Halloween seen by the Steampunk Universe!

After our article on choosing yoursteampunk corset for Halloween , we are going to look at the origins of this holiday.

Common history has it that Halloween originated in the foggy days of pre-Roman Ireland, with the end-of-year festival of Samhain. This last day of the Celtic calendar was a time when spirits roamed the Earth and young costumed druids traveled from house to house with lit turnips, begging for food. The festival was transformed by the Catholic Church, like all Celtic holidays, into All Saints' Eve. A common proselytizing attempt to convert the Pagans that evolved over time into the holiday we know today.

Key points

🎃 Celtic Origins : Halloween is often associated with Samhain, a Celtic festival marking the end of summer, but historical details are unclear.

📜 Roman Sources : Most information about the Druids comes from the Romans, who are known for their biased accounts.

⛪ Christianization : The Catholic Church transformed many pagan holidays, including Samhain, into All Saints' Eve.

📅 Variable Dates : The date of All Saints' Day varied depending on the region before being fixed on November 1 in the 12th century.

🕯️ Victorian Traditions : Victorian scholars popularized the idea that Halloween was an ancient pagan tradition.

🌾 Harvest Festivals : Many Halloween traditions originate from New World harvest festivals.

👻 Irish Immigration : Irish immigration in the 19th century played a crucial role in the rise of Halloween in the United States.

🎭 Guising and Souling : These medieval British practices influenced modern trick-or-treating traditions.

📚 Victorian Literature : Victorian stories, such as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” helped shape the imagery of Halloween.

🎥 Horror Cinema : Classic horror films have given Halloween a distinct visual vocabulary.

If only there was historical evidence!

Very little is known about the Druids, their rituals, and practices, due to their pre-literate culture. Most of what we do know comes from the Romans, an imperial force that cannot be relied upon to have a full and nuanced appreciation of the cultures they attempted to conquer. It was the Romans who gave the impression that mass human sacrifice among men was a common Druidic practice. After the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, the Celts reluctantly converted to Christianity. So it can be said that there was a festival around Samhain, a term that literally means "summer's end" but was not necessarily the end of the Celtic year. It may have been related to honoring the dead, but we are not certain, and the practice may have been Christianized as All Saints' Day, a small feast honoring all saints and martyrs who did not have their own designated feast days (the previous evening being All Saints' Eve ), and followed by All Souls' Day in remembrance of all Christian dead.

Yet the original practice of All Saints' Day varied from country to country - November 1 in England and Germany, April 20 in Ireland, May 13 in most of the Christian world - and the date of November 1 was not fixed until the 12th century, well after the Celts had been Christianized. Historians cannot say what happened during the Samhain festivals, because there is very little record of these periods. It seems that processions for the faithful dead were actually a Christian invention, as was the door-to-door begging for food. All Saints' Day was only one occasion among many for such activity: processions and door-to-door appeals against hunger also existed on the feast days of St. Andrew, St. Nicholas, St. Thomas, and even later on Guy Fawkes Day. Like other holy days, it has become the occasion for festivals of danse macabre and pranks. In Europe and the British Isles, Halloween is a celebration but is only a minor practice, often unwelcome, and has been imported mainly from the United States.

So where did the idea that Halloween was an ancient, pre-Christian Druidic practice come from? The most likely answer is that it came from the same people who invented the modern holiday of Halloween itself: the English during the Victorian era !

Halloween invented at the same time as Steampunk?

Okay, that may be a bit much, but remember that there is a part of fantasy in Steampunk, not just steam technology. More specifically, the association of Halloween with Samhain, Druids, and pre-Christian paganism seems to have come from 19th century comparative mythology PhDs like John Rhys and James Frazer. In The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, published in 1890, Frazer makes a number of unsubstantiated claims about the ancient Celts and their customs by reinterpreting or misinterpreting Christian practices. In this case, all the medieval Christian traditions that had developed around All Saints' Day were attributed to the Celts. Indeed, Frazer seemed particularly keen, as many mythologists have since, to strip Christianity of any originality in order to try to explain religion in a way that ends up confusing everything. It is hard to imagine a religion that had absolutely nothing original to offer.

The practice of All Saints' Day ended largely in Protestant countries, with the exception of a modified form in Anglican and Lutheran territories (it was on 31 October 1517 that Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, precisely because of the connection with the deceased believer). The head of the Church of England itself kept a bonfire for Halloween. The following description of a party at Balmoral Castle dates from 1874:

Her Majesty and Princess Beatrice, each carrying a large torch, rode out in an open phaeton. A procession, consisting of the tenants and servants of the estates, followed. All carried tall, lighted torches. They marched through the grounds and round the castle, and the scene of the procession was very strange and striking.... When the flames were at their brightest, a person dressed in a jester's mask appeared on the scene, representing a carriage surrounded by a number of fairies carrying long lances, the carriage bearing the image of a witch. A circle having been formed by the torchbearers, the elf presiding over the audience threw the witch's mark into the fire, where it was quickly consumed. This act of cremation being completed, the guests commenced dancing with great vigor to the strings of Willie Ross, Her Majesty's piper.

The same writings indicate that the practice of Halloween was "fast fading into oblivion in many districts of Scotland". It was slow to spread to the United States as well, where it had been initially settled by the Puritans, who had also banned Christmas. Before the 1840s, mentions of Halloween in American literature were rare, in fact they are most readily found in Victorian literature. Indeed, most of the most notable American Halloween stories - Washington Irving'sThe Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) - take place during a generic autumn harvest festival.

Irving, however, provides the reader with a description of an evolving American tradition. After the feast and the dancing, the participants in Baltus Van Tassel's frolics gather for tales of old... of heroes, of ghosts....

The immediate cause, however, of the prevalence of supernatural stories in these parts, was doubtless due to the proximity of Sleepy Hollow. There was a contagion in the air which blew from that haunted region; it breathed an atmosphere of dreams and fancies which infested the whole land. Several of the Sleepy Hollow people were present at Van Tassel's, and, as usual, were distributing their wild and wonderful legends. Many gloomy stories were told of the funeral trains, and the wails and groans heard and seen on the great tree where the unfortunate Major Andre was carried off. There was also talk of the woman in white, who haunted the dark glen of Raven Rock, and was often heard screaming on winter nights before a storm, after having perished there in the snow. The main part of the stories, however, revolves around Sleepy Hollow's favorite specter, the Headless Horseman, who was heard many times at night, patrolling the country, and is said to have tied his horse every night among the graves in the church yard.

The curious church seems to be a favorite haunt of troubled spirits doomed to wander for ever . It stands on a mound, surrounded by locusts and noble elms, among which its whitewashed walls shine modestly, like Christian purity shining in the shadows of retirement. A gentle slope descends from it to a silvery sheet of water, bordered by tall trees, between which the blue hills of the Hudson can be seen. Looking upon its grassy yard, where the rays of the sun seem to sleep so peacefully, one might think that at least the dead could rest there in peace. On one side of the church lies a broad wooded glen, along which a large stream flows among broken rocks and fallen logs. Over a deep black part of the stream, not far from the church, was once thrown a wooden bridge; the road leading to it, and the bridge itself, were thickly shaded by overhanging trees, which cast a shadow over it even by day; but made for a terribly dark night at night. It was one of the favorite haunts of the Headless Horseman, and the place where he was most frequently encountered. The story was told of old Brouwer, a Cartesian who had little faith in ghosts, and how he met the horseman. Returning from his excursion to Sleepy Hollow, he was pursued and forced to fight him. According to the story, they galloped at full gallop across the fields, over the hill and through the marsh, and overtook the road at the bridge. When the horseman struck him suddenly, he threw old Brouwer into the river, and went over the pass through the trees with a noise like thunder.

All these stories, told in a sleepy tavern, where men talk in the dark, make the faces of the hearers fearful of all their superstitions. Receiving a leisurely gleam from the glow of his pipe, all these stories impressed themselves upon Ichabod's mind. He has restored them with large extracts from their inestimable author, Cotton Mather, and has added many wonderful events that had taken place in his native state of Connecticut. Mingled with these are the terrifying sights he had seen in his nocturnal walks in Sleepy Hollow.

The debt of modern Halloween celebrations to the harvest festivals of old is most clearly seen in the legend of Jack . Various accounts of dubious authenticity and historicity attempt to connect theJack O' Lantern to Irish folk tales, where turnips were used to ward off evil spirits during Samhain. Missing from most accounts is the essential fact that the pumpkin is a New World vegetable. Pumpkin carving had been practiced in the United States since the early 19th century as part of the harvest festival. It is mentioned in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1837 anthology of short stories, Twice Told, in which a man scoffs at the idea of ​​hiding a shining jewel under a cloak, saying "Why, it will shine through the holes, and make you look like a pumpkin!" Some scholars have even argued that it was the end of the harvest that ultimately decided the placement of All Saints' Day on November 1, when large numbers of pilgrims could be more easily fed. Harvest images—pumpkins, scarecrows, bushels of wheat and corn—are still common at Halloween.

Halloween survived thanks to immigration?

The tide turned in Halloween's favor with the Irish Potato Famine and the mass immigration of Irish people to the United States in the 1840s. The Potato Famine, also known as the Irish Potato Famine, was caused by a disease called "potato blight" that affected Ireland's staple crop. As a result, a million people died and a million more fled the Emerald Isles. When the Irish diaspora arrived in America, their traditions came with them, including the Catholic holiday of All Saints' Day. Halloween evolved from these newly sown seeds as a distinctly Americanized holiday, much as St. Patrick's Day did. In Mexico, colonized by Spanish Catholics, All Saints and All Souls also evolved into Día de Muertos, the Day of the Dead.

With the Irish came the practices of "guising" and "souling". Guising was a short melodramatic play performed by itinerant, costumed actors on special festival days in the British Isles. Dating back to at least the 13th century, these plays were usually performed on Easter Monday, Christmas Monday and Plough Monday, the Monday after the start of the Christian feast of Epiphany (6 January) and the beginning of work after the 12 days of lenient festivities that followed Christmas. All Saints' Day was also an opportunity for actors to ply their trade, which usually ended with payment in food or coin. Guising was the secular version, usually performed by costumed children who went from door to door reciting verses, poems and songs for apples, nuts and coins, the beginning of "trick or treat". This was practiced at several different festivals, and the first mention of it being associated with Halloween in the UK dates back to 1895.

Guising was linked to the medieval practice of souling, in which the poorest members of British society would roam the streets during All Saints' Day, singing and offering prayers on behalf of the wealthier members in exchange for "soul cakes." The cakes were usually filled with the kind of luxuries that the poor could not afford: nutmeg and cinnamon, allspice, raisins and currants, and other such tasty morsels.

America and Halloween.

Although it repeats common myths about Halloween's pagan origins, Ruth Edna Kelley's 1919 Halloween Book provides valuable insight into American Halloween celebrations of the previous century. These customs were an evolving collection of celebrations and stories, mostly medieval and British, that culminated in the present form.

As the original Halloween customs were increasingly forgotten across the ocean, Americans encouraged them and made it an occasion similar to what it must have been in its best days abroad. All Halloween customs in the United States are borrowed directly or adapted from those of England under Queen Victoria . Of course, far from the Industrial Revolution that can be seen in the novels of Charles Dickens where this holiday was already on the decline.

It is a night of ghostly and joyous revelry. Mischievous spirits choose it to carry away shoes and other objects, to hide them or put them out of reach.... Sacks filled with flour are sprinkled on the passers-by. Doorbells ring, objects are thrown in the halls, and buttons are stolen. Such practices resemble the pranks played on the eve of the Fourth of July in connection with the Declaration of Independence. We see manifested in all these occasions the spirit of the night of liberty....

Halloween parties, like New Year's Eve, are the true survival of ancient rites. They are prepared in secret. Guests must not disclose the fact that they are invited. They often come masked, like ghosts or witches.

Halloween atmospheres and superstitions.

The decorations highlight both elements of the festival. For the center of the table, there may be a hollowed-out pumpkin, filled with apples, nuts, and other fruits of the harvest, or a pumpkin cart pulled by field mice. It is clear that this is a harvest festival, like Pomona's. In the carriage is a witch, representing the other element, of magic and prophecy. The Jack-o'-lanterns, with which the room is lit, are easy-to-carve pumpkins, hollowed out and candles placed inside. The light from the candle shines through holes cut in the shape of lines. The lantern thus becomes a candle, and is held to a window to scare those inside. Corn stalks from the garden in clumps around the room. A frieze of witches on broomsticks, with cats, bats, and owls surmounting the chimney, perhaps. A full moon shines down on everyone, and a cauldron on a tripod holds fortunes tied up in nutshells. The dominant colors are yellow and black: a deep yellow is the color of grain and the ripest fruit; black represents dark magic and demonic influence. Ghosts, skulls, and crossbones, symbols of death, surprise the viewer. Since Halloween is a time when lovers learn their fate, hearts and other sentimental symbols are used to good effect.

This plague mask is a unique and original piece that will become the central element of your outfit!

Having marched to the dining room for the duration of a hymn, the guests find before them simple and hearty dishes: doughnuts, gingerbread, cider, popcorn, apples and nuts. Halloween cake has been a staple in America since the beginning. A ring, a key, a thimble, a penny and a baked button respectively announce a quick marriage, a journey, old age, wealth and singleness....

The taste for Halloween festivities now is to study old traditions and organize a Scottish feast, using Burns' poem Halloween as a guide. In short, no custom that was once honored at Halloween is out of fashion today.

Towards a commercial celebration.

It took time for the traditions imported by the Irish to diffuse into American society, due to the Irish's bad reputation (rarely in history have Americans been unanimously enthusiastic about waves of mass immigration from unfamiliar cultures). The penchant for pranks and indulgence did not do the moral guardians of high society any favors. The October 1872 issue of Godey's Lady Book described the holiday in unflattering terms: "In this country Halloween was strictly observed for a time, but it has been forgotten by almost all except the young.

The first reference to trick-or-treating by its more popular name comes from a 1927 newspaper article from the town of Blackie, Alberta, Canada: "Halloween was an occasion for great fun. No real damage was done except to the tempers of some who had to break wheels, doors, barrels, etc. that decorated the main street. The young tormentors were at the back and front doors demanding edible plunder by the word 'trick or treat' to which the inmates responded with glee and sent the thieves away rejoicing." The term migrated to the United States in the 1930s, by which time Trick-or-Treat had become a cherished Halloween tradition.

Well, cherished by some. While Halloween is now plagued every year by urban legends of trick-or-treaters and drug dealers wasting LSD on children, in the past it was explicitly denounced as extortion. The following letter was written to the editor of the Washington Post in 1948: "I have lived in about twenty other cities and never saw or heard of the practice of panhandling until about 1936.... the sooner it is obsolete the better. I don't mind little children wanting to show off their costumes, but I don't like the impudence of older children." Despite the naysayers, Trick-or-Treat became popular enough that Walt Disney produced an eponymous cartoon in 1952.

Costumes became more widespread from the turn of the century, and their development alongside trick-or-treating is contemporaneous with the development of the horror genre in cinema. Horror literature has of course been around for some time, as have folk tales of ghosts and goblins. But the advent of cinema, and the classic Universal Studios films in particular, gave a distinct visual vocabulary to horror that has endured to this day. Few children today have probably seen Dracula with Bela Lugosi or Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, but they immediately recognize these particular incarnations as Halloween icons. Before this vocabulary, costumes were usually composed of storybook characters and popular characters.

Halloween is a prime example of an emerging tradition. Its origins are multiple—New World harvest festivals, medieval religious festivals, traditions imported by Irish immigrants, and local traditions of candy-mongering with threats—and have coalesced into a distinct holiday in the relatively recent past, but legitimized by a false history that predates written records. Its festivities are largely impenetrable to most people who participate in them, and there is much misinformation about them, but like Christmas before it, most of what we take for granted about October 31 was invented, more or less, in the early Victorian era.