Halloween in tradition and the HP books (Was: My thoughts on the title)

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 163283


> montims:
> sorry - being picky - All Hallow's Eve is the Christian name for the
> festival. The pagan name, strictly, would be Samhain or Hallowe'en,
if you like - a corruption of the Christian term. "Hallow" means
versions of "holy", in the Christian sense.
> ===========================================
> 
> Jeremiah:
> 
> Yes, Jeanette.  :)
> I am Pagan and I do realize that Halloween is called Samhain. But in
some traditions it is refered to as All Hallow's and, yes, Christian
tradidion has "usurped" (no word fits better... my sincerest apologies
if I've offended anyone... or am about to offend anyone... 'aint
religion touchy?) the idea and trwisted it to its own means. But there
has been chatter about "All Hallows" meaning the Final Battle will
take place on Halloween and that Pagan tradition says that All
Haollows (Samhain) is the night whn there "veil" between the worlds of
the living and dead are the thinnest: meaning the battle will be at
the Ministry for Magic at the veil where Sirius was killed.
> 
> So, going along with all fo that: the scenario is conveluded and the
clues are irrelevant. Why? Well, to use the Christian word for a Pagan
concept is a bit... um... crazy. Rowling has never done that to us and
it does not seem to fit her style/pattern of writing. However, she
would use some archaic, old-English term and play with that. But, IMO,
she has stated if we've read the books and have thought about them
then all the clues are there and we should be able to figure out the
ending. Halloween has always been Halloween in the stories and Samhain
wouldn't make any sense at this point. (But I could be completely wrong).

Carol responds:
I think you have All Hallows Eve (Halloween) mixed up with All Hallows
Day (All Saints Day). It's like the difference between Christmas Day
(december 25) and Christmas Eve (December 24) except that All Hallows
Eve and All Hallows Day have distinctly different traditions attached
to them. 

As I said in another post, "halewis" or "halwes" is the Middle English
word for "saints." To elaborate a bit further on the etymology, the
Middle English holy day "Alhalwemesse," from  Old English "ealra
hlgena mæsse" (All Saints' Mass), came to be called All Hallows Day or
All Saints' Day, not to be confused with All Saints' *Eve* or All
Hallows *Eve* (Hallow*een*). 

But I absolutely agree that Halloween is Halloween in the stories and
has nothing to do with Samhain if only because JKR is Christian. It's
difficult, based on what we now know, to say whether the Potters were
killed on All Hallows Eve (Halloween) or the early hours of All
Hallows Day (All Saints' Day), but it seems clear that the attack
began around midnight on Halloween, the *eve* of All Hallows or All
Saints' Day. 

As for pagan tradition and Christian tradition, Christians originally
celebrated All Hallows Day in March to coincide with what was then the
New Year. It was moved to November 1 in the eighth century, which
caused All Hallows Eve to fall on October 31, the same date as the
Celtic New Year's Eve festival but at a time when the Celtic
traditions had long ceased to be a threat to the firmly established
Roman Catholic Church. Also, the traditions of All Souls Day (November
2) somehow got mixed up with those of Halloween (All Hallows Eve), no
doubt because of pagan influence. 

But the concept of All Hallows Day itself, celebrating the Christian
Saints (whether saints in the Roman Catholic tradition or simply
"saved" souls) owes nothing to paganism. Again, the Day and the Eve
are two different things.

Here's a site for an Episcopal church appropriately entitled "All
Saints" which explains the confusion better than I can:

" . . . You may read in some sources that Halloween's origins lie in a
pagan festival of the dead; that's being a bit loose with history.
It's true that the pre-Christian Celts in the British Isles celebrated
their new year on November 1, and that the new year was a time for
remembering the year's departed. It's also true that the Catholic
Church had a documented policy of supplanting local festivals with
holy days.

However, to insist that customs in the northern reaches of Christendom
led an Italian pope to chose November 1 for dedicating his All Saints
chapel may be making more assumptions than is warranted. The modern
trappings of Halloween -- costumes, trick-or-treat, etc. -- are
certainly not pre-Christian; they came to the United States with Irish
(Catholic) immigrants in the 18th century, and share common origins
with the tradition of Christmas caroling. . . ."

http://www.allsaintsnorthfield.org/history.htm

It's interesting to note that the native Britons (Celts) had been
Christianized by 550 AD (many of them earlier). The Anglo-Saxons were
not permanently converted until the end of the seventh century AD.

Exactly how all this ties in with the HP books, and with JKR, a
Christian writer, I can't be sure. I have a feeling that the Veil ties
in with ancient Druidic traditions, for example, and that Witches and
Wizards were originally Celtic, with Muggleborns appearing among the
Angles and Saxons several centuries before Salazar Slytherin became
concerned about them, at a time when both groups were already
Christianized but had developed separate traditions. Just how any of
this will play into the legend of the Founders, which I think will be
developed in Book 7, is anybody's guess.

JKR's fascination with Halloween, the night on which everything from
Voldemort's visit to Godric's Hollow ("Hallow/"Hollow" is coincidence,
IMO) to the execution of Nearly Headless Nick seems to happen is
harder to explain. However, from SS/PS onward, significant events
occur on that day (the Troll in the dungeons being the first), yet
Harry never seems to connect the day with his parents' death or have
any objection to celebrating it with the traditional bats and
pumpkins. Probably, she does so because of the association in her
readers' minds between witches and Halloween, much like the
association between witches and broomsticks that caused her to invent
Quidditch or witches and cauldrons that led to Potions class. (Witches
have been disassociated from child-eating hags and wizards are their
male equivalent, hence Harry, Dumbledore, Snape, et al. Or "wizards"
is a generic term relating to both witches and warlocks, as in "three
thirteen-year-old wizards," but I won't get into that.)

I have a feeling (though this won't come out in the books) that JKR
considers October 31 to be her own, and therefore Harry's, conception
date (she shares his birthday, July 31, and October 31 comes exactly
nine months before July 31 of the following year. For this reason, I
believe that the Prophecy occurred on October 31, 1979, activated, so
to speak, by Harry's conception, and precipitating all the events that
occurred afterwards, from Voldemort's visit to Godric's Hollow (though
it's by no means certain that the Potters died on October 31--they
could have died on All Hallows Day, November 1) to some climactic
incident in Book 7. (The final battle won't occur on that date, of
course. The books always end in June, and JKR will need the whole
year, or most of it, to get Harry to that point.)

All this is a longish aside because I don't think that "Hallows"
refers to Halloween or All Hallows Day at all. I think "the Deathly
Hallows" is a place, maybe the burial place of the "hallowed" Founders
(even, possibly, Slytherin, who after all still has a House named
after him).

So, I predict that something significant will occur on Halloween, but
I don't think that Samhain per se has anything to do with it, only the
connection between Halloween and JKR's witches and wizards (the
Potters, Harry included, in particular). Maybe Harry will visit
Godric's Hollow on Halloween and learn the truth about what happened
there, but IMO, that won't be the climax of the book, nor will it be
the location of the Deathly Hallows.

Carol, with apologies for this incoherent and very long post