The following is from the first chapter of Halloween: From Pagan Ritual to Party Night by Nicholas Rogers, and makes good reading for any student in school or student of history who wishes to know the origins of Halloween:
“…The pagan origins of Halloween generally flow not from this sacrificial evidence but from a different set of symbolic practices. These revolve around the notion of Samhain as a festival of the dead and as a time of supernatural intensity heralding the onset of winter.
the notion that Samhain was a festival of the dead was first popularized by Sir James Frazer in the now classic Golden Bough (1890). He wrote that “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 from them in the kitchen or the parlour by their affectionate kinfolk.” This anachronistic description of a Celtic festival should make us wary, for it seems probable that Frazer confused the rites associated with All Souls’ Day with those that preceded it.
In fact, 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, some of whom have presumed that the feast was devoted to Saman, god of the dead. Certainly, the feast was linked to the mythical peoples of Ireland. According to the ancient sagas, Samhain was the time when tribal peoples paid tribute to their conquerors and when the sidh might reveal the magnificent palaces of the gods of the underworld. Insofar as Samhain was dedicated to anyone–and this is extremely conjectural–it appears to have been associated with the principal god of the Old Irish tradition, Eochaid Ollathair, sometimes referred to as Dagda, who in Tochmarc Etaine, or the Wooing of Etain, had ritual intercourse with three divinities, including Morrigan, the raven-goddess of war and fertility. Among other things, this coupling protected the crops. this would make sense, since pastoral communities were likely anxious about their ability to survive the winter months with their available food supplies, especially when they had to bear the burden of quartering warriors within their compounds.
In marking the onset of winter, Samhain was closely associated with darkness and the supernatural. In Celtic lore, winter was the dark time of the year when “nature is asleep, summer has returned to the underworld, and the earth is desolate and inhospitable.” In Cornwall and Brittany, November was known as the dark or black month, the first of winter; in Scotland, it was called “an Dudlachd” or “gloom.” Samhain was a time of divine couplings and dark omens, a time when malignant birds emerged from the caves of Crogham to prey upon mankind, led by one monstrous three-headed vulture whose foul breath withered the crops.
As night overwhelmed day, so the supernatural abounded. In Ireland, the fe-fiada, the magic fog that rendered people invisible, was lifted on Samhain, and elves emerged from the fairy wraths, erasing the boundaries between the real and the otherworld. In the Irish saga the Book of Lismore, Fingein was visited every Samhain by a banshee, a fairy-woman, “who would relate to him all the marvels and precious things in all the royal strongholds of Ireland.” In the long nights of impending winter, the festival was closely related with prophecy and story-telling. It is no accident that many of the mythic events in the ancient sagas happened during this period. Mythic kings and heroes died on Samhain, and carousing Ulster warriors, the Uliad, met their death by fire and the sword at the hands of their Munster enemies. Samhain was also the occasion when the Formorians exacted tributes of grain, milk, and live children from their subordinates and when malevolent gods strove unsuccessfully to burn Tara, the meeting place of the five Irish provinces. Not all stories, of course, spoke of war and destruction. Some dealt with the prospect of rebirth and the triumph of true love, including the tale of Oenghus and Caer, the prince of love and the princess of the sidh, who fall in love despite parental disapproval and fly away as swans.
What was especially noteworthy about Samhain was its status as a borderline festival. It took place between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. In Celtic lore, it marked the boundary between summer and winter, light and darkness. In this respect, Samhain can be seen as a threshold, or what anthropologists would call a liminal festival. It was a moment of ritual transition and altered states. It represented a time out of time, a brief interval “when the normal order of the universe is suspended” and “charged with a peculiar preternatural energy.” These qualities would continue to resonate through the celebration of Halloween.
pg. 19– 21
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