Origins of Halloween in Medieval England: Samhain, Hallowtide and the Making of Halloween

Halloween is far older than pumpkins and trick-or-treating, but its history is more complicated than the familiar story suggests. Medieval All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day became intertwined with older seasonal customs, local folklore and changing ideas about death. From Samhain and Calan Gaeaf to soul cakes and turnip lanterns, the traditions behind Halloween reveal how Christianity, folklore and popular culture gradually created the festival we recognise today.

Key Facts

• Halloween is celebrated on 31 October, the eve of All Saints' Day.
• The name Halloween comes from All Hallows' Eve, meaning the evening before All Hallows or All Saints' Day.
• All Saints' Day falls on 1 November and honours the saints. All Souls' Day falls on 2 November and traditionally commemorates the faithful departed.
• Together, 31 October to 2 November became known as Hallowtide in medieval Christian tradition.
• Samhain was a major Gaelic seasonal festival associated with the beginning of winter, but Halloween cannot simply be described as Samhain renamed by Christianity.
• In Wales, Calan Gaeaf marked the beginning of winter and developed its own body of customs and folklore.
• Soul cakes were associated with All Souls' Day and souling. English evidence for them exists from around 1400, although the custom was apparently older.
• The traditional British and Irish Halloween lantern was made from turnips or other large root vegetables. Pumpkins became dominant later, particularly in North America.
• Modern Halloween costumes developed from several traditions, including guising, disguise, performance and popular entertainment. There is insufficient evidence to say that medieval people routinely dressed up specifically to fool evil spirits.
  

The crisp air of late October, the shortening days, candlelight in windows and the glow of a carved lantern have become inseparable from Halloween. It is tempting to imagine that these customs all belong to one ancient tradition handed down almost unchanged from the distant past. The real history is much more complicated, and considerably more interesting.

Halloween is not the survival of one festival with a single point of origin. Its history has been built in layers. Gaelic seasonal traditions such as Samhain form one important part of the wider story, while in Wales the beginning of winter was marked by Calan Gaeaf. Christian observances brought All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day into the calendar, and medieval communities developed their own customs around prayer, charity, remembrance, food, fire and folklore. Later centuries added disguises, lanterns, games, parties and eventually the commercial Halloween familiar today.

The result is a festival whose modern appearance can be misleading. Some customs are genuinely old, some are medieval, some were recorded only centuries later, and some are distinctly modern. The important question is therefore not simply "Where did Halloween come from?" but which traditions can actually be traced, when they appear in the evidence, and how they changed along the way.

Where Did Halloween Come From?

The easiest answer is also the least satisfactory: Halloween came from several places at once.

The name itself is straightforward. Halloween derives from All Hallows' Eve, the evening before All Saints' Day. "Hallow" is an old word for a holy person or saint, so All Hallows' Eve literally meant the eve of the feast celebrating all saints. The Christian calendar therefore provides the direct explanation for the name and for the date of 31 October.

But names do not tell the whole story. Long before modern Halloween parties appeared, the end of October and beginning of November were important seasonal turning points across Britain and Ireland. Winter was approaching, the agricultural year was changing and communities had good reason to think about death, scarcity, darkness and the uncertain months ahead.

Different cultures gave these seasonal changes their own meaning. The Gaelic festival of Samhain became particularly important in later explanations of Halloween, while Wales had its own tradition of Calan Gaeaf. Christianity then provided a different religious framework through All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day.

These traditions did not necessarily replace one another in a neat sequence. They overlapped, changed and acquired new meanings over centuries. That is why the history of Halloween is better understood as cultural layering than as a single unbroken line from an ancient pagan festival to the modern celebration.

English Heritage's historians likewise caution against the popular claim that Christians simply "stole" Halloween from Samhain, noting that much of the evidence for supposed pre-Christian Halloween practices comes from relatively late sources.

What Was Samhain?

Samhain is one of the most important traditions to understand when looking at Halloween's deeper history.

The festival is associated with Gaelic-speaking Ireland and Scotland and marked the transition into winter. It appears in early Irish literature and was associated with major seasonal gatherings. The date was therefore significant in practical as well as cultural terms: the harvest was largely complete, winter was beginning and communities were entering the more difficult half of the year.

The problem is that modern descriptions often go much further than the evidence allows. The idea of Samhain as a universal "festival of the dead" in which spirits routinely returned to the world of the living is much harder to establish as a direct description of pre-Christian practice. Some of the most confident versions of this story owe more to nineteenth- and twentieth-century folklore interpretation than to contemporary evidence.

That does not make Samhain irrelevant. It means we should distinguish between what the early sources actually tell us and the elaborate Halloween mythology that developed around them later.

Calan Gaeaf: The Welsh Beginning of Winter

England was not the only part of Britain with traditions surrounding the beginning of winter.

In Wales, Calan Gaeaf marked the first day of winter and developed its own customs, folklore and beliefs. The night before was Nos Galan Gaeaf, the Welsh equivalent of Halloween, and it became associated with supernatural stories, divination, fires and unusual behaviour.

Welsh folklore contains particularly vivid traditions surrounding this period. One of the best known is the gwrachod, groups associated in later accounts with disguises, masks, sheepskins and mischievous behaviour. Other traditions involved games of divination and beliefs about supernatural beings encountered at boundaries or dangerous places.

These customs should not simply be presented as medieval evidence. Much Welsh folklore was recorded by antiquarians and folklorists centuries after the Middle Ages, so the date at which a particular custom first appears in writing matters enormously.

Nevertheless, Calan Gaeaf is important because it demonstrates that Halloween history was never exclusively an Irish or English story. Wales developed its own seasonal traditions, and some survived in recognisable forms into relatively recent times.

The Christian Calendar Changes Everything

The Christian Church had its own traditions of remembering the dead long before the modern word Halloween appeared.

Christians had commemorated martyrs and saints from the early centuries of Christianity. All Saints' Day eventually developed into a major feast celebrating the wider community of saints, and in the eighth century Pope Gregory III dedicated a chapel in St Peter's Basilica to all the saints.

The feast became associated with 1 November, creating the date from which All Hallows' Eve takes its name. The exact development of the feast across Western Christianity was gradual, but by the medieval period All Saints' Day was a major occasion in the Christian calendar.

Then came All Souls' Day on 2 November. Its development is closely associated with the Benedictine abbey of Cluny and Abbot Odilo around the turn of the eleventh century. The feast spread through Western Christianity and became a major occasion for praying for the faithful departed.

This produced the three-day sequence that became Hallowtide:

31 October: All Hallows' Eve
1 November: All Saints' Day
2 November: All Souls' Day

The three days were related, but they were not interchangeable. All Saints' Day honoured the saints, while All Souls' Day focused upon the wider community of deceased Christians. English Heritage describes All Souls' as developing around the year 1000 and becoming closely associated with masses and prayers for souls believed to be undergoing purification in purgatory.

What Was Halloween Like in Medieval England?

Medieval Halloween would have looked remarkably different from the modern celebration.

There would have been no pumpkins glowing outside terraced houses, no bags of branded sweets and no horror films playing in the background. The religious calendar dominated the period, and All Saints' and All Souls' were serious occasions within medieval Christianity.

Church services, prayers and remembrance were central. Bells could be rung, masses celebrated and the names of the dead remembered. For a medieval Christian who believed in purgatory, praying for a deceased parent, spouse, child or neighbour was not merely an expression of affection. It could be understood as a spiritual duty.

The wider community could also become involved. Guilds remembered deceased members, wealthy families established chantries to support masses and individuals left provisions in their wills for prayers or charitable acts. The dead remained part of community life in ways that are difficult for modern people to appreciate.

This is why medieval Hallowtide should not be described simply as a "festival of the dead". It was a period in which Christian ideas about saints, salvation, death and remembrance became particularly prominent.

For a fuller examination of this subject, see our companion article Medieval Festivals of the Dead.

Soul Cakes and the Origins of Trick-or-Treating

Villagers receiving soul cakes during the medieval English tradition of souling

One of the most fascinating links between medieval Hallowtide and modern Halloween is souling.

Soul cakes were small cakes or breads associated with prayers for the dead. People could visit households and receive food or charity while offering prayers for deceased members of the family. The custom created a practical exchange between rich and poor, while also reinforcing the religious importance of remembering the dead.

The evidence is older than the current article previously suggested. Soul cakes are recorded in England from around 1400, when John Mirk of Lilleshall Abbey in Shropshire described a custom of baking bread on All Hallows' Day and distributing it for the souls of Christians. English Heritage notes that the custom was apparently already old by the time Mirk recorded it.

It is tempting to call this "medieval trick-or-treating", but that is only partly accurate. The house-to-house structure is strikingly similar, yet souling had a religious purpose. The person receiving the cake was expected to pray for the dead, rather than simply receiving sweets because they had knocked on the door.

Over subsequent centuries, the religious meaning weakened in some communities while the underlying custom of visiting houses and receiving food survived. That process helps explain how something resembling modern trick-or-treating could emerge without requiring us to pretend that medieval children were already playing Halloween exactly as they do today.

For the food, customs and seasonal traditions themselves, see Medieval Halloween Food and Festivities.

Did Medieval People Believe the Dead Walked on Halloween?

Later folklore contains many traditions concerning restless spirits, supernatural processions and the return of the dead. Some of these beliefs may preserve genuinely old ideas, but many were written down by antiquarians and folklorists long after the medieval period.

The distinction matters. A belief being associated with Halloween in nineteenth-century folklore does not automatically make it a medieval Halloween belief.

What we can say with considerably greater confidence is that the Christian festivals around this date placed enormous emphasis on the dead. All Souls' Day specifically encouraged the living to remember and pray for deceased Christians, making death central to the season even without requiring a literal army of ghosts roaming the countryside.

Fire, Light and Halloween

Fire has become one of Halloween's most recognisable images, from bonfires to candles inside carved lanterns.

Fire also had obvious practical importance as autumn turned into winter. Medieval communities depended upon it for warmth, cooking and light, while churches used candles extensively during religious ceremonies. The darker evenings of late October naturally made light more conspicuous.

Later British and Irish folklore provides extensive evidence for Halloween fires and their protective or supernatural associations. But the idea that medieval England had a single, standard Halloween bonfire ritual designed to keep spirits away is much harder to establish.

This is another area where the modern story can become more certain than the evidence. Some traditions are clearly old, but the exact meaning attached to them changed between regions and periods.

The modern lantern has an equally complicated history. In Britain and Ireland, turnips and other large root vegetables were traditionally hollowed out and illuminated, while pumpkins became strongly associated with Halloween in North America. English Heritage places the documented English tradition of turnip or mangelwurzel lanterns in the nineteenth century.

So the pumpkin is not an ancient Celtic Halloween symbol. It is a later development that eventually became so successful that it reshaped the visual identity of the festival.

Halloween Costumes: Did People Dress Up to Fool Spirits?

Costumes are another part of Halloween history that is often given a neat origin story.

The popular explanation is that ancient people disguised themselves as spirits so that supernatural beings would not recognise them. It is an attractive story, but the evidence does not allow us to present it as established fact.

Disguise and performance certainly have long histories in Britain and Ireland. Medieval festivals included mumming, masking, performance and forms of social misrule, while later traditions such as Scottish and Irish guising involved people dressing up, visiting houses and performing for food or gifts.

Welsh villagers observing Nos Galan Gaeaf in a rural Welsh landscape 

Wales also developed traditions involving disguises and unusual clothing around Nos Galan Gaeaf. These customs provide important evidence for the eventual development of Halloween disguise, but they do not prove that medieval people wore costumes as a supernatural protective device.

Modern Halloween costumes are the product of several traditions coming together. Performance, disguise, guising, folklore, children's entertainment and commercial culture all contributed to the form we know today.

We examine this in greater detail in The Origins of Halloween Costumes.

Medieval Superstitions and Halloween Legends

Alongside official Christian observance existed a much less orderly world of popular belief.

People worried about omens, witches, ghosts, fairies and other supernatural forces. Certain places could acquire reputations as dangerous or uncanny, particularly crossroads, churchyards, boundaries and isolated stretches of countryside.

But again, chronology matters. Some beliefs that are now described as "medieval Halloween superstitions" are actually documented much later.

The same problem affects claims about salt, iron, bells and other protective objects. Iron certainly has a long history of supernatural associations, while bells had important religious and protective symbolism. Yet it would be misleading to suggest that every later folk practice was a standard medieval Halloween ritual.

The real medieval world was stranger than the simplified version, not less so. People could simultaneously participate in formal Christian worship, believe in saints and miracles, fear witchcraft and tell stories about supernatural creatures. These were not necessarily separate categories in the medieval imagination.

Our companion article Medieval Superstitions and Halloween Legends looks at these beliefs in greater detail.

Why Halloween Became a Festival of Witches and Ghosts

The modern association between Halloween and witches is relatively recent compared with the history of witchcraft itself.

Medieval Europeans certainly believed in magic and supernatural wrongdoing, and accusations of harmful magic could be serious. But the modern image of the witch as a standard Halloween character was created through a much longer cultural process.

The witch became increasingly associated with Halloween through later literature, folklore, illustration, theatre, film and popular culture. Ghosts and skeletons underwent a similar transformation. Death, which had once been a serious religious reality, gradually became something that could be represented through entertainment and playful fright.

That transformation is one of the reasons modern Halloween feels so different from medieval Hallowtide. The medieval festivals encouraged people to pray for the dead. Modern Halloween encourages people to dress as them.

What Did the Reformation Do to Halloween?

The sixteenth-century Reformation changed the religious meaning of Hallowtide in England.

Protestant reformers rejected the Catholic doctrine of purgatory and therefore rejected the idea that masses and prayers performed by the living could assist souls after death. The system surrounding prayer for the dead was dismantled.

Chantries were abolished in 1547, removing institutions specifically established to support prayers and masses for deceased benefactors. All Souls' Day was also removed from the official Church of England calendar in the early Protestant settlement, including its omission from the 1549 Book of Common Prayer.

This did not mean that every Halloween custom disappeared overnight. Popular traditions were much harder to eliminate than official religious observances. Souling survived in parts of England, seasonal games continued and local beliefs about the supernatural remained deeply embedded in communities.

In fact, the later history of Halloween is partly a story about what happened when customs survived after the religious framework that had once explained them had changed.

From Hallowtide to Halloween

Over the centuries, the balance between religion, folklore and entertainment shifted.

All Saints' and All Souls' remained important in Catholic communities, while some customs associated with the season continued in Protestant areas despite their altered religious context. Regional traditions developed differently across England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, and practices such as souling and guising survived in various forms.

During the nineteenth century, antiquarians and folklorists began recording many of these traditions. This period is particularly important because it preserved customs that might otherwise have disappeared, but it also created a new problem for historians: traditions recorded in the nineteenth century were sometimes interpreted as direct survivals from an ancient pagan past without sufficient evidence.

The Victorian fascination with folklore helped shape the story we tell about Halloween today. Ancient, medieval and relatively recent customs became woven together into a single narrative.

That narrative was then exported and transformed.

How America Changed Halloween

Halloween became particularly important in North America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, where British and Irish traditions were adapted to a new cultural environment.

Guising, seasonal games, disguises and house-to-house customs contributed to the development of modern trick-or-treating. Turnip lanterns encountered the pumpkin, a much larger and easier-to-carve North American crop. Children's parties and organised entertainment helped turn Halloween into a more secular festival.

The result eventually travelled back across the Atlantic.

The pumpkin that now seems inseparable from British Halloween is therefore part of a relatively recent cultural exchange. The same is true of many commercial costumes, sweets and decorations that dominate modern celebrations.

Halloween became global, but its underlying ingredients remained remarkably British, Irish, Gaelic, Christian and folkloric.

So, Is Halloween Pagan or Christian?

The historical answer is that the question itself is too narrow.

Halloween has an unmistakably Christian name and direct connection to the Christian feast of All Saints. All Souls' Day created an important medieval framework for remembrance of the dead, prayer and charity. At the same time, Halloween developed within a wider seasonal landscape that included older traditions such as Samhain and Calan Gaeaf.

Later folklore added supernatural stories, divination, disguises and seasonal customs. Modern popular culture added pumpkins, horror imagery, commercial costumes and trick-or-treating.

Trying to classify the entire festival as either "pagan" or "Christian" therefore misses how cultural traditions actually develop.

Festivals change because people change them. A religious feast can acquire local customs. A seasonal tradition can be absorbed into a new religious calendar. A charitable practice can become entertainment. A turnip lantern can become a pumpkin. A solemn commemoration of the dead can become an evening of horror films and sweets.

Halloween is the accumulated result.

The Real Origins of Halloween

The origins of Halloween are not found in one ancient ceremony, one medieval invention or one moment when the Church supposedly renamed a pagan festival.

They are found in the interaction between several traditions.

Samhain provides an important Gaelic seasonal context, particularly around the beginning of winter. Calan Gaeaf demonstrates that Wales had its own traditions surrounding the same seasonal turning point. Christianity created All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, establishing the Hallowtide period that gave Halloween its name and provided a powerful religious framework for remembering the dead.

Medieval communities then made the season their own. They prayed for deceased relatives, attended services, gave charity, distributed soul cakes, rang church bells and maintained local customs. Some people told supernatural stories, played games or took part in seasonal misrule.

Later generations changed the emphasis again. Religious observance declined in many communities, folklore became increasingly important, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century popular culture turned Halloween into the festival of costumes, lanterns, ghosts and witches that we recognise today.

The history is therefore not a straight line from Samhain to Halloween. It is a series of overlapping traditions, each leaving something behind.

That is what makes Halloween's history worth investigating.

People Also Ask

Where did Halloween come from?

Halloween developed from several overlapping traditions rather than one single source. Its name comes directly from All Hallows' Eve, the evening before All Saints' Day, while All Souls' Day added a strong medieval focus on remembrance of the dead. Gaelic seasonal traditions such as Samhain and Welsh Calan Gaeaf form part of the wider cultural background, while later folklore and popular culture shaped the Halloween we know today.

Was Halloween celebrated in medieval England?

Yes, although medieval Halloween looked very different from the modern festival. Medieval England observed All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day as part of Hallowtide, with church services, prayers for the dead, charitable giving and customs such as souling. Modern costumes, pumpkins and trick-or-treating developed much later.

Is Halloween really based on Samhain?

Samhain is an important part of Halloween's wider history, particularly in Gaelic tradition, but it is too simplistic to say that Halloween is simply Samhain renamed by the Christian Church. All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day have their own documented Christian histories, while many customs now associated with Samhain were recorded much later than the period in which they supposedly originated.

What is the difference between Halloween and All Saints' Day?

Halloween is the modern name derived from All Hallows' Eve, 31 October, the evening before All Saints' Day on 1 November. All Saints' Day honours the saints, while Halloween originally functioned as the vigil or eve of that major Christian feast.

What is All Souls' Day?

All Souls' Day is 2 November and traditionally commemorates the faithful departed. In medieval Catholic Christianity it became closely associated with prayers and masses for souls believed to require purification in purgatory. The feast developed in the Christian West around the turn of the eleventh century and spread widely through Europe.

What were soul cakes?

Soul cakes were small cakes or breads associated with All Souls' Day and the practice of souling. People could receive them as charity in return for prayers for deceased members of a household. English evidence for soul cakes dates from around 1400, although the custom was apparently older by then.

Was souling the same as trick-or-treating?

Not exactly. Souling involved visiting households to receive food or charity while offering prayers for the dead. It shares the house-to-house structure of modern trick-or-treating, but its original purpose was religious and charitable rather than recreational.

Did medieval people wear Halloween costumes?

There is evidence for medieval masking, disguise, performance and festive misrule, but there is limited evidence for a specifically medieval Halloween costume tradition. Later Scottish and Irish guising and Welsh customs involving disguise became important influences on modern Halloween, but the popular claim that costumes were originally designed to fool evil spirits should not be treated as established fact.

Why do we carve pumpkins at Halloween?

Pumpkins are a relatively recent addition to Halloween. Britain and Ireland had traditions of carving turnips and other large root vegetables into lanterns, while pumpkins became strongly associated with Halloween in North America. The pumpkin tradition subsequently spread back to Britain and became the dominant form of Halloween lantern.

Did medieval people believe ghosts walked the earth on Halloween?

Medieval people certainly believed in ghosts, demons, saints and supernatural encounters, but there is not enough evidence to claim that medieval England had a universal belief that the dead physically returned on Halloween night. Much of the familiar "wandering dead" Halloween folklore was recorded in later periods.

When did Halloween become a modern festival?

The transformation happened gradually. Older religious and seasonal customs survived and changed, while nineteenth-century folklore recording, migration to North America, children's entertainment and twentieth-century commercial culture helped create modern Halloween. There was no single date when medieval Hallowtide suddenly became the Halloween celebrated today.

Read Next

• Medieval Festivals of the Dead What did medieval people actually do during All Hallows' Eve, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day? From prayer and masses to soul cakes, guilds and chantries, this article examines the medieval culture of remembering the dead.
• Medieval Halloween Food and Festivities Soul cakes, seasonal food, apple games and the traditions surrounding medieval Hallowtide. Find out what people actually ate and how later Halloween customs developed.
• The Origins of Halloween Costumes Where did Halloween costumes really come from? Follow the history of masking, disguise, mumming, guising and Welsh traditions without relying on the familiar but poorly supported story about disguising yourself to fool spirits.
• Medieval Superstitions and Halloween Legends Ghosts, witches, fairies, protective objects, church bells and dangerous places all feature in the medieval supernatural imagination. This article separates documented medieval beliefs from later Halloween folklore.
• Witchcraft in the Middle Ages Halloween's modern witch imagery owes much to later centuries, but medieval Europe had its own complicated beliefs about magic, harmful supernatural practices and witchcraft.
• Myths and Legends of Wales: Witch Trials, Fairy Belief and the Tylwyth Teg Explore the Welsh supernatural world, including witchcraft, fairy belief and the Tylwyth Teg, and see how Welsh folklore complicates the familiar story of Halloween.

The Halloween History Hub

This article is the starting point for our Medieval Magic series. Rather than treating Halloween as a single tradition with a convenient origin story, the articles below examine the individual strands and the evidence behind them.

The further you follow the trail, the less tidy the story becomes. That is usually a good sign in history.

Regular podcasts by Histories and Castles to help you get a deep dive understanding of histories events and figures.