Halloween in Dark Ages Britain

For today’s Feature Friday, writer L.A. Smith brings us back to the British Isles in the 7th century to look at the various Hallowe’en type festivals. This is a great read!

the traveller's path

Next weekend is Halloween, so probably this post fits a little better there, but it’s also the end of the month which is when I have my regularly scheduled Year of Reading Lewis series. So, I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon early and give you a little peek into how the people in 7th century Britain (Northumbria, to be exact) celebrated Halloween.*

For starters, they didn’t. The term “Halloween” came along much later. But they did have a significant celebration at the end of October. And by “they”, I have to separate out the various people-groups who were living in Northumbria at the time: the Celts, the Anglo-Saxon pagans, and the Christians.

The Celts – we’ll start with these, as their festival is the one most often linked to our Halloween. It is called various names by the Celts – by the Irish, Oiche Shamna (summer’s end), the Welsh,

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