KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If there’s one subject Rockhurst University English Professor John Kerrigan likes to discuss this time of year, it’s how the spirit – or maybe, spirits – of Halloween are tied to Ireland.
Yes - Ireland.
The Emerald Island.
A country known for its green countryside, St. Patrick’s Day, pubs, and a wee bit of mischief also has close cultural ties to Halloween, Kerrigan said.
“The beliefs in the spirits and storytelling that has to do with ghost stories are such important Irish traditions that certainly come out of old Celtic traditions,” he said. “And so is the belief about this world and other worlds, and the separation of those that have spirits and ancestors, and things like banshees and fairies.
“It kind of all intersects in a really interesting way with the tradition we call Halloween.”
At the heart of that intersection, he said, is the Celtic festival called Samhain, which starts at dusk on Oct. 31 and continues through Nov. 1.
“Samhain was a harvest festival,” said Kerrigan, who specializes in modern and contemporary Irish literature. “It was a time of celebrating and feasting. If you think about it in agricultural ways, it was a time that’s sort of at the end of the year. The crops would be dying out and needed to be harvested.”
Samhain, however, has another, darker side.
“The Celts also believed this was a window of time when the spirits moved freely across and between the worlds,” Kerrigan said. “This was a time when they believed ancestral spirits -- spirits or souls of departed relations and loved ones -- returned to their homes to visit. But some of those spirits were malevolent or evil.”
To protect themselves from those evil spirits, Kerrigan said, the ancient Celts started several traditions, including:
- Lighting bonfires;
- Leaving out eggs, apples or nuts as bribes;
- Wearing masks or costumes so they could move freely on the night when the spirits were out.
“You can see indirectly how those lead to part of what we now call trick-or-treating,” Kerrigan said.
When waves of Irish immigrants came to American between the 1840s and 1860s, Kerrigan said, they brought those traditions with them.
“That’s when we started to see things that we now associate with Halloween really become an embedded part of American culture,” he said.
There’s another Halloween tradition that also traces its roots to Ireland, Kerrigan said.
Jack-o’-lanterns.
“Jack-o’-lanterns with the “O” apostrophe is clearly Irish,” Kerrigan said. “But they emerged originally as a mythical Irish story about a guy named Jack, who made a deal with the devil that he would not go to hell when he died.”
Jack, however, led a sinful life and was excluded from Heaven when he died.
“And the devil wouldn’t let him in hell, either, because of their previous agreement,” Kerrigan said. “Jack basically was forced to wander the earth for the rest of his days. And he became one of those spirits you needed to be afraid of.”
To ward off Jack’s spirit, the Irish carved out demonic faces and placed burning embers inside turnips.
“They didn’t have pumpkins in Ireland,” Kerrigan said. “But they did have turnips. When the Irish came to America, they continued to celebrate this tradition, but used pumpkins, which were native and ideal because they were bigger. And candles were placed inside to illuminate the night.
“That’s how we get today’s jack-o’-lanterns,” he added. “So all these traditions – lighting bonfires, handing out treats, wearing masks, and lighting jack-o’-lanterns -- all of these Halloween traditions filtered from Ireland to America.”
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