A God of the Dead and apples?

We’ve established that Samhain is among one of the world’s oldest known holidays rooted in ancient Pagan and even Christian festivals. The evening and day have many names and titles like Summer’s End, All Hallow’s Eve, Witches Night, Lamswool, and Snap-Apple night, Halloween. Originally a festival and celebration of the inextricable link between seasonal and life cycles, Halloween has transcended its cultural origins to be celebrated in multitudinous ways all over the modern world.

Which traditions of today’s holiday are actually linked with the past?

The essential elements: costumes, trick-or-treating, lighting bonfires, telling ghost stories, and community parties can be traced back over 2000 years to the ancient Celtic festival (some of this we already addressed in our last post). A lot of what we do know about these ancient festivals actually comes from the myths and legends written down finally by Christian monks. Previously, celtic myth and legend was an oral tradition passed down through the generations.

The title ‘Celts’ specifically references the people from northern France, Ireland, England, Scotland, Wales, and Brittany. Now, there’s a relatively Neo-pagan belief that the festival is in honor of a ‘God of the Dead’ Saman. This is a fuzzy area in our knowledge. Was there a Samhain God? We don’t know the answer. In the 18thcentury a writer incorrectly stated that Samhain was named after the celtic ‘God of the Dead’ and many Neo-Pagan religions have picked up on this claim without fact checking. This was propagated widely in the 1990s when secular sources cast it widely over newspapers and television programs. We ask ourselves then, was there a celtic Samhain God? According to an article on religioustolerance.org the answer is maybe and no. Maybe, because there are some obscure references to a little known character named Samhain or Sawan who played the role of a minor hero in Celtic mythology. His existence is so little known even among Celtic historians. He was not a major God, he was a minor hero and was named after the Samhain festival not the other way around. The answer is also NO because there is no Celtic God of the Dead, no Great God Samhain. This was a fictitious character created in the 18th century before the ancient Celtic people and their religion were studied in detail by historians and archaeologists.

It was a huge festival. This was their only chance to gain blessing for their survival of the winter. Ancestral ghosts visited families and were treated with respect to gain blessing. They wore costumes to hide from the sidh or the fey peoples. The carving of neeps and root vegetables was maybe to provide a guiding light to the souls of their dead or to scare away the fey. Bonfires were lit to cleanse and bless them for the coming darkness torches being lit in these fires to provide warmth throughout the winter.

What about bobbing for apples?

The Roman Festival of Pomona. The Romans conquered the Celtic lands (except Ireland) and assimilated and added to the ancient Celtic festival. The Festival of Pomona, celebrating the Roman Goddess of the harvest, Pomona (Pomorum) on November 1stcoincided rather nicely. Apples, in particular were Pomona’s specialty, and for the Romans, a symbol of love and fertility. Being the most potent night for prognostication, apples began to be used for divination such as to predict one’s spouse.