British Halloween

The Winter Solstice at Stonehenge

The British have always been a fun-loving people with a desire to party at the drop of a hat. Culturally a farming society, for thousands of years, the agrarian calendar has been the driving force behind the rationale to drop everything, clear space in the barn and have a knees-up. The autumn harvest, the winter solstice, the onset of spring and the summer solstice were, and still are, reasons for celebration in Britain. However, when the Roman Christians administered the country, the British penchant for a damn good party, and the debauchery that no doubt went with it, did not go unnoticed and the religious authorities adopted the Pagan customs into their own calendar. Two reasons for this were an attempt to ingratiate themselves with the newly-conquered indigenous population of these windswept islands and also an attempt to temper the shenanigans that go hand in hand with any alcohol-fuelled rave.

Halloween, or Samhain, was one of those Pagan festivals. Samhain was halfway between the

Samhain Bonfire

autumn equinox, when the sun rises directly in the east and sets directly in the west, and the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. Celebrating the harvest and the onset of winter, the dark half of the year, Samhain allowed people to enjoy themselves after the hard work of bringing in the harvest, fetching the livestock down from the pastures and preparing themselves for the harsh weather to come. Bonfires were lit to cleanse the world and there was a widely held belief that the divide between the spirit world and the living blurred, allowing communication with the dead. Witnessing this, the early Christian authorities usurped this festival into their own calendar, calling it "All Hallows Eve", the day before "All Saints Day" when the lives of long dead "Saints" were/are celebrated (for other Christian hijacking of Pagan festivals, research Easter and Christmas).

The traditional Halloween party game of "Bobbing for Apples" was part of the Samhain festivities. It was believed that the first person to successfully take a bite out of a bobbing apple (apples floating in a barrel of water) would be the first to marry or find their sweetheart in the coming year. Similarly, when peeling an apple, the length of the peel achieved would signify how long that person would live. Variations on the theme would exist depending in what part of the country you lived, but the Samhain festival would essentially be the same. Most ancient cultures had a celebration to welcome the onset of winter and these have survived in one form or another to the present day, with Mexico's "Day of the Dead" being one of the most notable.



The sad aspect of Halloween for Britain is that the "Marketing Men", like the early Christians, have

hijacked the festival. When I was a child, carved swedes were the traditional British lantern, not pumpkins, and trick or treating was a bizarre activity seen in American films or Scooby Doo. Demanding money/treats by menaces (tricks) seemed like some sort of criminal activity of which any typical East End gangster would be proud. Now, due to the incessant need for supermarkets to wrest our hard-earned pay from our wallets with any excuse, their marketing people would have us believe that allowing gangs of fancy dress clad children to roam the streets, disturbing the elderly by banging on their doors and terrorising them if sweets are not forthcoming is a socially acceptable pastime. I am all for celebrating the festival that is now known as Halloween, but I prefer the British tradition rather than the American one that is being foisted on the rest of the world.