Samhain or Halloween? The “ancient Celtic year” in Contemporary Children’s Fantasy – Dr Dimitra Fimi

Facts from the original

• Tochmarc Emire has Emer demand Cúchulainn stay sleepless from Samain to Imbolc, Imbolc to Beltine, and Beltine to Brón Trogain.
• Four quarter-days: Samhain (31 October/1 November), Imbolc (1 February), Beltaine (1 May), Lughnasadh (1 August).
• Samhain and Beltaine figure far more prominently in Irish sources than the other two festivals.
• Samhain is often claimed as the pagan origin of modern Halloween, retaining pre-Christian Celtic elements.
• Samhain was agriculturally significant: end of summer, start of winter, livestock returning, perishable food consumed at feasts.
• Ronald Hutton argues legendary feasts simply give characters time for adventures, as with Arthurian Christmas or Pentecost assemblies.
• Liminality (Van Gennep, Turner) suits Samhain as a seasonal transition, but liminal rites are common across many cultures, not uniquely Celtic.
• The festival-of-the-dead idea rests on 'working backwards', assuming All Saints and All Souls replaced a pagan feast.
• Sir James Frazer's The Golden Bough (1906-15) supported this pagan-survival idea.
• Margaret Murray's 'Old Religion' theory reinforced the notion of a pre-Christian nature religion supplanted by Christianity.
• All Saints had no fixed date until the 9th century, when it was set on 1 November, followed by All Souls.
• The 1 November date was established in Germanic dioceses of northern Europe, not in Ireland or any Celtic region.
• There is no evidence that Irish Samhain was 'taken over' by Christianity.
• Sir John Rhys first called Samhain the 'Celtic New Year' in Celtic Folklore (1901), using flimsy late-19th/early-20th-century Isle of Man folklore.
• The Tochmarc Emire order, beginning with Samhain, may have encouraged the New Year identification.
• There is no evidence the New Year began on 1 November in pagan Ireland or any Celtic region.
• The Coligny Calendar, the only pre-Christian Celtic calendar, from 2nd-century Gaul, seems to begin the year in summer; it survives only in fragments.
• 'Celtic' is problematic: the term was applied by classical commentators, never by the peoples themselves.
• Archaeology does not support mass migration of continental Celts to Britain and Ireland.
• Medieval Irish and Welsh did not see themselves as sharing ancestry or cultural heritage.
• Popular 'Celtic' identity and 'Celtic literature' were products of early modern and Romantic periods, often tied to national epics or forgeries.
• Recent scholarship questions the validity of the terms 'Celt' and 'Celtic' themselves.
• Welsh Nos Calan Gaeaf (Winter's Eve) on the same date lacks Samhain's significance; Welsh tales place magic on 1 May or May Eve (Calan Mai).
• Davis notes Samhain customs depend exclusively on Irish material and are not attested in early Welsh or Scottish sources except areas of heavy Irish migration.
• Fimi's monograph examined children's fantasy from the 1960s to 2010s adapting medieval Irish and Welsh narratives.
• Fimi uses 'Celticity' (Löffler) and 'Celticism' (Leerssen) as analytical terms.
• Mary Tannen's Finn novels: The Wizard Children of Finn (1981) and The Lost Legend of Finn (1982).
• Jenny Nimmo's Magician Trilogy: The Snow Spider (1986), Emlyn's Moon (1987), The Chestnut Soldier (1989).
• Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising Sequence: Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), The Dark is Rising (1973), Greenwitch (1974), The Grey King (1975), Silver on the Tree (1977).
• Henry Neff's The Tapestry: The Hound of Rowan (2007), The Second Siege (2008), The Fiend and the Forge (2010), The Maelstrom (2012), The Red Winter (2014).
• In Tannen's Finn novels, Fiona and Bran time-travel to mythical Ireland; the four quarter-days are 'magic nights'.
• Finn measures age by quarter-days, saying he will have passed through Lugnasad seventeen times.
• Beltaine is described as building big fires and driving cattle between them, greeting the sun, washing in dew, and bringing rowan branches indoors.
• Driving cattle between two fires at Beltaine is recorded in the 10th-century Sanas Chormaic ('Cormac's Glossary').
• Rowan branches and morning dew at Beltaine are later folklore from the Isle of Man and Scotland.
• Tannen retells Finn's heroic journey following Lady Gregory's Gods and Fighting Men (1904).
• Finn defeats the fire-breathing Aillen, who burns Temhair every Samhain.
• The Aillen story is narrated in the 12th-century Acallam na Senórach ('Dialogue of the old men').
• In Jenny Nimmo's trilogy, the term 'Samhain' never appears, nor the Welsh 'Calan Gaeaf'.
• Gwyn is born on Halloween; his Nain calls it All Hallows Day, the beginning of the Celtic New Year, and says his power comes once every seven generations.
• Bethan disappears the night after Halloween; a ghostly double returns via Gwyn's magic.
• The Snow Spider mentions a pumpkin jack-o'-lantern on the windowsill, rather than native turnips.
• In The Chestnut Soldier, Gwyn notes Halloween is appropriate for merging with Gwydion and exorcising Efnisien from Evan Llyr.
• Davis links Halloween bonfires to Christian iconography, especially purgatory and cleansing by fire.
• Frazer claimed Halloween was a fire-festival; Charles Hardwick extended this to all four quarter-days as pan-Celtic 'fire-festivals'.
• Susan Cooper's Sequence uses a looser 'Old Religion' calendar like Margaret Murray's and Robert Graves's The White Goddess (1952).
• Murray's list: May Eve/Roodmas/Walpurgis-Nacht, November Eve/All hallow Eve, Candlemas, Gule of August/Lammas, plus Beltane and Yule.
• Graves lists Candlemas, Lady Day, May Day, Midsummer Day, Lammas, Michaelmas, All-Hallowe'en, Christmas; adds Samhain for All Souls' Eve and 'Lugh nasadh' for Lammas.
• Cooper's manuscript plan: Over Sea, Under Stone (Summer Lammas? Aug 2), The Gift of Gramarye/Mid-winter, Greenwitch (May Eve), Fire on the Mountain/Hallowe'en, final book Midsummer.
• Cooper wanted 'Fire on the Mountain' as the fourth title but it had been used for a collection of Ethiopian folktales.
• In The Dark is Rising, Will is told to speak to the fire, mentioning yellow fire lit on beacon hills for Beltane and Hallowe'en.
• In Greenwitch, the Grail prophecy mentions 'the day of the dead, when the year too dies'.
• Bran describes Welsh Halloween as Calan Gaeaf, meaning the first day of winter.
• Bran mentions sitting in the church porch till midnight on Halloween to hear names of those who will die in the next year.
• Marie Trevelyan's Folk-lore and folk-stories of Wales (1909) records the church porch death-procession belief.
• In Silver on the Tree, Bran says he met Will last Calan Gaeaf, last Samain, treating the names as interchangeable.
• In Neff's Tapestry, Max uses body amplification on All Hallows Eve, called Samhain in later books.
• In The Second Siege, Max and David fly to the Sidh on Christmas Eve; in The Fiend and the Forge they attack Astaroth on Walpurgisnacht.
• In The Red Winter, Astaroth tries to open a portal on Imbolc; Max departs for the Sidh on Midsummer.
• Neff's Samhain Feast is officially so named in memory of Solas, but residents call it Halloween, All Saint's Day, Día de los Muertos, Dia de Finados or Feralia.
• Feralia was a Roman festival of the dead held in February, not October-November.
• In the Sidh, Max builds bonfires for Beltaine, attends Samhain (feasting in Hearth Hall, songs in Summervyne) and Imbolc, a day for feasting and celebrating spring.
• Lughnasadh is the one Irish festival not used in The Tapestry.
• Neff chose Midsummer for Max's departure because it is commonly linked with faeries and magic, though Lughnasadh would have suited the son of Lugh Lámhfhada.
• Fimi notes fantasy writing is not research; artistic choices rest on aesthetics, not authenticity.
• All Saints is also All Hallows' Day or Hallowmas, so All Hallows Eve became Hallowe'en.
• The 1 November date was resisted for over a generation in Ireland, where the Church preferred 20 April.
• In Culhwch ac Olwen, Gwyn son of Nudd and Gwythyr son of Greidol fight for Creiddylad every May day until Judgement Day.
• The reference to 'Brón Trogain' in Tochmarc Emire is unusual; most Irish texts use Lughnasadh.