A Love Letter To Halloween

Three years ago, Halloween suddenly felt different. I wasn’t able to put my finger on why exactly, but I remember asking myself: why do we like Halloween? 

It wasn’t only myself to whom I asked this question. My father and I discussed it for longer than either of would us care to admit. I asked family. I asked friends. I asked people who, like me, see Halloween the way normal people see Christmas. For people whose favorite holiday is Christmas the answer easy, almost pre-prescribed. Whether it’s nostalgia, the music, the lights, presents, Jesus: it’s not even a question that we think about asking. It’s their favorite holiday because frankly, it’s the holiday: the holy day. 

Regardless, I expected similarly definitive answers from people whose plastic and polymer composite skeletons are as tall as their Christmas trees, but I was ultimately left disappointed. Even those who were able to squeak out a half answer in free candy or costume parties, it was always preceded by an almost defensive, “I don’t know.” It’s like nobody is expecting to hear such a question. 

I wasn’t able to stop thinking about it, though. All year I looked forward to Halloween, and all year I wondered why. Why are we so infatuated with fear that our favorite day is one reserved for celebrating it? But that’s just it. I believe this is such a difficult question for halloweenies to answer because we are looking in the wrong place. 

Halloween has its roots in the north of the British Isles in what is today Scotland and occupied Ireland, over 2,000 years ago. The Celts were ruled by a kind of religious tribal council who called themselves the Druids. The Druids saw the harvest as the end of the year, and the sowing as its beginning. As such, on the eve of the annual harvest, the Celts would hold a massive festival to celebrate the year’s passing, and to usher in the next. Samhain (pronounced “Sow-in” because Gaelic is a language communicated by blowing one’s nose into a shamrock rather than speaking with one’s mouth,) was held during and around the harvest itself, typically around what is late October and early November by the Christian calendar. While Samhain focused primarily on thankfulness for a good harvest and prayers for a better one in the coming year, it was believed that this period was when the worlds of the living and the dead were at their closest, allowing spirits to cross freely across the veil. 

As such, it was tradition to light monolithic bonfires across the moors and countryside, and dance around them in animal furs. This was believed to appease benign spirits while warding off evil. It was also custom to hollow out dried turnips and hang them with candles and incense for the same purpose. 

Families would often be met by monsters on their doorsteps. Each monster would be clad in furs and bones, and would offer a family a riddle. Should the family correctly solve the riddle, the monster would piss off. Should they not, however, (and mind you, the riddles were intentionally unsolvable) the monster would be invited in for an autumn meal and games with the children. Coincidentally, the monster would often sound and smell like a family friend. 

While fascinating in its own right, it’s not difficult to see how this “guising,” was at its core, a person dressed as a monster, knocking on a door, playing a trick, and being given treats. 

By the eighth and ninth centuries, Catholicism had spread like the plague across much of the known world. The areas of modern Ireland and Scotland were now called, if you can believe it, the kingdoms of Ireland and Scotland. Both of these kingdoms were officially catholic, and the church began to recognize striking similarities between the annual Samhain festivities and their own domestic holidays of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. As such, Pope Gregory IV moved All Saints’ Day to November First of the Christian calendar, and All Souls’ Day to the Second. Of course, “saint” is synonymous with the word “Hallow,” making the night before, October 31st, All Hallows Eve. 

Irish and Scottish immigrants brought Halloween with them to the Americas during the 17th and 18th centuries. In the modern day, Halloween is recognized in an official capacity by four major states: Ireland, the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. I personally believe that Halloween is one of the few, if not the only thing the United States still does better than any other country. 

When the facts are laid out like this, more questions inevitably arise: what could the church have possibly seen that was shared between Samhain and their own traditions? Moreover, what does any of this have to do with fear?

It was actually that initial question I answered first the one I started with: why did that Halloween three years ago feel different? Last year, I realized it was because that was my first Halloween without my Aunt Cindy. Cindy and I weren’t close. Any time we might have seen each other I had a convenient excuse. I regret that now, of course. I never knew much about her. I do know, however, that she loved Halloween. 

The Catholics did not only discover Samhain. The Day of the Dead in Mexico is now associated with Halloween, with parties and widespread trick-or-treating. Irreechaa is celebrated by the Oromo people in Ethiopia. The Mid-Autumn Festival in China, Багач in Belarus, the Harvest Festival as an institution has existed for as long as the Harvest itself, since homo sapiens became humanity, when we dug our toes in the Earth and decided to make it our home. The Harvest has marked the ends of calendars developed by countless cultures for thousands of years in every corner of the globe independently from one another, and still, they each share something in common: they don’t celebrate fear, they celebrate death. 

Not only the departed, but death as an concept. The macabre is a love letter to cycle of life. As the year ends, so too do our lives. The sowing is not without the harvest. Work is not labor without a reward. A story is not one without an ending. 

This is that love letter. This is a love letter to those who only feel themselves when the leaves are falling and our bodies cool down with the air. This is a love letter to the dead, and the reminder that someday, we all will meet again. 

This is a love letter to you, Aunt Cindy. This is love letter to Halloween.