# what is the real history of Halloween ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 10, 2001, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776 "2001-09-10T23:38:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dave316](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@dave316](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dave316)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2001, 11:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/1 "2001-09-10T23:38:36Z")
I have always heard that Halloween is from The Druids but on doing some research I have found that a book was written called “The Stations of the Sun” by Ronald Hutton that claims that the whole Druid Halloween connection is wrong. So what is the real history of Halloween? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/2 "2001-09-11T00:41:44Z")
The History Channel will probably be showing their production _The Haunted History of Halloween_ soon. Here’s what they say about the video they sell: > [@](#): > > On October 31, when pint-sized ghouls and goblins knock on doors, they’re actually carrying on a tradition that goes back thousands of years to the Celtic tribes of northern Europe. For centuries this night has celebrated mystery and chaos, a time between summer and winter, a time between life and death. > > _CBS This Morning_ host Harry Smith leads this 3,000 year tour through the history of the quintessentially pagan holiday which has survived to become one of America’s most popular. Discover how trick or treat originated in ancient Ireland’s harvest festivals, when food and sweets were offered to entice the dead to stay in the spirit world. See how Christianity tried to co-opt the celebration by turning it into All Saints Day, but how the underlying dark elements have survived, inspiring debate to the present day. From ghoulies and ghosties to the origins of the Jack-O-Lantern, THE HAUNTED HISTORY OF HALLOWEEN is a delicious journey into the enchanting past of the spookiest night of the year. You can also go to [http://www.thehistorychannel.com/](http://www.thehistorychannel.com/) and enter “halloween” into the search engine. Click on one of the links provided (my server is about to crash, otherwise I’d post it) for a history. ---
**Author:** ![maralinn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@maralinn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/maralinn)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/3 "2001-09-11T01:03:56Z")
There’s little doubt that Halloween can be traced back to Druids. I wonder if you’re thinking about specific modern customs – pumpkin carving, costume-wearing, trick-or-treating, etc. No, that stuff probably has nothing to do with Druids. Very few reputable scholars have ever claimed that they do, as far as I can tell. I don’t believe that Hutton is claiming that the Druid Halloween connection is “wrong,” but if you have a quotation from his works that shows he _is_ claiming that, I’d be interested in hearing about it. ---
**Author:** ![dave316](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/76d3ee/32.png) [@dave316](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dave316)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/4 "2001-09-11T01:21:56Z")
this is what i got while doing a search on [deja.com](http://deja.com) i don’t know if this is from his book At the end of the nineteenth century , two distinguished academics, one at Oxford and the other at Cambridge, made enduring contributions to the popular conception of Samhain. The former was the philologist Sir John Rhys, who suggested that it had been the ‘Celtic’ New Year… Rhys’s theory was further popularized by the Cambridge scholar, Sir James Frazer. At times the latter did admit that the evidence for it was inconclusive, but at others he threw this caution overboard and employed it to support an idea of his own: that Samhain had been the pagan Celtic feast of the dead. He reached this belief by the simple process of arguing back from a fact, that 1 and 2 November had been dedicated to that purpose by the medieval Christian Church, from which it could be surmised that this was been a Christianization of a preexisting festival. He admitted, by implication, that there was in fact no actual record of such a festival, but inferred the former existence of one from a number of different propositions: that the Church had taken over other pagan holy days, that ‘many’ cultures have annual ceremonies to honour their dead, ‘commonly’ at the opening of the year, and that (of course) 1 November had been the Celtic New Year. He pointed out that although the feast of All Saints or All Hallows had been formally instituted across most of north-west Europe by the emperor Louis the Pius in 835, on the prompting of Pope Gregory IV, it had already existed, on its later date of 1 November, in England at the time of Bede. He suggested that the pope and emperor had, therefore, merely ratified an existing religious practice based upon that of the ancient Celts. “The story is, in fact, more complicated. By the mid-fourth century Christians in the Mediterranean world were keeping a feast in honour of all those who had been martyred under the pagan emperors; it is mentioned in the _Carmina Nisibena_ of St Ephraem, who died in about 373, as being held on 13 May. During the fifth century divergent practices sprang up, the Syrian churches holding the festival in Easter Week, and those of the Greek world preferring the Sunday after Pentecost. That of Rome, however, preferred to keep the May date, and Pope Boniface IV formally endorsed it in the year 609. By 800 churches in England and Germany, which were in touch with each other, were celebrating a festival dedicated to all saints upon 1 November instead. The oldest text of Bede’s Martyrology, from the eighth century, does not include it, but the recensions at the end of the century do. Charlemagne’s favourite churchman Alcuin was keeping it by then, as were also his friend Arno, bishop of Salzburg, and a church in Bavaria. Pope Gregory, therefore, was endorsing and adopting a practice which had begun in northern Europe. It had not, however, started in Ireland, where the _Felire_ of Oengus and the _Martyrology of Tallaght_ prove that the early medieval churches celebrated the feast of All Saints upon 20 April. This makes nonsense of Frazer’s notion that the November date was chosen because of ‘Celtic’ influence: rather, both ‘Celtic’ Europe and Rome followed a Germanic idea…” ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/5 "2001-09-11T01:45:05Z")
Subject to the hstorical corrections provided by **dave316** , [The Witch’s Voice - Hallowe’en… We Call It Samhain](http://www.witchvox.com/holidays/samhain/1031_samhain_history.html) gives a pretty accurate description of how it developed in the U.S. I think the way they describe the Irish cultural traditions carrying on, without claiming a direct connection to an on-going religion, is fairly accurate as well. Obviously, **dave316** ’s research calls into question some of the other aspects of their version, but the one presented is _popularly_ (if not scholarly) accepted. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/6 "2001-09-11T01:48:57Z")
Here’s a little something on Samhain (pronounced sow-inn – I caught “Mulder” pronouncing it “sam-hain” on _The X-Files_ once): [http://ladyhedgehog.hedgie.com/samhain.html](http://ladyhedgehog.hedgie.com/samhain.html) ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/7 "2001-09-11T01:50:48Z")
Beaten again. Similar information, different link. ---
**Author:** ![Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/earl_snake-hips_tucker/32/3269_2.png) [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/8 "2001-09-11T03:33:42Z")
An earlier thread on this subject: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=7354](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=7354) ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [September 11, 2001, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/9 "2001-09-11T08:49:36Z")
Ronald Hutton is the leading academic sceptic of the idea that modern English folk traditions can be traced back to the pre-Christian period. _The Stations of the Sun_ is just one of a number of major monographs published by him on this subject in recent years. His view is pretty much that _all_ such traditions developed much more recently. A Druid origin for Halloween is just the sort of hypothesis he would regard as implausible. The passages quoted by dave316 may well come from one of his works. Hutton, who holds the chair in history at the University of Bristol (England), is a very serious historian. Assessing his impact on every field covered by his work is a bit difficult, but my impression is that most professional historians now consider him to have won this particular argument. ---
**Author:** ![APB](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2001, 9:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/10 "2001-09-18T09:40:17Z")
The passages quoted by dave316 are indeed extracts from the relevant chapter of _The Stations of the Sun_. ---
**Author:** ![Wumpus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8c91f0/32.png) [@Wumpus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wumpus)\ **Post date:** [September 18, 2001, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-real-history-of-halloween/80776/11 "2001-09-18T15:17:51Z")
Nitpicks: People often say that a practice “goes back to the Druids” when in fact they really mean it “goes back to some time in pre-Roman British history.” The term “Druid” refers to a specific priestly class during a specific period of time, not to the entire pre-Roman civilization. Also, Druids were not confined to Britain; Caesar wrote about the Druids of Gaul. We actually know very little about the Druids, most of our knowledge coming from a handful of Roman sources. Most of the “facts” you find on the Web about Druids are concocted out of legends, speculation, and completely anachronistic sources. (I was just looking at a site which recommened THE MABINOGION for its Druidic insights–never mind that it was written 13 centuries after the Druids. It’s rather like recommending BRIDGET JONES’ DIARY for its insights into the lives of medieval Welshmen.)