From ugly costumes to trick-or-treating: The unexpected ancient roots of Halloween’s most popular and most esoteric traditions.

Halloween is one of the world’s greatest holidays, with its goblins, goosebumps, and rituals that range from picking apples to dressing up as vampires and ghosts. It is celebrated all over the world, from Poland to the Philippines, and nowhere is it more extravagant than in the United States. $12.2bn (£9.4bn) spent in 2023 on desserts, costumes and decorations. The West Hollywood Halloween Costume Carnival in the USA is one of the largest street parties of its kind; Hollywood parties, like George Clooney’s tequila brand party, create a huge social splash; and is famous for his outlandish disguises at model Heidi Klum’s party. iconic giant writhing worm suit.

With US stars returning to the stage for the ultimate dress-up extravaganza following the Oscars red carpet, it’s no surprise that Halloween is often seen as a modern US invention. In fact, it dates back more than 2,000 years to Ireland and an ancient Celtic fire festival called Samhain. The exact origins of Samhain predate written records, but A.According to the Horniman Museum: “In Ireland there are Neolithic tombs aligned with the Sun on the mornings of Samhain and Imbolc (in February), indicating that these dates were significant for thousands of years”.

Usually celebrated from October 31 to November 1, the religious rituals of Samhain (pronounced “ek-win”, meaning the end of summer) focused on fire as winter approached. “Fire rituals to bring light into darkness were vital to Samhain, the second most important fire festival of the Pagan Celtic world, with the first being Beltane on May 1,” anthropologist and pagan Lyn Baylis tells the BBC. Samhain and Beltane, Wheel of the YearAn annual cycle of eight seasonal festivals celebrated in Paganism (“a polytheistic or pantheistic, nature-worshiping religion”) Pagan Federation says).

Samhain was the high point of the Celtic Pagan new year, a period of rebirth and death. “Pagans had three harvests: Lammas, the corn harvest on August 1; the harvest of fruits and vegetables on the autumnal equinox, September 21; and the third, Halloween,” says Baylis. At this time, animals that could not survive the winter were being culled to ensure the survival of other animals. “So there were a lot of deaths at that time, and people knew there would be deaths in their villages during the harsh winter months.” Other countries, especially Mexico, are celebrating Day of the Dead around this time to honor the person who died.

Celtic Pagans in Ireland would put out their house fires on Samhain and light a giant bonfire in the village, around which they would dance and act out stories. death, renewal and survival. The entire village participated in the dance, while animals and crops were burned as sacrifices to the Celtic gods, thanking them for the previous year’s harvest and encouraging their good will for the following year.

At that time, it was believed that the veil between this world and the world of spirits was the thinnest, allowing the souls of the dead to pass through and mix with the living. The sacred energy of the rituals was believed to enable the living to communicate with the dead and gave Druid priests and Celtic shamans a heightened sense of perception.

This is where the dressing factor comes into play; Costumes and ugly masks were worn to scare away evil spirits believed to have been released from the land of the dead. This was also known as “waxing” or “disguising”.

These early Samhain dressing rituals began to change when Pope Gregory I (590-604) came to Britain from Rome to convert pagan Anglo-Saxons to Christianity. Gregorian mission Baylis says he decided that Samhain festivities should include Christian saints “to ward off the ghosts and evil creatures of the night.” All Souls’ Day, November 1, was created by the Church so that “people could still call on their dead to help them”; October 31, also known as All Hallows, became All Hallows’ Eve, later known as Halloween.

“There’s a long tradition of some kind of costume going back to Hallow Mass, when people pray for the dead,” explains Nicholas Rogers, a history professor at York University in Canada. “But they also prayed for fruitful marriages.” He says that centuries later, choir boys in churches dressed as virgins. “So there was a certain degree of cross-dressing at the All Hallow’s Eve ceremony.”

Victorians loved ghost stories and adopted non-religious Halloween costumes for adults. Later, after World War II, the day focused on children’s dressing up, a ritual still alive during trick-or-treating. Since the 1970s, it has become common again for adults to dress up for Halloween; not only with creepy and outrageous costumes, but also overly sexualized costumes. By Timethese suggestive outfits came about due to the “extreme” mood of the event, “you can get away with it without being seen as particularly offensive”. In the classic teen movie Mean Girls, it is jokingly said that in the “girl world” Halloween is “the one night a year when girls can dress up like total sluts and no other girl can say anything about it.” Halloween has a disinhibiting effect not just in “girls’ world”; It is also an extremely popular holiday in the LGBTQ+ community and is often referred to as: “Gay Christmas”. In New York, the city comes alive every year with a Halloween parade where participants dress up in flashy and unusual costumes.

Echoes of Samhain persist in fire practices today. It was a tradition to carve lanterns from root vegetables, but turnips, not pumpkins, were used first. The practice is said to originate from a Celtic myth about a man named Jack who made a deal with the devil but was so deceitful that he was banned from heaven and hell and condemned to wander in the dark with only a consuming fire. coal inside a hollowed-out turnip to light the way.

In Ireland, people made lanterns and placed turnips with carved faces in their windows to ward off a ghost called “Lantern Jack” or Jack-o’-Lantern. In the 19th century, Irish immigrants brought this tradition to the United States. In the small Somerset village of Hinton St George in the United Kingdom, turnips or chips are still used and elaborately carved “punkies” are displayed on “punkie night”, which is always the last Thursday in October. The English town of Ottery St Mary still has an annual “flaming tar barrels” ritual; This is a custom once widely practiced in Britain at the time of Samhain, when flaming barrels were carried through the streets to ward off evil spirits.

Leaving food and sweet-spicy “spirit cakes” or “soul mass” cakes on doorsteps was said to ward off evil spirits. Households deemed less generous with their offerings would be subjected to a “trick” played on them by evil spirits. This translates to modern-day trick-or-treating. Whether soul cakes came from the ancient Celts or the Church is open to debate, but the idea was that as they were eaten, invocations and supplications were said for the dead. Since the Middle Ages, “spirit casting” was a Christian tradition in English towns at Halloween and Christmas; Spiritists (mostly children and the poor) went door to door singing and praying for spirits in exchange for beer, cakes and apples.

According to historian Lisa Morton, apple bobbing — dipping your face into water to bite into an apple — dates back to the 14th century: “An illustrated manuscript called the Luttrell Psalter depicted it in a drawing.” Others take this tradition back even further, to the Roman conquest of Britain (from AD 43) and the apple trees they imported. Pomona was the Roman goddess of fertile abundance and fertility, and so it is suggested that apple bobbing has ties to love and romance. In one version, the bobber (usually female) attempts to bite into an apple named after her suitor; if he bites her the first time, she is destined for love; two gos mean her romance will begin but flounder; three means it will never start.

British rituals at the heart of Halloween traditions Ben Edge’s book Folklore RisingIllustrated with mystical paintings. Edge says he has observed that “people are becoming interested in ritual and folklore… I call it the folk renaissance, and I see it as a real movement led by young people.”

He cites artists like Shovel Dance Collective who are “non-binary, cross-dressing, and singing the country’s traditional working-men songs.” There’s also Weird Walk, a project to “explore the ancient ways, sacred places and folklore of the British Isles through walking, storytelling and mythologising”. If interest in folk rituals is growing, so are those turning to traditions such as Paganism and Druidism, both tied to the Wheel of the Year, and Samhain, “dedicated to remembering what has passed and connecting with the ancestors.” and we are preparing ourselves spiritually and psychologically for the long winter nights ahead.”

Psychologist, author and practicing druid Philip Carr-Gomm says the last few decades have seen a “steady increase” in interest in Druidry. “We now have 30,000 members in six languages,” he tells the BBC.

Baylis says ritual, commitment, and the need for community are at the heart of many Halloween traditions: “One of the most important aspects of Halloween for us is remembering our loved ones. We light a candle, possibly say the person’s name, or place a picture of them at an altar. This “It’s a sacred time and ceremony, but you don’t have to be Pagan to participate in it, the important thing is that it comes from a place of protection and love.”