Spooky Samhain - The History of Halloween In Ireland

New subscriber, I learned something today. You are also adorable :)

Best Witch Ever!

In the US it’s about the candy , the costume and scaring the sh$t out of each other. But it’s really about the candy 🍬

Serious Christians have turned Halloween into the safer “Fall festival” and discourage dressing as witches and ghosts and spirits.

And it was much easier to carve a pumpkin than a turnip. Thank you Ireland for Halloween! It's my my fav holiday.!

O'sin was from the Fiona LOL

@ clisare do the Irish In still go to church and celebrate all hallowseve or was that something they did way back.Just curious

"... and they didn't fight in the winter ... because it was too cold." .... LOL LOL That's so Irish. Why fight when the bed is so comfy?

Really interesting! I did know that halloween originated in Ireland though. I’ve heard that Jack-o-lanterns were originally called Jack O’lanterns and were carved out of turnips to ward off evil spirits and when the Irish came to North America it got switched to pumpkins. I don’t know if that’s true, I’m just a swede (like the turnip, haha) who is bad at history.

Thank you so much for the education of Halloween. I really enjoyed it.

thank you so much for Halloween Ireland and thanks for sharing the history Clare happy Samhain 💙

What a cool story! I learned a lot today, thanks Clare for sharing! I know it’s an old video but I still enjoyed it.

Thank you Claire for this, i didn't know it was specifically from Irland but i did absolutely know that it was Samhain, and like so many other holidays the Christians tried to make it their own, but it is great to hear the more defined beginning

What a beautiful witch. Lol.

Ireland carved turnips for Halloween and brought that tradition to America when they emigrated there and then in America pumpkins were readily available so it was easier to carve pumpkins, so technically us Irish did kinda invent pumpkin carving

My favorite holiday, and my favorite time of the year. The ber months...September, October, November, December.

Thank you🎃

I was born on Halloween

Do you speak Gaelic fluent?

Honestly, I’m kinda pissed off that people are spreading around this common misconception without fact checking it, I know it’s easy to believe misconceptions but literally no one fact checked it, not a single person decide to fact check it. No, Halloween/Samhain has nothing to do with Christianity

I'm a Pagan so I knew some of this, a lot of modern Pagan holidays come from Ireland. I've always deeply admired the Irish for how they've managed to stay relatively more connected to their Pagan traditions 😁 As much as Christianity tried to either appropriate or abolish Pagan traditions, it's woven into every day life to this day

Excellent

So interesting, Good storytelling comes from Celtic folklore. Ireland, Scotland, Gales, and England cultures come from roots Celtic paganism. Halloween in US have mainly Irish origin

Growing up in ireland in the 70s and 80s I never saw a pumpkin. It was from memory about the early to mid 90s that they started to become popular in ireland. That also seemed to coincide around that time with trick or treaters getting more in the way of candy etc rather then fruit and nuts etc. So it could be said that in the early to mid 90s in ireland that halloween became more americanised.

I know som Christian’s that DO NOT like Halloween. They preach that it is a holiday to celebrate the Devil 😂

Very interesting! To be fair some kinds of Christians in American boycott Halloween because of its Pagan Roots 🎃 others celebrate “All Hallows Eve” which is basically the Christianized version of Halloween.

It seems a reasonable claim that the festival is a harvest one, associated with death and the "other world" mainly because of the slaughtering of livestock that people didn't want to feed over winter, and as a consequence the abundance of feasting food to be shared around so it doesn't spoil.

I love your canines.

No here in america everyone dresses like whores that's what it has become

I'm in LOVE!

Gaelic Ireland, which provided the island of Ireland with a unified culture and laws extending to almost 1,600 years, did not identify as Celts (Keltoi) and there is zero evidence the Keltoi ever settled in Ireland from their bases in France, Austria and Germany. So what's all this Celtic malarkey?

Think it meabs winters end

Summers end 🤣🤣 sorry .

Love this!

They didn't fight in the winter as it was too cold....what you get when you fight naked!

About bonfires...Texas A&M used to have a legendary 54' bonfire before playing the arch rival Texas Longhorns... animal bones into the fire...

It's my understanding that gourd carving actually came from Ireland.
"It was believed that during Samhain the spirits of the dead would travel from house to house, seeking hospitality. To attract these good spirits, Irish households would carve lanterns from gourds and place them near their houses along with offerings to the spirits. And to frighten away evil spirits, they would carve ghoulish faces into these lamps."

Pagan shouldn't really be associated with evil. That's just what the Christians think because it wasn't their religion. It was a rich tradition of culture and beliefs. Funny how despite their best efforts, many Pagan holidays and traditions are incorporated into modern day Christian holidays.

in USA a lot of Christian fundamentalists do not like Halloween. They think it is a celebration of satan or something dumb like that. (Christianity typically and literally demonizes anything that isn't Christian. sigh) Also a question: does bonfire tradition of Halloween tie in with bonfire night in England (where they burn Guy Fawkes and the pope in effigy)? It also seems like a holdover of the pagan times to me. i am especially thinking of how it is depicted in Thomas Hardy's novel, The Return of the Native where he strongly references the pagan roots of the bonfire (and other) traditions of the native people of the heath.

Neither did I,! so i like to say thank you very much for letting me know😮😊❤

The Irish have been carving turnips for a very long time. When the Irish got to America, they found that carving pumpkins was so much easier.

Fhere’s a story of Jack o lantern who tricked rrhe devil twice and was excuses from his afterlife in hell.

What a great video !! Fun and informative.

She failed to mention the ritual of the bonfire was burning all the criminals to cleanse the town as an offering to their gods.

In 18th century America kids actually carved lamps out of gourds and pumpkins. They were called "Bogey lanterns". That's were the "Boogeyman" or "Bogey Man" comes from. The story of the headless horseman that had a Bogey lantern looking for his head in the night comes from New England.

There are definitely lots of Christians who reject Halloween traditions and keep kids back from trick-or-treating in Canada and the USA. I'm not 100% sure if conservative Catholics here are as prone to preach against Halloween as I know various Protestant groups are, but I think it goes along with conservatism and being impulsively afraid of exposing kids to the Harry Potter books. People who really practice Wiccan spirituality and tradition are usually more accepting, even as they object to varying degrees to the villainization of caricatured "witches" that goes along with it.

Your deep dives are addictive! Great channel and content. 😀

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