[HN Gopher] A deep history of Halloween
___________________________________________________________________
A deep history of Halloween
Author : benbreen
Score : 101 points
Date : 2024-10-29 13:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (resobscura.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (resobscura.substack.com)
| self_awareness wrote:
| Poland had "Dziady", although world-wide Americanism has
| introduced Halloween the same way as in the rest of the world.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dziady
| throw4847285 wrote:
| This is a very sloppy argument. The first citation is a work from
| the 60s which makes the unsubstantiated claim that some kind of
| practice was actually the survival of a prehistoric fertility
| cult. Then later the author says any claim made about a
| prehistoric society must be taken with a grain of salt... and
| then he makes a sweeping claim.
|
| As far as I know, the modern historical consensus is that Samhain
| had no link to the dead and that aspect comes entirely from
| Christianity. People project a lot onto the past based on their
| assumptions about what seems pagan and what seems Christian, and
| what they project onto paganism is things that feel non-modern
| (belief in the supernatural, practices tied to the cycle of the
| year, things that seem "spooky.")
| subsubzero wrote:
| I was going to say the same thing. There is nothing "deep"
| about this history, the article is a string of poorly connected
| events that still try to bring up the spectre of wrong ideas
| that came out in the 60's tying Samhaim to our modern Halloween
| which has been refuted many many times. I am sorry but bonfires
| are not really associated with modern Halloween and just
| because ancient persians used them does not meaningfully tie
| that in with trick or treating, ghouls and ghosts. Even this
| actual line sounds nothing like our modern halloween:
|
| > A 12th-century Irish source records a week of feasting during
| this time, when "there would be nothing but meetings and games
| and amusements and entertainments and eating and feasting"
| (sounds fun!).2 There is talk of kindling sacred fires, and of
| spirits and ghosts wandering the earth. But very little detail.
|
| This sounds more like Thanksgiving (or fall festivals
| Oktoberfest etc) than halloween.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| I almost lost it when he started making claims about proto-
| Indo-European religion.
|
| I don't want to dunk on the author too much. His book about
| Margaret Mead and psychedelics sounds interesting, and I read
| a couple positive reviews of it. It looks like he spent too
| much studying early anthropologists and he seems to be
| replicating their worst qualities as academics.
| devjab wrote:
| > As far as I know, the modern historical consensus is that
| Samhain had no link to the dead and that aspect comes entirely
| from Christianity.
|
| As far as I know it's build on a harvest festival which
| happened to be when the veil between our world and other worlds
| were thin. That didn't necessarily mean spirits of dead people,
| but also faeries and stuff. Of course the Christian church
| mostly took the timing of the already existing festival and
| used it as their own because people didn't really want to stop
| celebrating what they usually did (who would?) and Christianity
| worked with what it had.
| throw4847285 wrote:
| There is no evidence, as far as I'm aware, that Samhaim was
| associated with the "veil between worlds being thin" prior to
| Christianization. The medieval Church was not allergic to
| rituals that involved the spirits of the dead. The belief
| that these practices are anti-Christian or pagan is a product
| of the Protestant Reformation.
|
| The notion that the Church was acting in a deliberate way to
| co-opt certain festivals that it couldn't destroy gives it
| too much credit. Syncretism is often bottom up. And many of
| the practices that survive are tied to the human experience
| in ways that transcend any specific belief system, like the
| changing of the seasons and the agricultural cycle.
|
| Also, treating paganism as some undifferentiated whole is
| ahistorical. Why do people talk about ancient Indo-European
| rituals that survive for millenia and then Christianity is
| the rupture? More likely, religious beliefs changed many
| times, and Samhain was itself a syncretic combination of a
| new belief system with pre-Samhain harvest festival
| practices.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| > a product of the Protestant Reformation.
|
| It's instructive to note the beginning date of the
| Reformation: 31 October 1517. Likewise, 5 November 1605
| remains significant for Protestants.
|
| Bonfires on the 5th of November have been obligatory for
| centuries, and therefore strongly associated with this
| season. For Protestants. Protestant bonfires. Not pagan.
| Burning their fellow Christians in effigy.
|
| I would say that those two events, combined with Dia de los
| Muertos influence, are the most enlightening aspects of
| Halloween culture.
|
| In fact, rather than Christians co-opting paganism, it's
| more properly a case of anti-Catholic bigotry co-opting All
| Saints Day. The secular/pagan/demonic overtones are merely
| allied with the Protestant jihad.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _As far as I know it's build on a harvest festival which
| happened to be when the veil between our world and other
| worlds were thin. That didn't necessarily mean spirits of
| dead people, but also faeries and stuff._
|
| A lot of these types of claims came from the book _The Golden
| Bough_ , which gets things wrong:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough
|
| A good weblog post that goes into primary sources and how
| _Bough_ influenced popular culture is:
|
| > _Contrary to Seth Andrews' claims about "the Catholic
| Church" stealing a pagan festival "involving the druid
| priests and the people dressing up in masks and tricks and
| treats", the date and most of the traditions are firmly
| Christian in origin. The November 1 date that is the centre
| of "Allhallowmas" was not derived from any "Celtic" original
| and the original Irish date for an All Saints feast moved
| from April 20 to November 1 due to the influence of
| Continental and English liturgical practice. That this meant
| the new All Saints Day fell on the "quarter day" of Samhain
| was pure coincidence. 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._
|
| * https://historyforatheists.com/2021/10/is-halloween-pagan/
| sfwc wrote:
| The story here is likely off on the wrong foot from the start:
| our Halloween isn't really meaningfully connected to Samhain.
| https://adfontesjournal.com/archives/halloween-its-creation-...
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| See also this exploration of the origin of All Saints Day:
|
| https://www.newliturgicalmovement.org/2017/11/the-origin-of-...
| Jun8 wrote:
| So, as a person who came to the US in his late 20s in '95 from a
| country where Halloween was not "celebrated" (of course, now it
| is has expanded there, too, like in many other countries, fueled
| by the incentive to sell stuff) I have had an outsider's PoV of
| the celebrations over the years, here's my chronology in
| chronological order with my son: 1. Baby
| Halloween: When you have children this is from birth to approx.
| 4yrs old, where they don't have much input into costumes so
| parents can buy the cutest, funniest costume, e.g. a small cow or
| a bumble bee. 2. Kid Halloween: From about 5 yrs to 11yrs,
| when kids join you in costume planning and are so infatuated with
| candy its cure. Some Halloween decorations may still be scary for
| them :-) 3. Teen Halloween: From about 12yrs old to perhaps
| 13-14 yrs old. Halloween is a guilty pleasure for these kids, who
| think they are now too old. You see them still collecting candy
| but not in costume and using pillowcases for loot 4. Sexy
| Halloween: Starts around 18 yrs old and covers college years and
| single adulthood. This is the realm of spooky houses, sexy
| witches, skimpy costumes 5. Interlude: Early years of
| marriage, when (4) is fading but you don't have kids yet. You
| still go out to parties but they are not that wild. 6.
| Grandkid Halloween: You get to live (1) again but you have much
| more time!
| josefresco wrote:
| This warmed my heart. I'm sooo looking forward to #6 having
| lived through 1-5 both for myself, and with my kids.
| scaglio wrote:
| A couple of years ago I wrote a brief article about Halloween,
| and linked to the Roman Lemuria:
| https://godsip.club/articles/monster-mash/
| aswerty wrote:
| Is there a well regarded book or study on the origins of
| Halloween? Any thread online seems to involve a rather baseless
| argument between people who think it is the natural development
| of European traditions brought to the US and further iterated
| upon; or people who think it is an American tradition which also
| has some influences from immigrant groups.
|
| Essentially allowing religious and nationalistic sentiment drive
| the entire discussion in terms of it's paganism or who owns it.
| wrp wrote:
| _Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween_ by Lisa Morton is a
| good place to start, moderately thorough and doesn 't have an
| axe to grind. Her _Halloween Encyclopedia_ is also quite good.
| downvotetruth wrote:
| The Mysterious Origin of Halloween - Randall Carlson:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucn175R8WgY
| echelon_musk wrote:
| I didn't find this to be deep. It seems to be a rambling series
| of conjecture that left me none the wiser for having read it.
| throw0101d wrote:
| The _History for Atheists_ weblog has a good entry called "Is
| Halloween Pagan?":
|
| > _The short answer is "no". Contrary to Seth Andrews' claims
| about "the Catholic Church" stealing a pagan festival "involving
| the druid priests and the people dressing up in masks and tricks
| and treats", the date and most of the traditions are firmly
| Christian in origin. The November 1 date that is the centre of
| "Allhallowmas" was not derived from any "Celtic" original and the
| original Irish date for an All Saints feast moved from April 20
| to November 1 due to the influence of Continental and English
| liturgical practice. That this meant the new All Saints Day fell
| on the "quarter day" of Samhain was pure coincidence. 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._
|
| * https://historyforatheists.com/2021/10/is-halloween-pagan/
|
| YT video/audio equivalent of the article if you want a more
| podcast-y experience:
|
| * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fVWAWQxKpM
|
| * https://historyforatheists.com/2022/10/pagan-halloween/
| VagabundoP wrote:
| Halloween has always been a feast at the end of the harvest
| season. The weather changes around now. Its the end of Autumn
| for us, the start of Winter. There's berries and nuts etc. It
| was always going to be a massive party. I really doubt the
| coming of Christianity changed it in any significant way.
|
| The bonfires and wildness of the night are still there, its
| always been a night were the rules seem looser.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Halloween has always been a feast at the end of the
| harvest season._
|
| [citation needed]
|
| Because the weblog goes to primary sources (amongst others)
| and finds that:
|
| > _The Felire Oengusso or "Martyrology of Oengus" is another
| martyrology, attributed to Saint Oengus of Tallaght. It seems
| to date to the ninth century and is based on earlier English
| martyrologies (like that of Bede), but with significant local
| Irish additions. It mentions a feast of All Saints in its
| listing for April 20:_
|
| > _Under November 1, on the other hand, we do find - finally
| - a reference to "Samhain". But it is not associated with
| commemorating All Saints, but rather with three Irish saints
| only:_
|
| > _So while the English were already celebrating All Saints
| Day on November 1 in the eighth century and that date became
| predominant in Frankia by the mid ninth century, the Irish
| were doing so on April 20, with "stormy Samain" the feast of
| three local holy men only. As esteemed historian of folklore,
| Ronald Hutton, summarises it in his Stations Of The Sun
| (Oxford, 1996):_
|
| [...]
|
| > _For Frazer, Samhain had been nothing less than the pagan
| Celtic feast of the dead. Like Rhys, he saw it as marking the
| death of the old year and also as a numinous time when the
| supernatural was abroad. But he argued that it was common for
| many cultures to honour their dead at the close of the year
| and so argued that the Christian feasts of All Saints and All
| Souls on November 1 and 2 had to have their origins in this
| posited earlier Celtic festival. Of course, this is based on
| the idea that All Saints began in Ireland and the Celtic
| tradition and transferred to the rest of Europe. But, as
| discussed above, this does not seem to be the case, with the
| earlier Irish celebration of All Saints (April 20) giving way
| to the date established in Frankia in the ninth century
| (November 1). Frazer got the influence completely the wrong
| way around._
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| > the coming of Christianity changed it in any significant
| way.
|
| The 95 Theses changed it in a huge way in 1517. Recall that
| many Protestants don't believe in saints at all!
| bluGill wrote:
| I'm going to slightly disagree. The facts are probably correct,
| but celebration of spirits, evil, and the other things are
| clearly against teachings in the bible. Thus I'll have to claim
| that it came not from Christians, but from Pagans pretending to
| be christian. (which is rather common anyway)
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| It came from Protestants pretending not to be Catholic,
| actually
| bluGill wrote:
| Catholics and Protestants both have their own ways of
| pretending to be Christian while ignoring teachings in the
| bible. (though protestant has enough different sects that
| you can't draw a blanket on any one thing that they all do
| wrong)
| smokel wrote:
| Some people suggest Halloween is named after "Heer Halewijn"
| (Lord Halewijn), who figured in a pre-Christian Dutch folk tale
| [1].
|
| Might as well be the other way around though :)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heer_Halewijn
| oersted wrote:
| Yes it's quite a stretch. Occam says that it clearly comes from
| All Hallows' Eve/Day (Nov 1st). Hallow just means "to make
| holy", so the day of all who where made holy, or All Saints
| Day.
|
| Not sure how they justify the connection to the dutch. There is
| a town called "Haelen" in Limburg or "Hale" in the local
| dialect. And "wijn" just means wine, as in the drink. It's
| quite a plausible surname pattern and a total coincidence, not
| even a very close one. Although it is quite a spooky tale, fair
| enough.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| It's the halfway point between the winter solistice an autumnal
| equinox. Just like "Christmas" is really just winter solstice.
|
| It's all thinly veiled solar worship.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-10-29 23:00 UTC)