronald Hutton notes, “Until the middle of the 20th century, anthropologists automatically assumed that _any_ festival, however new it actually was and no matter where it came from, had ancient pagan roots, even if the people celebrating it gave a different story. They were simply thought to be ignorant of its origins.
There was a romanticization of rural cultures such that it was thought the rural folk were holders of ancient wisdom, but simultaneously ignorant that they held such wisdom, or that it was ancient, so they needed academics to explain it to them, based on theories that have long been discredited.”
Halloween is no exception to the above process.
The simple truth is, what we definitively know about Samhain, facts that can be historically documented, would fill about a page and a half of paper.
Contrary to repeated insistence in popular sources, scholars can find no clear indication of any ritual or religious practices on Samhain, and certainly none that can be traced to later Halloween traditions. Masks, costumes, trick or treating, Halloween games etc. all either have known traditional Christian origins or simply cannot be linked to anything definitely pre-Christian. Possibly the main thing that does connect Halloween to earlier beliefs about Samhain is the idea that it is a numinous time of year when this world and the otherworld become closer and, thus, it is a time to be wary of malevolent entities. But how much of that idea comes from pre-Christian beliefs and how much of it is a result of a Christian feast focused on the afterlife and the dead is, again, impossible to tell.
According to Nicholas Rogers, a history professor at York University and author of Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night, “there is no hard evidence that Samhain was specifically devoted to the dead or to ancestor worship, despite claims to the contrary by some American folklorists.” Samhain, originally at least, was less about death or evil than about the changing of seasons and preparing for the dormancy (and rebirth) of nature as summer turned to winter.
Most accounts we have of Samhain come from early Christian Irish monks who, for obvious reasons, painted it in the worst light possible, embellishing their stories with superstitions that were current in their day. The reality is, that they really knew nothing more of Samhain then than we do today.
The primary source of what is known comes from the books of the Ulster Cycle. By most historical accounts, Samhain proper was preceded by three days, and followed by three days. In some accounts it’s only a three-day celebration (not a seven day). Samhain seems to have been a time to prepare for winter, cull the herds and celebrate the final harvest of the year. One particular activity that old Gaelic texts seem to suggest was very popular at Samhain was…. horse racing. That sounds a lot like many European holidays today from October-January. These texts also speak of it as a time to pay tithings, gather taxes, and the holding of a judicial assembly (much like the Manx ‘Tynwald Day’).
As historian Ronald Hutton notes, “there seems to be no doubt that the opening of November was the time of a major festival which was celebrated, at the very least, in all those parts of the British Isles with a pastoral economy. At most, it may have been general among the ‘Celtic’ peoples. The Gauls apparently celebrated it as well, based upon its appearance on the Coligny calendar. There is no evidence, however, that it was connected with the dead, and no proof that it opened the year.” The second-century Coligny calendar, engraved on a bronze tablet found in France, suggests that the new year was celebrated on May 1, with the holiday Beltane. Other scholars suggest the new year may have begun at the summer or winter solstices, or at the autumn equinox.
Is it just me or am I just not seeing anything that smacks of modern Halloween.
Halloween just does not have the “pagan precedent” so many people seem to desperately want it to.
The assertion that modern Halloween ties back to ancient Samhain, is based more on the legends, lore and myth that have surrounded the holiday for centuries, than actual historical fact.