Halloween: Ireland’s Ancient Gift to the World
5 min read
Few people tucking into Halloween sweets realise the holiday is, at its root, Irish. The modern festival of costumes and carved pumpkins descends directly from Samhain, one of the great festivals of the ancient Celtic year - and the Irish diaspora carried it across the Atlantic and gave the world Halloween as we know it.
Samhain: the turning of the year
Samhain (pronounced “SOW-in”) marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of winter, on the night of 31 October into 1 November. For the Celts it was the most important threshold of the year - the boundary between the light half and the dark half. They believed that on this night the veil between the world of the living and the otherworld of spirits and the dead grew thin, and that the souls of the departed, along with less friendly beings, could cross over.
Old customs, familiar shapes
Many of today’s traditions are recognisable in their ancient forms. People lit great bonfires and wore disguises or masks - partly to ward off, partly to imitate, the wandering spirits, the ancestor of dressing up. They left out food and drink to appease them, the distant root of trick-or-treating. And they carved frightening faces into turnips (not pumpkins) and set a candle inside to keep evil at bay - the original jack-o’-lantern, named for a figure of Irish folklore condemned to wander with a lantern.
From turnip to pumpkin
When Irish emigrants fled the Famine to North America in the 19th century, they brought Samhain with them. There they found the pumpkin - bigger, softer and far easier to carve than a hard Irish turnip - and the jack-o’-lantern took its now-iconic form. American commercial culture did the rest, turning the old festival into the global juggernaut of sweets and costumes we know today, then exporting it back to the world.
Samhain today
In Ireland, traces of the old festival survive alongside the modern one. People still eat barmbrack, a fruit loaf with charms baked inside to tell your fortune, and the town of Athboy in County Meath sits near the Hill of Ward, an ancient Samhain gathering site. Derry hosts one of the world’s biggest Halloween festivals. So when you light a pumpkin this October, you’re keeping a fire lit in Ireland more than two thousand years ago.
More guides: The Great Famine: What Happened and Why It Still Matters · Irish Traditional Music and the Magic of the Session · Irish Pub Culture and the Sacred Art of the Round