HALLOWEEN
-- The modern holiday of Halloween has its origins in the ancient
Gaelic festival known as Samhain ("Sow-in" or alternatively "Sa-ven",
meaning: End of the Summer). The Festival of Samhain is a celebration of
the end of the harvest season in Gaelic culture, and is frequently
regarded as 'The Celtic New Year'.
Traditionally,
the festival was a time used by the ancient pagans to take stock of
supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. Whether or not the
ancient Celts considered Samhain to be the beginning of the new year, or
just one point in the cycle of the seasons, the living traditions in
the Celtic lands and the diaspora regard it as the "Celtic New Year" and
it continues to be celebrated as such. For instance, the calendars
produced by the Celtic League begin and end at Samhain/Halloween.
The Ancient Gaels
believed that on October 31, the boundaries between the worlds of the
living and the dead overlapped and the deceased would come back to life
and cause havoc such as sickness or damaged crops. The festivals would
frequently involve bonfires, where the bones of slaughtered livestock
were thrown. Costumes and masks were also worn at the festivals in an
attempt to mimic the evil spirits or placate them. When the Romans
occupied Celtic territory, several Roman traditions were also
incorporated into the festivals. Feralia, a day celebrated in late
October by the Romans for the passing of the dead as well as a festival
which celebrated the Roman Goddess Pomona, the goddess of fruit were
incorporated into the celebrations. The symbol of Pomona was an apple,
which is a proposed origin for the tradition of bobbing for apples on
Halloween
The carved
pumpkin, lit by a candle inside, is one of Halloween's most prominent
symbols. This is an Irish tradition of carving a lantern which goes back
centuries. These lanterns are usually carved from a turnip or "swede."
The carving of pumpkins was first associated with Halloween in North
America, where the pumpkin was available, and much larger and easier to
carve. Many families that celebrate Halloween carve a pumpkin into a
frightening or comical face and place it on their home's doorstep after
dark.
The
jack-o-lantern can be traced back to the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, a
greedy, gambling, hard drinking old farmer who tricked the devil into
climbing a tree, and trapped him by carving a cross into the trunk of
the tree. In revenge, the devil placed a curse on Jack which dooms him
to forever wander the earth at night. For centuries, the bedtime parable
was told by Irish parents to their children. But in America the
tradition of carving pumpkins is known to have preceded the Great Famine
period of Irish immigration, and the tradition of carving vegetable
lanterns may also have been brought over by the Scottish or English;
documentation is unavailable to establish when or by whom. The carved
pumpkin was associated generally with harvest time in America, and did
not become specifically associated with Halloween until the mid to late
19th century.
This “in
between time” has long been one which Gay people have taken on as their
own holiday, reveling in masks and costumes. There are reasons Halloween
is so closely associated with Gay people, some of which author and
long-time White Crane contributor, Arthur Evans explained in his
wonderful series of lectures in San Francisco in the mid-1970s which
later became his book, Witchcraft and The Gay Counterculture. Here is a brief excerpt:
One Celtic male
deity … is the horned god, “one of the most basic of the Celtic god
types,” whose worship goes back to the Stone Age. He is often associated
with the Mothers, as well as with sex, animals, and nature. He also
seems to have links with male shamans. His great antiquity is shown by a
Stone Age painting in Ariege, France, which shows a man dancing in the
hide of an animal and wearing the antlers of a stag. And in the
eighteenth century, construction workers inside Notre Dame Cathedral in
Paris uncovered a four-sided Celtic stone altar dating from Roman times
and bearing the figure of a bearded male deity with antlers. The stone
was inscribed with the word Cernunnos, which means “The Horned One.”
The horned god
was especially linked with male sexuality and often appears with an
erect cock. Moreover, when erect, he is sometimes portrayed in the
company of men, not women. A drawing of the horned god from Val
Camonica, Italy, shows him holding a ceremonial collar ring in one hand
and a horned serpent in the other. He is being worshiped by a man, and
the man has an erection. This picture is reminiscent of early art
scattered throughout Europe. The men often have erections and appear
together in groups without women. In view of the Celts’ notoriety for
homosexuality, these facts suggest a Gay element in the workshop of the
horned god.
The horned god
was also lord of the dead and the underworld. To the Celts, who believed
in reincarnation, darkness and death were parts of the cycle of life
and rebirth, and death was the very place where the creative forces of
nature brought about new life. Because of this connection with the
underworld the horned god was often shown as black in color. But this
blackness was not considered evil, as Christianity later viewed it.
The depiction of
the Celtic male god as an animal with horns is understandable in terms
of the economy and religion of the times. Stone age Europe was dependent
for its very existence upon the hunting of reindeer, red deer, and elk.
Among the first animals to be domesticated were sheep and goats.
Ancient Europeans, like all nature people, worshipped the animals they
depended on, in contrast to modern, “civilized” people who objectify and
destroy animals with all the impersonal violence that only scientific
industrialism can devise.
The Celts dated
the feast days of their religion according to the changing of the
seasons, the breeding habits of animals, and the sowing and harvesting
of crops. As in Judaism, feasts began on the night before the holiday.
The four greatest Celtic holidays (with their Irish names) were Samhain
(November 1); Imbolc (February 1); Beltaine (May 1) ; and Lugnasadh
(August 1). These holidays were celebrated with ritual sexual
promiscuity.
As it happens,
these dates correspond exactly with the holidays later attributed by
medieval Christians to witches. The Christians called these days,
respectively, Halloween, Candlemas, Walpurgisnacht, and Lammas. Two
other holidays were also celebrated by both Celts and witches: the
winter solstice, December 21, surviving as the Feast of Fools; and the
summer solstice, June 23, surviving as Midsummer Night. Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream,
written in the late sixteenth century, has echoes of this holiday. The
play is full of magic, faeries, human and animal sexuality. It features a
leading character named Puck, or Robin Goodfellow – a descendent of the
horned god.
Ritual
transvestism associated with the old holidays continued in Europe down
to modern times. “May Day sports perpetuated the practices, including
even transvestism, and…in Wales, there existed, into the nineteenth
century, a peasant dance and march with a garland, led by a dancer [a
horned god figure] called the “Cadi.” In the twentieth century England
such celebrations as the Helston Furry Dance, the Morris Dances, and the
Peace Egg Mumming Play continued the tradition. In the Homanay
celebration in Scotland, “the boys wore skirts and bonnets, the girls,
hats and greatcoats.” The feast of Fools, a remnant of the old pagan
religion, has persisted into modern times with clerics “wearing masks
and monstrous visages at the hours of the office. They dance in the
choir dressed as women, or disreputable men, or minstrels. They sing
wanton songs.” Today many Gay people throughout Europe and America
observe Halloween as a Gay holiday with transvestite celebrations.
Originally, Halloween was one of the great holidays of the old religion –
the Night of All Souls.
Excerpted from The Evans Symposium: Witchcraft & the Gay Counterculture and Moon Lady Rising, Arthur Evans,
© 2019 White Crane Books, ISBN: 078-1-7322844-0-1
