Wilson's Almanac on
Related terms: Halloween Australia
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An American custom? Many Australians think it is.
Not so. Trick-or-treating was going on in some parts of Australia
before it was ever seen in some parts of the USA.
And the Scots have trick
or treating for 500 years. Halloween itself is millennia old,
and, writes almanackist
Pip Wilson, seems to be in Australia
to stay
Your Aussie Halloween
More Halloween folklore at October 31 in the Book of Days
itches
and spooks might come a-knocking on your door on the night of
October 31. Send them away if you will, by all means, but not because they're enacting a foreign custom. Most Aussies unwittingly have
Halloween was already an ancient festival of souls 2,000 years ago. It has long been commemorated in countries from Ireland and Poland to Mexico and the Philippines
(where trick-or-treating is called Nangangaluluwa, and your chickens are in danger of being purloined).
Halloween customs are relatively new to Australia, but are rapidly establishing themselves. When you come to think of it, every old, cherished custom was once a new-fangled idea, even in the BCE.
The ancient Druids of Britain and Ireland, whose mysteries held sway for centuries before the Romans came to those islands, celebrated a spooky night on October 31. These pagans – Druids, and the Celts in general, of whom they were the priestly class – called it Samhain (pronounced sow-wen – sow as in pig). In the Northern Hemisphere, the day which falls slap bang between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice, is November 1. The eve of Samhain, October 31, was the night the lord of death was said to judge the souls of the departed.
"Samhain eve was associated with the opening of the Sidhes [fairies] and was a time of the dead. The feast marked the beginning of winter proper and its name may be related to 'summer's end'. At this time beasts were slaughtered for winter store and to conserve herds during the lean months: beasts were brought into winter pasture or into outbuildings. But most especially it was the inception of winter when the Cailleach [crone; ancient mother] ruled. In a curious early Irish text we hear of a strange boardgame which the boys of Rome play. At one end of the board is a cailleach with a dragon which she sends against a maiden with the lamb. The game was instituted by the sibyl, says the story, and explains why Samhain is so called. This contest is a clear remembrance of combat between winter and spring, which in Celtic terms were governed by the Cailleach and Brigit respectively."
Source: Encyclopedia of the Celts
What you could have expected on Samhain eve if you were a suburban Celt or Briton in 300 BCE, was to go to the mall bonfire and watch a neighbour being roasted alive, while you nibbled roast chestnuts with your diet cola. This was an 'end of summer' ceremony, and the druidic priests built a bonfire (bone-fire) to represent the sun which they wished would return, dispelling bitter cold and famine.
The Romans invaded Britain, and outlawed human sacrifice, so the Druids put another horse on the barbie. In 834, two centuries after St Augustine of Canterbury had brought Christianity to Britain, Pope Gregory the Great and succeeding pontiffs ordered that the ancient pagan rituals, which couldn't be stamped out among the masses, be Christianized. Spring fertility rites became Easter. Winter solstice, or yule, rites became Christmas. Samhain became All Saints' Day, November 1 (the day following is All Souls' Day). Another word for saint was 'hallow', and 'even' meant 'evening before': All Hallows' eve became called ... Halloweven, or Hallowe'en.
There are other factors in the origin of this famous feast, most notably the Lemuralia (also known as the Lemuria) of ancient Rome. Pope Boniface IV consecrated the Pantheon at Rome to the Blessed Virgin Mary and all the martyrs, on 609 or 610, on the final day of the Lemuralia, May 13. The feast of the dedicatio Sanctae Mariae ad Martyres has been celebrated at Rome ever since.
The old customs passed from generation to generation, and sometimes their religious origins were forgotten. The ancient Druids had used the sacred apple for divining the future; today in Ireland or America you can see the party-goers 'bobbing' for apples – they grab the fruit with their teeth out of a tub of water.
Prognosticating the future was always an important part of Halloween, and European girls would look for signs of their future husbands in the way hazelnuts burned on the kitchen fire-grate, on 'Nutcrack Night' as Britons sometimes called Halloween. (Hazel is associated with witchcraft.)
The English poet John Gay wrote in reference to this practice,
Two hazel nuts I threw into the flame,
And to each nut I gave a sweetheart's name:
This with the loudest bounce me sore amaz'd,
That in a flame of brightest colour blaz'd;
As blaz'd the nut, so may thy passion grow,
For 'twas thy Nut that did so brightly glow!
Other auguries of romance included egg whites, melted lead, needles, hemp (yes, hemp) and, as Robbie Burns tells us in his poem Halloween, cabbages.
Villagers divined, from stones in the ashes of a bonfire, the names of those who would die in the coming year. The souls of the dead have always been a central concept of Samhain and Halloween, as have grotesque costumes and even 'trick-or-treating'. We have 16th-century records of Scottish 'guisers', young men in fantastic costumes and masks going from door to door with turnip lanterns. Emboldened by their anonymity, they asked "Please to help the guisers" and were rewarded with apples, nuts and copper coins.
Trick-or-treating, then, is not strictly American, despite assertions to the contrary by some Australian xenophobes. British Catholic and Protestant emigrants, and others from Europe, took Halloween customs to America, but they were spread unevenly. Catholic customs went to Maryland, Dutch and Swedish Lutheran to Delaware, English Protestant to New England, and so on. Texas children started trick-or-treating in the 1940s. Some regions didn't see it before 1955.
The spread in Australia is also uneven. I have spoken to people who are 'pestered' by kids on Halloween, and to others who have never seen a trick-or-treater in their lives. Jeremy Brown, aged 11 when I asked, of suburban East Malvern, Victoria, says that he has no great desire to go out trick-or-treating, but junior ghouls do call at his home in some years. Some families have been watching over their children on the annual expedition for 15 years or more in Sydney. Alternative-lifestylers and neo-pagans frequently celebrate the ancient rites, emphasising the sacred rather than gimmicky aspects.
Everybody seems to have an opinion about Halloween. Rhonda Richardson of Avalon, NSW, won't encourage her baby
son (as he was at the time of interview), Jamie,
