October Bank Holiday
October Bank Holiday
More and more countries celebrate Halloween. This popular holiday has most probably evolved from the Gaelic Samhain festival and is attributed to the Irish. That is why in Ireland, the weekend falling on the last Monday of the month is sometimes called “Halloween Holiday”. In the Irish language it is named “Lá Saoire Oíche Shamhna”, or “Lá Saoire i mí Dheireadh Fómhair”, which simply means October Bank Holiday. It marks the unofficial start of the cold season. Most often it occurs one day after the end of Western European Summer Time. In the Catholic Church, October 31 used to be known as the day preceding All Saints’ Day - the All Hallow’s Eve - which is where the name “Halloween” originated from.
Samhain was probably the Celtic New Year’s Eve; it marked the transition between two cycles, which incidentally was the best time to blur the border between the world of the living and the dead. This is the reason why celebrations based on Samhain include wearing scary costumes (warding off evil spirits), visiting graveyards and creating Jack O’Lanterns (a symbol of the cursed Jack who colluded with the devil). In Ireland the lanterns used to be made out of turnip, but Irish immigrants in America had easy access only to pumpkin, which is why the latter vegetable became an icon of the holiday.
October 31 All Hallow’s Eve was introduced into the Christian calendar in the 8th century by Pope Gregory III, but the holiday has been highly syncreticized with the ancient pagan rituals. The October Holiday came to existence only twelve centuries later, in the Holidays (Employees) Act, 1973 (Public Holiday) Regulations, 1977; it became observed on a moveable last Monday of the month.
There are many Halloween traditions that the world adopted from the Irish, such as the above mentioned costumes and lanterns. The customs more typical for Ireland are giant bonfires, based on the Samhain festivities, and the specific cuisine. Apart from various turnip and pumpkin treats, there are foods such as colcannon, a meal consisting of curly kale, coiled potatoes and raw onion, or the barnbrack, which is a fruit cake with divinatory items inside. The prophetic items that someone may find in his or her piece of dessert include: the rag - meaning an unclear financial future, the coin - predicting a successful period, the ring - meaning a close romantic relationship, and the thimble, which tells that the person will never marry. Nevertheless, Halloween is not the only tradition characteristic for the October Holiday. There is also the Dublin marathon, family trips, Irish folk concerts, and various art, food and fashion festivals.
October Bank Holiday is mostly celebrated by the workers as a paid day off, though many shops and pubs are open. It is a public holiday in Ireland, hence employees must be compensated financially (or otherwise) for the work on a national free day. Although there is ac lot going on in Ireland during that weekend, the most conspicuous tradition is still Halloween; it is not frequent, however, for the holiday to fall on October 31. That is why Ireland often celebrates separate Halloween, only naming the weekend in October a “Halloween Holiday”. It honors the increasingly prominent tradition, which, similarly to St. Patrick’s Day, originated in Ireland, and thanks to the United States has spread throughout the world.