The Real Dope on Halloween Myth, Lore, and Legend

All of the familiar icons of American Halloween were present in this early 20th Century card.

Note—Our annual Halloween post.

Halloween traces its origin to the Celtic harvest festival Samhain.  It was one of the four festivals that fell between the Solstices and Equinoxes and which celebrated the natural turning of the seasons.  Samhain was particularly important because it was the gate in time to the death and starvation season of Wnter, as well a time to celebrate the recent harvest. 

This association with the death of winter also extended to the spirit world, which was considered to be closer to the mortal plane than at any other time of the year.  The Celtic priests—the Druids—marked the occasion with the lighting of bonfires and with gifts of food and drink for the spirits of the dead.  Some consider it also analogous to a New Year’s celebration launching a new cycle of the seasons.  It was popularly celebrated by the peasantry long after the Druids passed and well into the Christian era.

Details of actual Druid practices are practically unknown but widely imagined as in this illustration of a supposed ritual at Stonehenge.

Too popular to squelch, as with many pagan observances Catholic Church co-opted the custom as All Saints Day on November 1.   In rural regions Samhain customs continued to be observed on the evening before the Holy Day—which came to be known as All Hallows Eve, or Hallowe’en in Scots.

Immigrants from the British Isles brought some of their customs with them to the New World, but Halloween does not seem to have been widely celebrated colonial America.  The Puritans spent a lot of time trying to squelch other pagan customs like the May Pole dances associated with the spring Celtic festival of Beltane, but for all of their obsession with witchcraft, usually associated with those who continued to keep the old pagan traditions, there is no evidence of suppressing Samhain or Halloween.

These types of colorful greeting cards from around the turn of the 20th Century were  evidence of the growing popularity of Halloween while helping to spread it and create many of the iconic images still associated with it.

In fact, there is little mention of Halloween in America until the second half of the 19th Century.  By the 1880’s and ‘90s greeting card companies were printing colorful post cards featuring images of witches, black cats, skeletons, and pumpkin Jack o’ Lanterns—all of the classic images associated with Halloween.  Period photos from around the turn of the 20th Century show both adults and children in costumes, most commonly some variation of witch or ghost themes.   

A few scattered newspapers began reporting ritual begging on Halloween by masked youths accompanied by general hooliganism, threats, and acts of vandalism.  This was probably introduced by the wave of poor “country” Irish immigrants that began after the Potato Famine and continued through most of the rest of the century.  The ritual begging in costumes and general hooliganism more closely resembled rural Irish Wren Day—St. Stephen’s Day December 26—customs than those celebrated in either England or Scotland.

The scary Halloween scene from Meet Me in St. Louis illustrated both the street begging and hooliganism associated with it in the early 20th Century.

Rowdyism by boys and young men was reported in big cities and small towns alike and often included setting small bonfires of junk in roadways; tipping or stealing outhouses; pelting houses with eggs, rotten vegetables, or manure; letting horses and livestock loose from barns and pens; and sometimes blocking chimneys so that houses would fill with smoke.  Sometimes significant damage was done.  The Halloween scene in the classic MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis shows a rare screen glimpse at the rowdy shenanigans most Americans associated with the celebration.

As it spread, customs for observing the holiday varied regionally. Communities started to organize activities to keep the kids and hooligans off the streets, with mixed success.  Parties with games such as bobbing for apples and the telling of ghost stories were fairly common.  

Parties for children with wholesome games were a popular alternative to the hooliganism associated with Halloween but failed to stop it.

Animated films of the ‘20’s and ‘30’s such as Walt Disney’s 1929 Silly Symphony The Dancing Skeletons showed the popularity of the holiday and light-hearted images of death, witches, and black cats.  The Skeletons perhaps show a tip-o’-the-hat familiarity with the Mexican customs around The Day of the Dead which is celebrated on All Soul’s Day.

Walt Disney's 1929 Silly Symphony cartoon The Skeleton Dance  helped make them an enduring Halloween image.  It also borrowed heavily from Mexican Day of the Dead imagery.

The custom of trick or treating seems to have spread slowly.  It combined the ritual begging with toned-down tricks that were a little less extreme than the wild rampages reported earlier.  What progress it was making was largely interrupted by the Depression years when families had little extra money to spend on treats and by the sugar rationing of World War II.

Trick or Treating spread rapidly in the post-World War II years.

Trick or treating was still far from universal until after World War II when it became a topic of popular radio programs like the Jack Benny Show and Ozzie and Harriet. 

In 1947 the popular children’s magazine Jack and Jill published a story on the custom of Halloween begging and described it in detail, spreading the practice widely and with amazing uniformity.  By 1951 the practice was widespread enough that a Philadelphia woman, Mary Emma Allison and the Reverend Clyde Allison decided to channel the energy to constructive purposes by introducing Trick or Treat for UNICEF to support the work of the United Nations international children’s relief.

In the 1950's stores like Woolworths were one-stop Halloween shopping centers.  Inexpensive costumes, masks, and gear replaced homemade costumes and candy companies promoted their sweets for treats instead of homemade popcorn balls, cookies, and apples.

By the mid 1950’s with the strong support of the candy companies and the introduction of cheap masks and pajama style costumes for children, the practice of trick or treating had become ubiquitous and had even taken on a feeling of a long standing practice.

Halloween has been increasingly identified with horror/slasher films like John Carpenter's 1972 Halloween starring Jamie Lee Curtis and its sequels including the Academy Award winning turn for Jamie Lee Curtis Halloween Ends.

What started with ghost stories and the like, soon spread to all types of horror, and fueled by the growing popularity of increasingly violent Hollywood slasher films.  Gore became and more and more common theme and showing horror films for the whole month of October in theaters and on TV was standard by the early 1970’s.

Adult carousing has made Halloween a rival to New Years Eve and St. Patrick's Day for the party-till-you-puke crowd.

At about the same time the first generations of trick or treaters grew up but continued to enjoy the dress-up and parties of Halloween.  It is, year by year, an increasingly popular adult holiday, incorporating many of the features of various world masquerade festivals with macabre twist.

Halloween is now the second most widely celebrated holiday in the United States and is an economic powerhouse, generating sales second only to Christmas.  Popular American media has spread the customs of trick or treating and celebrating gore around the world, often supplanting truly ancient celebrations of Halloween in the Celtic countries.

Fundamentalist opposition to Halloween might be swimming against the cultural tide, but increasingly schools and some municipalities skittish about the complaints have substituted a bland harvest festival or banned any kind of celebration.

The resurgence of Christian Fundamentalism in the U.S. has led to a counter movement to strip the “Satanic” festival from public schools and the wider community.  Although they get it wrong—there was never any connection between Satanism and Halloween—the Fundies, ironically, at least recognized a religious tradition hiding under the commercial hoopla.  

Modern Wiccans and other neo-pagans practice a wide variety of largely invented Samhain and Halloween rituals.  By some accounts Wicca is the fastest growing religion in the U.S.

At the same time re-invented “traditional” paganism like Wicca, one of the most rapidly growing religious movements of the last decades, has striven to recapture the nearly lost significance of the holiday’s roots in Samhain—and sometime invented traditions on flimsy or non-existent evidence.

Go thou and celebrate as thou wouldst.  

Ring Out Solstice Bells by Jethro Tull—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2024-‘25

        

                                                                Jethro Tull's Ring Out the Solstice Bells by Ian Anderson.

Call it Solstice, Yule, Meán Geimhridh, or any name you choose, it is the longest night of the year—the official beginning of Winter. Tomorrow the Sun begins its annual return. Despite claims otherwise, Solstice is the Reason for the Season—the overt or disguised inspiration of most Northern Hemisphere Festivals of Light clustered around this date. To celebrate we turn to Jethro Tull’s classic 1977 album Songs from the Woods, Ian Anderson’s turn from jazz-infused rock to an embrace of his English roots and folk identities is a fitting carol for the day.

Today, the Solstice—the moment in the Northern Hemisphere when has its maximum tilt away from the Sun will occur at 3:21 CST.  You can calculate it for your time zone.

                                         The Holly King rules in the Germanic Yule celebration at Solstice.

In most so-called pagan traditions around the Northern Hemisphere there were two ways to celebrate the Solstice.  Some lit fires in the darkest night to summon the return of the Sun.  Others gathered at dawn to in some way capture the first light of that return.  The latter often involved human construction on or in which that light would strike a significant stone or altar.  Think pyramids in Egypt and the pre-Columbian Americas, Stonehenge, Greek temples, medicine wheels, certain Medieval Cathedrals, and far simpler wooden structures in Northern Europe and Siberia.  Either way, those who observe or re-create such rituals have found a way to do so.

Even if you do not observe the pagan doings—or shun them as the Devil’s work—chances are that you to have been or will be celebrating the solstice yourself.  

Buried in traditional folklore, swathed in symbolism, and steeped in metaphor, Christmas and Hannukah share the same impulses as Yule and its Celtic and ancient British cousin, Meán Geimhridh  beloved by contemporary neo-pagans of one stripe or another.  At their core there was in each of them a physical or metaphorical re-kindling of the light at the darkest hour of the year offering a glimmering of hope at a time of cold and starvation. 

                                The Moon Goddess is the spirit of Solstice in Celtic-based modern neo-paganism.

Archeological evidence shows that the event—the shortest day and longest night of the year, when the Sun’s daily maximum elevation in the sky is the lowest—was marked, often using physical constructions to capture the rising sun, in Neolithic times across widely separated cultures in Europe, the Near East, Asia, and North America.  Stonehenge is just the most famous example.  

English Druids and other neo-pagans celebrate the winter solstice annually at dawn at Stonehenge.

While the trappings of Christmas—the Yule log, the holly and the ivy, the Christmas tree, mistletoe, wassailing, and other customs are commonly known to be borrowed from pagan celebrations, the metaphor of the birth of the Son, bringing light and salvation to the world is often overlooked.  Among still nervous orthodox Christians, drawing parallels to pagan belief is still actively discouraged.

Ring out Solstice Bells was included on Jethro Tull's 1977 album Songs from the Woods featuring Ian Anderson.

Ian Anderson is a Scottish born multi-instrumentalist and singer best known as the creative force behind the innovative and influential British folk/jazz/fusion/progressive rock band Jethro Tull.  Many of the band’s best known songs evoke a magical, even mystical spirit.  That is certainly the case in Ring Out Solstice Bells featuring percussion and Anderson’s signature flute.

Ring Out Solstice Bells by Jethro Tull—Murfin Winter Holidays Music Festival 2023-‘24

 

                                                         Ring Out Solstice Bells by Jethro Tull

Call it Solstice, Yule, Meán Geimhridh, or any name you choose, to it is the shortest day and longest night of the year—the official beginning of winter. Tomorrow the Sun begins its annual return. Despite claims otherwise, Solstice is the Reason for the Season—the overt or disguised inspiration of most Northern Hemisphere Festivals of Light clustered around this date. To celebrate we turn to Jethro Tull’s classic 1977 album Songs from the Woods, Ian Anderson’s turn from jazz-infused rock to an embrace of his English roots and folk identities is a fitting carol for the day.

Today, the Solstice—the moment in the Northern Hemisphere when has its maximum tilt away from the Sun will occur at 9:27 CST.  You can calculate it for your time zone.

                            The Holly King rules in the Germanic Yule celebration at Solstice.

In most so-called pagan traditions around the Northern Hemisphere there were two ways to celebrate the Solstice.  Some lit fires in the darkest night to summon the return of the Sun.  Others gathered at dawn to in some way capture the first light of that return.  The latter often involved human construction on or in which that light would strike a significant stone or altar.  Think pyramids in Egypt and the pre-Columbian Americas, Stonehenge, Greek temples, medicine wheels, certain Medieval Cathedrals, and far simpler wooden structures in Northern Europe and Siberia.  Either way, those who observe or re-create such rituals have found a way to do so.

Even if you do not observe the pagan doings—or shun them as the devil’s work—chances are that you to have been or will be celebrating the solstice yourself. 

Buried in traditional folklore, swathed in symbolism, and steeped in metaphor, Christmas and Chanukah share the same impulses as Yule and its Celtic and ancient British cousins, Meán Geimhridh and Meán Geimhridhh beloved by contemporary neo-pagans of one stripe or another.  At their core there was in each of them a physical or metaphorical re-kindling of the light at the darkest hour of the year offering a glimmering of hope at a time of cold and starvation. 

                                The Moon Goddess is the spirit of Solstice in Celtic-based modern neo-paganism.

Archeological evidence shows that the event—the shortest day and longest night of the year, when the sun’s daily maximum elevation in the sky is the lowest—was marked, often using physical constructions to capture the rising sun, in Neolithic times across widely separated cultures in Europe, the Near East, Asia, and North America.  Stonehenge is just the most famous example.  

While the trappings of Christmas—the Yule log, the holly and the ivy, the Christmas tree, mistletoe, wassailing and other customs are commonly known to be borrowed from pagan celebrations, the metaphor of the birth of the Son, bringing light and salvation to the world is often overlooked.  Among still nervous orthodox Christians, drawing parallels to pagan belief is still actively discouraged.

English Druids and other neo-pagans celebrate the winter solstice annually at dawn at Stonehenge.

The early Church actively squelched efforts to confabulate the Feast of the Nativity with the Festival of Sol Invictus, introduced to the Roman Empire in the Third Century under the Emperor Elagabalus.  It was a religious revolution that briefly upended Jupiter as the primary Roman God and put in his place the Invincible Sun, which combined the characteristics and cult practices of several sun gods including Syrian Elah-Gabal, the Greek Apollo, and Mithras, a soldier god of Persian origin.  

The late Roman cult of Sol Invictus celebrated it Solstice Festival on December 25.  The Catholic Church ultimately adopted that date for the Feast of the Nativity to co-opt the pagan celebration which remained popular in the Mediterranean region.

The feast was set on December 25, during the Roman holiday period following Saturnalia.  Later, under the Emperor Aurelian as Christianity grew in influence and importance, attempts were made to incorporate worship of the Christ child into the cult as an incarnation of Sol.  When the Church became ascendant in the Empire, it did all it could to squelch the festival, but like many popular pagan customs, it was so integrated into many daily lives that it inevitably influenced how Christmas, by then assigned to the same calendar day, was observed.  

 

Ring out Solstice Bells was included on Jethro Tull's 1977 album Songs from the Woods featuring Ian Anderson.

Ian Anderson is a Scottish born multi-instrumentalist and singer best known as the creative force behind the innovative and influential British folk/jazz/fusion/progressive rock band Jethro Tull.  Many of the band’s best known songs evoke a magical, even mystical spirit.  That is certainly the case in Ring Out Solstice Bells featuring percussion and Anderson’s signature flute.

Ring Out Solstice Bells by Jethro Tull—Murfin’s Carols for Corona and Winter Holiday Music Festival

                                            Ring Out Solstice Bells by Jethro Tull.

Note—Today we will feature a two-fer!  First, in honor of the Winter Solstice and a second post honoring the Christmas Star planetary convergence this evening.

Call it Solstice, Yule, Meán Geimhridh, or any name you choose, today is the shortest day and longest night of the year—the official beginning of winter. Tomorrow the Sun begins its annual return. Despite claims otherwise, Solstice is the Reason for the Season—the overt or disguised inspiration of most Northern Hemisphere Festivals of Light clustered around this date. To celebrate we turn to Jethro Tull’s classic 1977 album Songs from the Woods, Ian Anderson’s turn from jazz-infused rock to an embrace of his English roots and folk identities is a fitting carol for the day.

Today, the Solstice—the moment when in the Northern Hemisphere when has its maximum tilt away from the Sun will occur at 4:02 CST.  You can calculate it for your time zone.

                            The Holly King rules in the Germanic Yule celebration at Solstice.

In most so-called pagan traditions around the Northern Hemisphere there were two ways to celebrate the Solstice.  Some lit fires in the darkest night to summon the return of the Sun.  Others gathered at dawn to in some way capture the first light of that return.  The latter often involved human construction on or in which that light would strike a significant stone or altar.  Think pyramids in Egypt and the pre-Columbian Americas, Stonehenge, Greek temples, medicine wheels, certain Medieval Cathedrals, and far simpler wooden structures in Northern Europe and Siberia.  Either way, those who observe or re-create such rituals have found a way to do so.

Even if you do not observe the pagan doings—or shun them as the devil’s work—chances are that you to have been or will be celebrating the solstice yourself. 

Buried in traditional folklore, swathed in symbolism, and steeped in metaphor, Christmas and Chanukah share the same impulses as Yule and its Celtic and ancient British cousins, Meán Geimhridh and Meán Geimhridhh beloved by contemporary neo-pagans of one stripe or another.  At their core there was in each of them a physical or metaphorical re-kindling of the light at the darkest hour of the year offering a glimmering of hope at a time of cold and starvation. 

The Moon Goddess is the spirit of Solstice in Celtic-based modern neo-paganism.

Archeological evidence shows that the event—the shortest day and longest night of the year, when the sun’s daily maximum elevation in the sky is the lowest—was marked, often using physical constructions to capture the rising sun, in Neolithic times across widely separated cultures in Europe, the Near East, Asia, and North America.  Stonehenge is just the most famous example.  

While the trappings of Christmas—the Yule log, the holly and the ivy, the Christmas tree, mistletoe, wassailing and other customs are commonly known to be borrowed from pagan celebrations, the metaphor of the birth of the Son, bringing light and salvation to the world is often overlooked.  Among still nervous orthodox Christians, drawing parallels to pagan belief is still actively discouraged.

English Druids and other neo-pagans celebrate the winter solstice annually at dawn at Stonehenge, but alas not this year as England enters a near total Coronavirus lockdown.  Folks will have to witness the Sun shining through the key stones on the BBC.

The early Church actively squelched efforts to confabulate the Feast of the Nativity with the Festival of Sol Invictus, introduced to the Roman Empire in the Third Century under the Emperor Elagabalus.  It was a religious revolution that briefly upended Jupiter as the primary Roman God and put in his place the Invincible Sun, which combined the characteristics and cult practices of several sun gods including Syrian Elah-Gabal, the Greek Apollo, and Mithras, a soldier god of Persian origin. 

The late Roman cult of Sol Invictus celebrated it Solstice Festival on December 25.  The Catholic Church ultimately adopted that date for the Feast of the Nativity to co-opt the pagan celebration which remained popular in the Mediterranean region.

The feast was set on December 25, during the Roman holiday period following Saturnalia.  Later, under the Emperor Aurelian as Christianity grew in influence and importance, attempts were made to incorporate worship of the Christ child into the cult as an incarnation of Sol.  When the Church became ascendant in the Empire, it did all it could to squelch the festival, but like many popular pagan customs, it was so integrated into many daily lives that it inevitably influenced how Christmas, by then assigned to the same calendar day, was observed. 

Ring out Solstice Bells was featured on Jethro Tull's 1977 album Songs from the Woods featuring Ian Anderson.

Ian Anderson is a Scottish born multi-instrumentalist and singer best known as the creative force behind the innovative and influential British folk/jazz/fusion/progressive rock band Jethro Tull.  Many of the band’s best known songs evoke a magical, even mystical spirit.  That is certainly the case in Ring Out Solstice Bells featuring percussion and Anderson’s signature flute.

 

Beltane Fire Dance—Murfin Home Confinement Music Festival 2020

Beltane Fire Dance by Lorena McKennitt.

In addition to May Day, International Labor Day, yesterday was the much older celebration of Beltane in Celtic traditions and Walpurgisnacht, a thinly Christianized celebration of the Night of the Witches in Germanic and some Norse cultures.  Both are half season holy days marking the mid-pint between the vernal equinox and the summer solstice.  Here in Northern Illinois the weather was damn near perfect—mild and sunny during the day, nature erupting everywhere, and perfectly mystical that night with occasional clouds scudding past a half moon.  Somewhere there were neo-pagans dancing around a fire in the woods.

An Irish Beltane bon fire.

Among the many customs ancient and re-created in both traditions are the bonfires lit to warm the earth and summon a sleeping earth goddess and the warming sun that brings forth a lush natural re-birth.  In dance and art the Goddess often trysts with the Green Man who will rule at Midsummer. 

The Earth Goddess and the Green Man.

To sing about all of this we have Loreena McKennitt, a Canadian singer, composer, harpist, accordionist, and pianist known for her Celtic, World, and New-Age music.  Her pure, ethereal soprano is well beloved and she has sold more than 14 million albums world-wide.

Loreena McKennitt.

This version of Beltane Fire Dance was recorded before a live audience for her 2007 album Nights from the Alhambra.