From Samhain to Hallowe’en
In the first part of this series we looked at the old festival of Samhain, a fire festival rooted in the rhythm of the land, marking the hinge of the year, the moment when the light slipped away and winter stepped in. People gathered to honour their ancestors, share the warmth of the communal fire, and disguise themselves to confuse wandering spirits. Nearly everything we recognise in today’s Halloween began here.
When Christianity spread through Ireland and Britain, the old ways did not vanish overnight. The Church had its own rituals and customs: All Saints’ Day (or All Hallows “hallow” is an old English word meaning “holy person” or “saint”), All Hallows’ Eve (just as we have Christmas Eve), and later All Souls’ Day.
All Saints’ Day can be traced back to the early centuries of the Church, created to honour all Christian saints and martyrs, those who had attained heaven but did not have their own feast day. By the eighth century, it had been fixed on November 1st. All Hallows’ Eve was the vigil the night before, more solemn and devotional than festive. People would attend church, light candles, visit graves to pray for souls, and perform acts of penance and fasting in preparation for the holy day. All Souls’ Day was added around the tenth century to pray specifically for the souls in Purgatory, creating a three-day observance known as Hallowtide.
These observances came to fall at the same time as Samhain, whether by design or by gradual adaptation. The Church often aligned Christian festivals with older seasonal celebrations to help people transition to the new faith, as it later did with Yule and the Winter Solstice at Christmas. Yet the old ways lingered still. Fires burned, people dressed in costume, and families left food for visiting souls.
Over time, the Gaelic Oíche Shamhna – the night of Samhain – merged with All Hallows’ Eve to become Hallowe’en, a simple contraction of the name. Across Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man, people continued their blend of Christian and pre-Christian customs. Children and young people would go “guising,” dressing up and visiting houses to sing songs or recite rhymes in return for food, much as their ancestors had done centuries earlier.
When Irish and Scottish immigrants crossed the Atlantic in the nineteenth century, they carried these traditions with them. In America, Hallowe’en evolved quickly. Pumpkins, native to the new land, replaced the turnips once carved into lanterns to ward off spirits. Communities organised parties, games and parades. By the early twentieth century, the night had become more about neighbours and play than fear or reverence.
Today’s Halloween is a patchwork of traditions from across the centuries. It can be hard to see beneath the commercial layers, with decorations appearing in shops long before October ends, and it is easy to feel that Hallowe’en came from the other side of the Atlantic to us, but behind the sweets and costumes are echoes of the Dumb Supper, the guisers, the apple peel and the shared fire. The names have changed, but the tradition remains if we look for it: the need to gather together at the edge of the dark, to laugh in the face of fear, and to remember that we are part of something much older than ourselves.
As the lights go out and the candles flicker in the window, a little of Samhain still walks beside us.