Breda O'Brien
I have lovely neighbours of whom I am very fond. However, I am not fond of their Hallowe’en display, which consists of two ugly witch-like figures sitting somewhat incongruously on deck chairs.
A motion-activated sensor sets off vicious cackling and screaming while the figures bob up and down as though possessed, including in the middle of the night when urban foxes pad past.
Decorations
I am growing less fond of Hallowe’en decorations every year. Recently, my husband and I passed what could only be described as a gibbet, with grisly figures twisting in a row in the breeze.
Hallowe’en decorations have become increasingly macabre and ghoulish. Some people would say that is the point. Life is not all sugared violets, and it is important to face the reality of evil and death.
But do the nastier Hallowe’en decorations help us to acknowledge that reality, or render it remote by making it cartoon-like? Is there any evidence that modern Ireland is more comfortable with death than our forebears?
Furthermore, most Hallowe’en decorations are plastic and destined to end up in landfills but honestly, that is not my primary objection.
The Church’s ceremonies at this time of the year are all about death, too, but within a context of Christian hope, the kind of hope that is markedly absent from the dark displays we witness.
Here in Ireland, we are fond of saying that Hallowe’en grew out of the Celtic feast of Samhain. It is probably a bit more complicated than that”
Hallowe’en itself (and I am a stickler for the apostrophe) comes from All Hallows’ Eve – the vigil of All Saints. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that ‘hallow’ as a noun comes from Old English, and its first recorded use was pre-1150 and it disappeared by 1500. As a verb, in the sense of to make holy, or to consecrate, it lasted longer but was already seen as somewhat archaic by the early 20th Century.
After All Saints, there is the feast of All Souls, a day of prayer and remembrance for all the faithful departed. Here in Ireland, we are fond of saying that Hallowe’en grew out of the Celtic feast of Samhain. It is probably a bit more complicated than that.
Remnants
Remnants of folk customs no doubt persisted in Ireland and other parts of Europe long after Celtic culture was no more.
The Church believed in the communion of saints since the earliest times. There is some evidence that by the year 800, churches in Ireland were praying for the dead in early November, possibly due to memories of Samhain, but the universal Church had different dates.
The idea that Hallowe’en had pagan origins seems to stem more from the Protestant Reformation”
In 609, Pope Boniface IV rededicated the pagan Pantheon to St Mary and All Martyrs on May 13. This date was an ancient Roman feast dedicated to the dead. From then until the early 8th Century, when Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel to relics of the saints, it continued to be the day of remembrance of the saints. It then moved to November 1.
This casts doubt on Samhain being the definitive influence on the date for the universal Church. Surely it would have been more likely to have been an influence the closer we were to Celtic times and certainly earlier than the 8th Century?
The idea that Hallowe’en had pagan origins seems to stem more from the Protestant Reformation. Puritans disliked Hallowe’en. Let’s face it, they hated most Christian festivals and tried to ban the celebration of Christmas.
When the Puritans made their way to the New World, enter the Irish again, fleeing famine in the mid-19th Century, but bringing with them customs like carved turnips and what looked to the Puritans like other reprehensible ‘popish’ nonsense.
Retreated
In the face of Protestant outrage, US Catholics retreated from their traditional customs, which ironically left the field wide open to the growth of secular Hallowe’en.
We know less about Celtic culture than we pretend. There is a lot of cherry-picking and embellishing in modern paganism, for example, the conflation of the real person, Brigid of Kildare, with a Celtic goddess scarcely mentioned in myths. Something similar seems to have happened with Samhain.
The little we do know, however, shows respect and awe for the world of the dead, who were perceived to have the power to harm the living.
Modern Hallowe’en strips the Christian meditation on the fleeting nature of life and the need to pray for the dead, and even the Celtic wariness of the dead and the need to appease them, from Hallowe’en. It leaves an ugly, commercial, and hollow substitute in its place.
I am not against people dressing up or kids collecting sweets. I even understand the thrill of being frightened in a safe context which is part of the appeal of ghoulish imagery.
I just wonder whether commercial attempts to sell more costumes and decorations, far from helping us deal with life’s ultimate realities, have led us into a literal wasteland of tacky and pointless gory imagery instead.