Deconstructing Halloween
The Word Nerd
Howard Richler
Now that the ghosts, goblins and ghouls of Halloween have receded for another year, I thought it might be safe to delve into the origin of this pagan f ête. Conspiracy theorists would have us believe that Halloween was created by the candy industry or a dental lobby group. If we must hold any group accountable for the many hellions who wreak havoc on the eve of October 31, it should be the Celts.
Some of the OED’s earliest citations for Halloween are from Scottish literary greats Robbie Burns and Robert Fergusson. The celebration formerly referred to the eve of the Celtic festival Samhain (Gaelic for the end of summer), which honoured the ‘Lord of the Dead’. The pagan Celts believed that the souls of the dead returned on the last evening preceding the month of November.
When Britain became Christian, this holiday became All Saints’ Day or
Hallowmass, a shortened form of All-Hallows’ Mass. The word hallow comes from the Old English halig, or holy man. From halig we also get our words holy and hallow. The eve of this important day was All-Hallows ’ Even, which was corrupted to Hallow-e’en, now more commonly spelt Hallowe’en or Halloween.
Another ancient word associated with Halloween is witch. One should be mindful if predisposed to referring to a cranky elderly woman as an “old witch” that the term was originally restricted to male wizards, appearing in 890 as wicca. Female witches in the form wicce only emerged in the year 1000.
Nowadays, Paganism is often referred to as Wicca, though the term was only recorded by OED as late as 1959. Judging by the 6,944,000 hits that the term Wicca elicited by a Google search, interest in witchcraft is flourishing
The word wicked, however, is not related etymologically to the practice of Wicca. Wicked comes from the Old English wreccha, from which we derive wretch and wretched.
Intrinsically connected with Halloween is the word goblin. Originally, the term referred to a wandering sprite with a procli vity for attaching itself to houses, where it acted rather like a poltergeist. The word comes from the Greek kobalos, or rogue, which was also the source of the German malicious spirit of silver mines called a kobald, from which we get the word cobalt. It was a pejorative term defining ore considered worthless at that time because its arsenic and sulfur contaminants caused ulcerations of the hands and feet. It was believed that cobalt ore was harmful to the neighbouring silver ore, or actually had been left behind as a kind of changeling by the mountain goblin who stole the silver.
The festival of Samhain featured many itinerant spirits who enjoyed playing nasty tricks on mortals. If you left some milk or food on your doorstep to sate the cantankerous demons, they could be appeased. This is the origin of the expression Trick or Treat. Believing that evil spirits hate the light, it became a practice to carry a lantern made from a turnip lit with coals from the bonfire. As the people went home from the ceremony, they used these lanterns to ward off evil spirits and to mark those houses that were in sympathy with Druidic practices. Over the centuries, this custom came to America, and the turnip was exchanged for the more popular pumpkin, today ’s Jack-O-Lantern.
One odd nasty that visits us on Halloween that does not possess Celtic roots is the ghoul, a term derived from an Arabic verb meaning “to seize.” In many Muslim countries, a ghoul represents an evil spirit that robs graves and preys on human corpses. It is with this sense that the word came into English at the end of the 18th Century. Nowadays the word and the adjective ghoulish are generally used to designate a morbid fascination with unpleasant things.
On Halloween you may have spotted many children carrying UNICEF boxes. This does not stand for Underage Nocturnal Individuals Clutching Extorted Funds, but for United Nations International Children ’s Emergency Fund, to which I trust you gave generously.
The launch of Howard Richler’s latest book Can I Have a Word With You? is 7 pm, November 14 at Paragraphe Bookstore, 2220 McGill College.
