The ancient Irish get way too much credit for Halloween

By Lisa Bitel, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences The Celtic festival of Samhain celebrates a time of year when the division between Earth and the otherworld collapses, allowing spirits to pass through. Matt Cardy/Getty Images This time of year, I often run across articles proclaiming Halloween a modern form of the pagan Irish holiday of Samhain – pronounced SAW-en. But as a historian of Ireland and its medieval literature, I can tell you: Samhain is Irish. Halloween isn’t. The Irish often get credit – or blame – for the bonfires, pranksters, witches, jack-o’-lanterns and beggars who wander from house to house, threatening tricks and soliciting treats. The first professional 19th-century folklorists were the ones who created a through line from Samhain to Halloween. Oxford University’s John Rhys and James Frazer of the University of Cambridge were keen to find the origins of their national cultures. They observed lingering customs in rural areas of Britain and Ireland and searched medieval texts for evidence that these practices and beliefs had ancient pagan roots. They mixed stories of magic and paganism with harvest festivals and whispers of human sacrifice, and you can still find echoes of their outdated theories on...