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The Roman Origins of Halloween: Updated
It seems that there is a bit more interest this year about the origins of Halloween. Maybe it is the fascination with its seemingly mysterious and ambiguous origins. Maybe it is simply just marketable as Halloween has grown into an industry in the United States. It is, however, a story worth examining as Halloween has become a social fixture.
We outlined the Roman origins of Halloween over a year ago in a previous article, and here we will focus a bit more on the Roman holidays that bridge the gap from ancient Rome to modern Halloween.
First of all, there is the link of Halloween to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. As Samhain simply marks the end of summer, or the harvesting season in modern day Ireland, the festival was a celebration of the harvest and a look forward to the new year, which started on November 1st. There was a great big party for the community – all hearth fires were put out in favor of one, large, communal fire where sacrifices were made. Seeing as this was a time of transition, the belief was that the forces of the underworld were ever present as the line between the living and dead was blurred. It became a time of prophecy and the Druids, or priestly class of Celtic society, used this moment to ask questions about the future – doing this with great pomp and ritual. Most were also in costume. Once the rituals and celebrations were over, the hearths within the homes were rekindled using the fire from the sacred, communal bonfire.
The Romans were not without their otherworldy celebrations. There was the Feralia, which according to Ovid, was celebrated at the end of the Parentalia from February 13-21 (a festival for honoring dead ancestors). The Feralia, celebrated on February 21st, was a festival were the Romans had to make offerings to appease the dead. If they did not, the consequences could be hauntings by these infernal spirits.
Yet it remains that the strongest link between ancient Rome and modern Halloween was the result of the celebration which honored the goddess Pomona, the godess of fruits and orchards. She was associated with the apple, and as we have seen, this is probably the reason why bobbing for apples is a tradition associated with Halloween. The Romans, who had conquered the province of Gallia and thereby subjugated the Gauls and Celts (living in Britannia), assimilated Samhain with the Pomona festival (a form of synchretism). As this tradition was kept alive for hundreds of years, eventually the Roman Catholic church assimilated this pagan holiday celebration with the recognition of All Hallows Day, a day to commemorate the saints and martyrs of the Catholic church’s pantheon.
So Samhain/Pomona Day was typically celebrated on October 31st and Novemeber 1st, respectfully. Then the Catholic church proclaimed November 1st All Hallows, which essentiall made All Hallows Eve – or Hallowe’en – the night before, October 31st. Without the Roman empire assimilating Samhain into their own festival, we may not have had a Halloween celebration to begin with. Scary thought!
Some Links:
Great and Telling Tales: Halloween
Game Time: Mola
Here is an ancient Roman board game that I have taught my students – and they take to it with great enthusiasm! The game is called Mola, it is an ancient Roman board game that infuses strategy from several different games. It is part Tic-Tac-Toe, part Chess, and part Connect Four.
Materials
You will need the game board (which you can download here) and 9 tokens for each team (which you can download here or just simply find some old checkers, glass beads or whatever to make up your tokens). That’s it, you’re ready to play!
Rules
The game has three phases: placement, removal and capture play.
Placement is the first phase. There are two teams and each team must alternate staging their pieces. Nota Bene: the object here is to place your pieces strategically so you can eliminate your opponent swiftly and efficiently. Your object here, too, is to get three pieces in a row so that when the 2nd phase begins, you eliminate as many of your opponents pieces as you can (before you start the third and final phase).
Removal: as described above, after both teams have completed placing their nine pieces for each team, they are to inspect to see how many times they got three of their own pieces in a row (this is called a mola or “millstone”). The players are to then remove one of their opponent’s pieces for each mola they laid down – they are to do this in an alternating fashion, as well, until every mola was accounted for.
Capture play: This is where the game truly begins. Now, all your strategies must come to light in order to eliminate your opponent. Again, the goal is to remove all your opponents pieces by obtaining a mola. Each time a mola is achieved, an opposing player’s piece is removed. Once this has been done until a player only has 2 pieces left, the game is over (you need at least three pieces to create a mola).
Addendum: You are not allowed to keep sliding a piece back and forth between the same spot to get a mola.
Well, those are the rules of the game! Practice and enjoy! Comment here if you develop any interesting strategies!
The Roman Origins of Halloween
Believe it or not, the origins of Halloween have a distinct Roman flavor. The explanation, however, requires some jumping around.
The month of May, for the Romans, was both a somber time and a laborious time. Laborious in that it was a time for farmers to reap the fruits of their harvest. That is, if the proper deities were happy – which brings us to why there was a somber mood for this particular month. The rituals needed to keep harmony between man and the divine were critical.
Maia – A Goddess of Growth
The month belonged to the goddess Maia, who, in one guise, was the mother of Mercury. Born from the union of Jupiter and Maia, Mercury was not only a messenger god, but a psychopompos – a herald of the dead (the Romans learned this trait from the Greek god Hermes and ascribed it to Mercurius). Maia, however, was also known as Maia Maiestas (Maia the Majestic), associated with the Bona Dea (The Good Goddess), and Fauna – she was a fertility goddess and believed to offer growth. Thus why the month of May, as the end of winter and the beginning of spring – was given to her. May was the month of growth.
Rituals of May Day – the sacred day of Maia
May Day, May 1st, was sacred to her: the flamen volcanis offered a sacrifice of a pregnant sow. Under her alias known as the Bona Dea, a festival was given in her honor whereby only women were allowed to attend; men were forbidden. (In fact, this very transgression was later used by Julius Caesar as an excuse to divorce his wife.) Also on May Day the lares praestites were honored who were the spirit guardians of the state (much like the lares familiares were the spirit guardians of the household).
The Lemuria
Then there is the Lemuria, or Lemuralia as it was also known. The Lemures were spirits of the dead who returned for only three particular days a year to threaten their descendants. They were restless, malevolent ghosts whose purpose was to torture the families they left behind.
In order to propitiate them, a ritual was enacted by the pater familias. At midnight, the pater familias would walk barefoot through his own house to rid the lemures with this exorcism ritual: holding his hand upheld in what is referred to as a fig gesture (placing the thumb between the 2nd and 3rd fingers) and filling his mouth with dried black beans, he would make the circuit around his house spitting the beans onto the floor in order to bait the lemures. As he walked and spit out a bean, he would recite nine times the incantation “with these I redeem myself and mine” [cum hīs redimō ipsum atque familiam meam].
When the lemures came out to eat the beans, the rest of the household – following along but forbidden to look behind them – would clash bronze together, like cymbals, and proclaim “ghosts of my fathers and ancestors be gone!” [manes paternī exite!]
The Lemuria was practiced on May 9th, 11th, and the 13th (even days were seen as unlucky!).
Ancient Roman skeleton mosaic
How the Lemuria affected Halloween…
Here is the interesting part: All Saints Day, a Christian holiday, was adopted on May 13th and there is good reason for this: originally, the Lemuria concluded on May13th and on that same day in 609AD the church held a feast in dedication to Saint Mary and the Martyrs. This became the establishment for All Saints Day! How does this relate to Halloween? Here’s how.
Later, around the 8th century AD as the Lemuria faded away in popularity and practice, the church moved All Saints Day from May 13th to November 1st – where it is currently celebrated to this day. It was originally known as All Hallows’ (all the holy ones’) and Halloween was simply All Hallows’ Eve. [Note that May 1st and November 1st are exactly 6 months apart and mark the beginning and end of summer, respectively]
The pagan holiday associated with November 1st? Samhain (sah-ween) – which was the end of the harvest season for the Celts, the people living in Ireland, and one of the principle festivals for their culture. It was their new year. As the harvest ended, the Celts tended to gather up all their crops and livestock and have one large feast as they headed into winter. This final harvest falls on October 31st, and the name for Halloween in Gaelic is Oíche/Oidhche Shamhna.
But there were some uninvited guests coming to dinner.
On this day, the Celts believed that those who died during the year returned – so the festival of Samhain was a way to help the dead on their journey to the otherworld. Because this particular day the Celts believed the dead were more likely to mingle with the living, a place for the dead was set at their feasts in order to honor them! This also meant that Samhain, with all the dead returning to visit, was a time for clearer omens and prophecy.
Pomona and How the Romans adopted Samhain
When Julius Caesar conquered Gaul and the Celts, the Romans became exposed to the rituals of Samhain and ascribed them to their own goddess Pomona, who was the goddess of orchards and abundance. She was associated with apples, nuts and grapes. The Romans associated the apple with love and fertility and we have lots of rituals associated with Samhain that use the apple. The Romans adopted these, too.
[One mystical aspect of the apple is that if you slice it in half transversely you will find the image of a five pointed star. A Halloween tradition known as "apple peeling" was a direct result of Roman apple lore. A woman would pare an apple, all the while being very careful to remove the casing in one long strip. She would then toss it over her left shoulder and the peel would land on the floor displaying the shape of the initial of the man she was destined to marry. It was said that to peel an apple at midnight on October 31st while gazing in a mirror would surely cause the face of your future husband to appear. Another way to see who would be the first to marry was to "bob for apples". Apples were floated in a basin filled with water.]
Cultures that celebrate the dead, as something to fear or honor, are nothing new. Halloween, in a round about way, is our culture’s way of paying homage to the dead as its origins, in actuality, stem from a multitude of cultures which felt compelled to do the same in order to keep an accord in their universe.
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