The Celtic Origins of Hallowe’en

 

 

So it’s Hallowe’en. What does that mean?

 

Sure, the night everybody dresses up and trick-or-treats. We all know that. But why should that be? What precursor to our tradition of putting on superstitions and glutting on candy gathered door-to-door?

 

Modern society seems to have largely lost any recollection of why it is that we (well, mostly just our kids anymore) should engage in actions that would appear to an uninformed outsider as mass insanity featuring an untoward preoccupation with devilish themes.

Well, here is the explanation, which is as fascinating and entertaining as it is also disturbing.

 

What we now call Hallowe’en, October 31^st, is in the Celtic calendar Nos Calan Gaeaf – the end of the year; November 1^st is their New Year’s Day, and has been so since the time of the druids. Calan Gaeaf is the night straddling a magical moment – the gap between the old year and the new. And this is when the trouble arises.

 

I quote Nikolai Tolstoy in The Coming Of The King, a novel woven from fact and lore of the British Isles:

 

Kalan Gaeaf is the name borne by that unchancy day, but in truth it could be called “No-day.” For it belongs not to the year or the seasons, or to the ageing of the world. It is the allotted time of Him they call the Black Pig, and so it stands beside time. It is said that when the gods first divided up the mounds of the Fair Folk [faeries] and the inhabited places of the earth among themselves, that deceitful Horned One came to where Bran the Blessed and the company of the gods were gathered about the dark-blue Cauldron of Inspiration, demanding that he, too, receive his portion from that cauldron from which no one may depart unsatisfied.

 

“I have nothing for thee,” replied the Fisher King, his brow darkening. “The division is completed.”

“Then give me,” pleaded the Trickster, “a day and a night in your own dwelling.”

“That I will do willingly,” replied Bran smiling.

Next day the Trickster was ordered to depart to his own people, for his time was up. The nine maidens blew upon the fires that heat the cauldron, and the gods looked mockingly upon the enemy of mankind. But it was he that laughed scornfully as he left their company; for, as he said, “I see now that Night and Day are the whole world, and it is that which you have given me.”

Then Bran and his company saw how they were deceived, for there is Time and No-time, and Space and No-space, and in each case it is the latter that the horned maleficent one has appropriated to himself. So it is that from that day forward it is he who rules over the Wasteland, and the gap between the years when there is no time and the frontiers of kingdoms and the rule of kings are annulled.

 

So the eve of the New Year is in fact a ‘thin place’ as the Celts termed it, a unique mix of time and location where the barrier between the real and spirit worlds evaporates, and passage can be made from one to the other. Tolstoy then describes the coming of the Wild Hunt which Cernun the Horned God leads on this his given night:

 

The Wild Hunt is passing overhead, the host of fiends and goblins that ranges the earth each Kalan Gaeaf, coursing through a storm-laden, livid sky behind their master, Gwyn mab Nud. Fiends and goblins, swart and hairy, extinguishing fires, ripping slats from roofs, and plucking babies from their cradles, they course in reckless exultation over the lonely homesteads of abandoned men. One night of lawless rule was Bran the Blessed deceived into granting the Trickster, and on it he exacts his toll of terror. Before the Wild Hunt flies the baying pack of the Hounds of Hell; glittering bright white is their colour, their ears red; the redness of their ears glitters as brightly as does the whiteness of their bodies. Behind skims a shadowy flock of copper-red birds, wide of wing and crooked of beak, blighting crops and slaughtering cattle with their poisoned breath.

So all night long the Wild Hunt battered the world, with people cowering within their dwellings in fear of the madness at their doors.

 

So it also makes sense that I remember being told as a boy that masks and costumes originated as a defence against the hordes – that by disguising themselves as devils and fiends, people would be perceived by the evil hosts as one of their own – and thus could be overlooked and escape unmolested. Pumpkins and gourds were carved into Jack-O’-Lanterns – effectively gargoyles – to further ward off the evil, carried about or set to guard property.

 

The knocking at the doors and the offering of treats is symbolic of attempts to appease the devils who come rattling the thresholds to do mischief. Picture demons threatening to toss eggs and soap windows.

 

By morning, the Hordes flee back to the halls of Annufn, or the Underworld, to bide their time until the next Calan Gaeaf. My kids will retreat to feast on carbohydrates, gum and chocolate for a whole month.

 

And the partying? That part is the Celtic New Year festivities. The sigh of relief after the storm and the celebration of the harvest.

 

So that, in a nutshell, is the substance behind the 31^st of October in its modern form.

 

The name Hallowe’en? All Hallows’ Evening. As in the night before All Hallows’ Day, or All Saints’ Day on Nov. 1^st which was instituted by Pope Boniface IV in the seventh century in what historians suspect was an attempt “to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday” (yet another example of the Church’s historic efforts to compete with and render irrelevant the traditions and beliefs of nonchristian peoples).

 

You want the ultimate Hallowe’en costume? Here’s Tolstoy’s depiction of the Black Pig (brace yourself):

 

Out of the heart of this satanic brood a huge black horse appeared, from whose saddle sprang the colossal figure of the Master of the Wild Hunt. Over the recumbent form of the stricken saint he limped, a dreadful figure, naked save for a golden torque about his neck, green and hirsute, towering far above the height of mortal men. Forth from his bony forehead branched antlers broad as those of a roebuck in his prime, sprouting amidst upswept, spikey, flamelike hair – [...] His gaze was fierce and smoldering, his saturnine features furred by a reddish-coloured beard, and his full-spread scarlet lips twisted in a malevolent grin. His hands were long and clawed, his belly buttoned by parallel rows of naked udders, while a great hairy phallus swung between his sinewy goat’s thighs. About his left arm was coiled a broad-backed, writhing, ram-headed serpent, and in his right hand he bore an ebony-handled trident. This, then, was Gwyn mab Nud, in whom God has put the ferocity of the fiends of Annufn.

 

Yikes. Luckily, my kids are going out dressed as Darth Vader, Princess Leia and a Unicorn.

 

 

Happy Celtic New Year – er, Hallowe’en.