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On the eve of Blotmonath, the month of animal sacrifice

In northern Europe, Halloween occurs when the days are rapidly shortening, the first frosts harden the earth, and the trees undress to reveal their skeletons. But there have long been comparable celebrations at this time of year - in Ireland Samhain, in Wales Nos Calan Gaeaf, and in Scandinavia ‘Winter Nights’. These festivals, like many folk celebrations, occur at a time of transition. In early autumn, the hard work of the harvest season is over, and food is plentiful. But November ushers in the most deadly season, the coming Winter months when food will be scarcest and the nights coldest. For this reason, this time of year has taken on associations with evil spirits.

The origin of modern halloween is in the eve of the Christian feast of All Hallows, celebrated on 1 November, when Christian saints are commemorated. This feast has its origins in ninth-century England. It is often said that All Hallows was a Christian appropriation of earlier Celtic festivals of the dead. However, folklore historian Ronald Hutton has been careful to stress that there is no evidence that earlier Celtic celebrations had any association with the dead until Christianity’s involvement.

The earlier antecedent of this November festival is not concerned with the dead, so much as the act of killing. The eighth-century Northumbrian monk Bede tells us that to the pre-Christian English, November was known as ‘Blotmonath’, when the cattle were slaughtered and dedicated to the pagan gods.

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