Halloween Traditions

Around the UK, the celebration of Halloween, or Samhain in its original form, was a highly localised business, and nothing like the highly commercial venture that it has been turned into today.

In Lancashire, 'Lating' was an important Halloween custom. Lating was an abbreviation for ‘lighting the witches’ and in it, people walked around outside, from eleven until midnight, carrying candles. If the candles burned steadily throughout the hour, the person carrying them was safe from witches for the winter, but if the witches blew them out, the omen was bad indeed and would need the protection of the Church.

In many areas of the north of England, Halloween was known as Nut-crack Night. Nuts were placed on the grate or in the embers of a bonfire and, according to their behaviour in the flames, faithfulness of a sweetheart or the success or failure of marriages could be predicted

Halloween was also sometimes called Snap Apple Night. Snap apple was a game where apples were suspended on a long piece of string. Contestants had to bite the apple without using their hands. A variation of the game was to fix an apple and a lighted candle at opposite ends of a stick suspended horizontally and to swing the stick round. The object was to catch the apple between the teeth while avoiding the candle.

Another tradition from which many Halloween have descended is a ninth century European custom, called Souling. In this Christian festival people would make pilgrimages from house to house, begging for soul cakes. It was believed that strangers could help a soul's journey to heaven by saying prayers, so, in exchange for a cake they pledged, throughout the year, to pray for the deceased relatives of the householder ss we all wander around the supermarket, prodding pumpkins and buying skeleton costumes for 31 October, it might be a good point to reflect on the origins of Halloween.

Halloween Traditions

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