What is Halloween's Predecessor Samhain?

Before Halloween became Big Candy’s largest revenue stream, the holiday originated with Samhain, a pagan Celtic festival. Samhain was the most important of the four annual fire festivals, held on the midpoint of the fall equinox and the winter solstice.

Traditionally, households in a community would let their hearth fires die out overnight at the beginning of the three-day festival. The community leader would light a communal fire with a ceremonial tool shaped like a wheel that represented the sun, and each household would relight their hearth fires from the communal fire.

Similar practices are continued today, with a focus on honoring the dead and the thinning of the barrier between them and the living — thus the scarier aspects of Halloween. Samhain is a celebration of the end of the harvest season, a way to honor death as part of the cycle of life, and the ceremonial beginning of the harsh winter season — or the dark half of the year.

Among people who celebrate Samhain today, Halloween is considered to have originated with the spiritual Celtic holiday, but is now an entirely separate folk holiday.

In Boise, a group called the Idaho Aetheopagans regularly celebrates the annual fire festivals. If you’re interested in tapping into this aspect of the season, check out their Facebook group.