Halloween in Australia

Australia has had an historically difficult relationship with the festival of Halloween, which can trace its origins back to the Celtic ritual of Samhain.[1] This occurred despite considerable Irish and the Scottish migration historically to Australia.[2] In the 1980s Halloween in Australia was still a mistrusted, foreign institution. Yet more recently, Dr Paul Harrison of the Business School of Deakin University has argued that Halloween has at last ‘caught on’ in Australia.[3] So what happened then? Why did it take so long for Halloween to become popular in Australia? And equally, what has changed so recently that could account for its increased popularity?

A Jack-O'-Lantern, Toby Ord, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

There were many Irish convicts transported to the Australasian colonies and between 1791 and 1867 it is estimated that 40, 000 Irish convicts arrived.[4] Several thousand Irish alone were transported to Van Diemen’s Land between 1803 and 1853 presumably bringing their cultural practices with them.[5] The Irish born population of Australia peaked at 230, 000 in 1891, representing more than a quarter of the total foreign-born population, second only to the English.[6] A much smaller amount of Scots, approximately eight thousand, were also transported to the Australian colonies.[7] Additionally though,  175, 000 Scottish immigrants arrived in Australia between 1860 and 1914. As they represented a largely ‘urban industrial working class’, the Scots tended to settle in cities, particularly in Victoria. Scottish migrants had a proclivity to cluster in urban settings and their most obvious cultural impact was to dramatically increase the level of Presbyterianism in their new country.[8] There appears to be a clear disparity though between the level of Celtic emigration to Australia (either forced or free) and subsequent evidence of the adoption of the Halloween ritual in Australia.

As mentioned, Halloween developed out of the traditional Celtic ritual of Samhain and was in fact likely a Christian attempt to recycle and sanitize what was considered inherently pagan. The ritual was developed by the Druidic order who had emerged in Gaul during the Second Century BCE; the druids were known to have had extended contact with the Greeks who celebrated their own festival for the dead—although it was in February.[9] To the Celts, Samhain coincided with the end of summer and the onset of their new year.[10] Originally it may have been a cultural benchmark for the annual agricultural cycle; Samhain marked the time of the year by which all crops needed to be harvested, and farms secured by storing all produce and moving livestock from the moors and mountains so they could be handfed.[11] Traditionally celebrated between sunsets from the 31 October to 1 November, to the ancients it represented a mystical ‘time between times’, a time when the normal physical laws of the world were suspended. As such it was a time when the living and the dead could commune.[12]

However, after the departure of the Romans and the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, the animal sacrifices (particularly of cats and horses) common during the feast of Samhain became notorious and evidence of pagan depravity.[13] Pope Gregory I in a letter to Abbot Mellitus - famously quoted in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History - indicated that he desired existing pagan places and rituals be adapted to a Christian purpose. The creation of the ‘Allhallows Eve’ ritual on 31 October in preparation for All Saint’s Day on 1 November during the early Middle Ages to honour Saints, seems suspiciously opportune and synchronous then with church policy; the ritual involving prayers and fasting in preparation for the measured Feast Day seems a stark contrast to the traditional wild festivities already described yet they built on the cultural foundations of Samhain.[14]

The meaning and practice of what became known as “Hallowe’en” and later ‘Halloween’ continued to evolve over the centuries. Reinvention under Christianity saw it become identified with predictions of the future, closely associated with pairing for marriage and of course a time for pranks. One of Robert Burns’ longer poems is ‘Halloween’ and its copious 252 lines document many of the practices and traditions which had become associated with the festival by his lifetime. Burns describes the first ceremony which involved couples going out blind and pulling the first kail plant they encounter, which itself was believed to have prophetic properties. The practice called the burning of the nuts also gave insight into the future of courting couples. According to Burns, ‘sowans’ with butter rather than milk was a traditional Halloween supper treat.[15]

Halloween enjoyed fertile ground in the New World, transmitted by waves of Celtic migration. According to the United States Census Bureau in 2021, more than 35.1 million Americans claim descent from Irish migrants.[16] While some contemporary discrimination was open and documented during the period of the famine, it can be argued that the US particularly better embraced its Celtic heritage than Australia. In a country initially settled by Puritans, eventual waves of Irish emigrants entered the land that had hosted the Salem witch trials and therefore enjoyed a pre-existing awareness and perhaps even belief in witchcraft.[17] The first St Patrick’s Day parade was held in New York as early as 17 March 1762. This sense of Celtic pride has been maintained and in 1991, Congress declared the month of March to be Irish American Heritage Month.[18] In contrast celebrations of St. Patrick’s Day in Australia are arguably much more muted.

New Orleans Charity Hospital School of Nursing Halloween Dance, 1950, Uncredited for the 'Caps and Capes', Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Considerable Irish emigration helped to ensure that Halloween became a permanent feature on the American calendar. The American tradition of trick or treating on Halloween can be traced directly back to the figure of Muck Olla who was represented by a man, adorned by a horses’ head, who during Samhain paraded through a settlement begging for food – the meaning of the tradition having been long lost by those who transplanted it.[19] It was in Scotland that the practice of carving demonic faces in turnips began. By the time the festival reached America it became common practice to carve ‘jack-o-lanterns’ from pumpkins and illuminate them from the inside with candles.[20] Americans even found that their pumpkins were ideal for carving.[21] Halloween became a harvest holiday almost as important as Thanksgiving and therefore in the eyes of the world, distinctly American.[22] Halloween has persisted in Ireland, although there is more emphasis on fireworks and bonfires. In fact, during an atrocity in Northern Ireland on 31 October 1993, the Loyalists responsible shouted the American phrase ‘trick or treat’. Although opinions differ on why this occurred, it certainly reinforces the American appropriation of the concept of Halloween.[23]

Professor John Maloney of the ANU argued in the 1980s that in Australia at least, the Irish were discouraged from practicing that which their English overlords considered to be pagan practices among them funeral wakes and of course, Halloween. This seems a more likely scenario than the alternate argument that the custom died out because Australian pumpkins were hard to carve![24] I have been unable to find any evidence of suppression and even very little derision of the concept of Halloween in the colonial period. Queen Victoria herself appears to have hosted Halloween balls at Balmoral.[25] Denis O’Donoho typified those attitudes in his story ‘The Irish Peasants: Halloween’ published in the Dublin Penny Journal in 1834. Implicit in the title is the idea that Halloween was common to the simple peasantry. While focusing on a more harmless interpretation of the festival the story describes those involved to have commonly shared a child-like belief in the reality and power of magical conjugations and fairies.[26] There is no doubt though that as a festival it was regarded as quintessentially Celtic and therefore probably as the creation of an inferior people and culture who often represented a threat to the established order.

It was the Irish settlers in Australia, rather than the Scottish, who were seen to be collectively difficult and rebellious despite evidence to the contrary. This may have simply related to the fact that as discussed, the Scottish were Presbyterians and therefore at least Protestant in inclination as opposed to their native Irish kin. Lloyd Robson demonstrated in The Convict Settlers of Australia that most Irish male convicts at least were first offenders with shorter sentences than their English and Scottish counterparts.[27] Before 1840, all Irish transports were sent to New South Wales. There was little Irish migration to Tasmania before 1845 and they represented only 4,492 in a population of 58,902—however thanks to transportation, the Irish nearly tripled their numbers by 1851 growing to 12, 444. Although still a minority, the Irish were now a sizeable one.

In his 1972 thesis on Irish convicts in Van Diemen’s Land, John Williams argued that the Irish settlers faced widespread social prejudice with regard to their ‘religion, occupations and illiteracy.’ Increasingly then, the Irish were seen to be a ‘problem’ specifically their lack of practical skills and education.[28] The Rebellion of 1798 was likely a contemporary event that hardened pre-existing prejudices. Manning Clark observed that a line had been drawn between Catholicism and rebellion. To the British mainstream, Protestantism encouraged liberty and wealth, while Catholicism was associated with poverty and despotism. The concentration of Irish convicts in New South Wales may have played a factor in two uprisings that took place in 1804 aimed at freeing the disaffected from their Anglo-Saxon oppressors; although small, these incidents likely further cemented an impression of the Irish as ‘disloyal’.[29] Certainly in 1911 only 29% of the Irish born population in Australia was Protestant.[30]

Predictably, the tradition of the Irish wake became very common among the large Irish Catholic population in Sydney.[31] This was an example of an Irish tradition that was arguably discouraged for reasons of hygiene rather than for the hijinks that often accompanied it after the body had been prepared.[32] At the same time, distrust of anything ‘Irish’ in Australia does not account for the persistence of other Celtic concepts such as St. Patrick’s Day and Valentine’s Day.[33] But these traditions were Christian in origin and therefore while Celtic, they were tolerated as they did not suffer the additional stigma of being ‘pagan’.

The sectarian divide remained strong in Australian during the interwar period. It had possibly been sustained by the toxic conscription debate during the Great War.[34] Sectarianism even permeated the Australian national cricket team. Catholic Jack Fingleton had a habit of sprinkling Holy water on his bat before an innings. When on one occasion, he was out early, Bradman commented that they would see what a dry bat could accomplish.[35] As late as 1983, only the third Australian Catholic Captain of the national side, Lindsay Hassett, was publicly denying being a party to the tension that had existed between fellow Catholic cricketers Bill O’Reilly and Stan McCabe and the then team Captain Don Bradman in 1937.[36] There clearly were then, distinctive lingering tensions during the period within an institution that should, and normally did, represent a unifying force.

So, a combined Celtic-Catholic prejudice may answer the question as to why the Australian antipodes did not provide fertile ground for Halloween, but it does not explain its continued abandonment amidst a sustained century of infatuation with the emerging United States. An infatuation with US culture in Australia had been brewing for a good century before the Second World War. Famously at the outbreak of that war former Prime Minister Billy Hughes commented in relation to our Pacific neighbour and cousin: ‘What we are, you were; and what you are we hope to be’.[37]

The war torn Twentieth Century arguably drew the two nations, Australia, and the United States, closer politically by necessity and perhaps also uncomfortably close culturally. The decision by the Churchill government during that War to effectively disown Australia and adopt a policy to ‘Beat Hitler first’ in the face of growing concerns over Japanese aggression, forced our young nation to make some hard decisions. The fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin both of which occurred during February 1942 prompted the Curtin Government to reassess its loyalties. When the US were forced out of the Philippines in March by the Japanese, we leapt at the chance to form an alliance; although it was in truth only a practical strategic decision on their part. The ANZUS treaty of 1951 was an attempt to make the arrangement permanent and it coincided with the final decline of what was left of the British Empire. Australia has followed the US into every one of its conflicts from that time.[38]

While the defence and trade relationship with the US has remained the cornerstone of foreign policy, it could be argued that it is one based more on practicality than affection. Perhaps one of the earliest indications that the forced marriage between Australia and the United States had soured was the infamous ‘Battle of Brisbane’ in November 1942, which saw open conflict between Australian and US Service men.[39] Over the next half century or more there has existed a lingering affection for the ‘mother country’ that is offset by the economic realities of the modern world which made it an increasingly indifferent but not irrelevant parent.[40] In 2019-20 the UK was still Australia’s fifth largest trading partner although it ranked behind the US which was second behind China. The UK also remains Australia’s second largest source of investment, after the United States of course.[41] The ties to America are clearly practical while the ties to the United Kingdom appear more familial. It could be argued that the recent AUKUS treaty between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, designed to deal with the potential threat from China is a modern expression of the nation working to balance its practical and familial impulses.[42]

Children trick or treating in costumes, Jarek Tuszynski, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Our changing relationship with the United States in the Twentieth Century may have inadvertently influenced Australian attitudes to Halloween. Indeed, Phillip and Roger Bell have argued that: ‘The power of the US abroad is increasingly understood as a consequence of its cultural and ideological authority or appeal.’ In relation to all popular culture (including literature, film, radio, music) the American influence on Australia during the post-war era was increasingly pervasive. However, this ‘penetration’ of America into Anglo-Australian culture was not universally admired and did provoke some resistance.[43] The contemporary concern about the hegemonic influence of American culture on Australian society – at least among the intelligentsia – could explain a tendency to ignore the tradition of Halloween. It may have served to exacerbate a prejudice against it that had originally arisen from its ethnic and pagan genealogy. Even in 2013 an ABC radio special indicated that many callers felt that Halloween represented ‘American commercialism’.[44]

The Australian mainstream media were consistent in their negative interpretation of Halloween in the second half of the Twentieth Century. Halloween trick or treating was described as dangerous because in the US razor blades were being inserted in apples and sweets were laced with poison. The resilient Americans however were foolishly persisting with the tradition; hospitals even provided free x-raying of children’s loot.[45] There was some truth to all this: Jack Santino had observed in 1983 that these concerns had been given some corroboration by the ‘Tylenol scare’ of the previous year. But criminal incidence appears to have been rare.[46] Regardless, this does not seem to have phased the Americans in their enthusiasm for the tradition over the next generation or more. In 2020 US citizens reportedly spent 9.1 billion on Halloween paraphernalia (ranging from costumes to sweets).[47] An article in the Canberra Times in 1986 described Halloween as trivial and nonsensical, the implication being that it was crass and certainly echoing sentiments that it was ‘not our culture’.[48]

Within the last decade Halloween has become popular among young adults. It is thought that the rise of social media has encouraged the uptake of Halloween across the globe, including Australia. This newfound popularity has little or nothing to do with Celtic heritage as it has become just as popular in areas with no such connection. According to a YouGov poll in 2017 about 18% of all German young people aged 18-29 dressed up for the festival. It has also become popular in Japan who have adapted it to indulge in alter-ego costume play as there is less emphasis on the supernatural elements of the tradition. The older demographic seems to have proven less enthusiastic as demonstrated in Devon and Cornwall, England where the police have been known to supply ‘no trick or treat signs’ for concerned householders.[49]

Halloween at Waikiki in 2012, Kyle Nishioka, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Halloween has continued to increase in popularity in Australia where it is estimated that the figure of 50% of adults that celebrated it in 2005 rose to 76% in 2020; the most engaged demographic appears to be the 18-34 year olds. Yes, it has become a youth (read ‘social’) thing! Psychologists and sociologists explain this recent uptake by what they refer to as ‘emerging’ adults. Traditional markers of successful independence such as career, family and home ownership have increasingly been delayed and this has created a longer transitional phase that can extend through a young adults’ twenties into their thirties. Halloween was often a festival for people (originally the Irish and Scottish) who had not been fully integrated into society. As a cultural space it has also historically been claimed by the LGBT communities as a means of celebrating their differences. Most holidays represent some form of social anxiety, and it could be that Halloween has become a way for this disaffected generation to express both its solidarity but also its anxiety about an uncertain future.[50]

The explanation for Halloween’s loss and rediscovery in Australia then is multi-faceted. While there is no evidence for Maloney’s suppression theory, it is very clear that with its links to Samhain, Halloween was widely considered from the time of European settlement in Australia, to be at least subliminally pagan. The overt Catholicism of the native Irish population in Australia, with whom Halloween was so closely identified, may have also inadvertently served to discourage its uptake. Furthermore, it seems likely that an increasing resentment of our political and economic reliance on the United States and their subsequent hegemonic penetration into Australian culture post WWII, may have further extended collective resistance to Halloween. However, over time these hegemonic concerns appear to have largely gone the way of the secular divide, over into the pit of cultural irrelevance.  In the modern, interconnected world of ‘emerging adults’ there are few, if any, disincentives towards embracing Halloween. While my own generation grew up reading American comic books, millennials (including my own children) are clearly just as fascinated with Japanese manga. The increasing adoption of Halloween by the youth of Australia, appears to have no deeper cultural significance beyond the desire to have fun. Their interest in Halloween could be dismissed as being shallow, insincere, and fleeting. However, youth culture today inhabits an increasingly borderless, global world that cares little or nothing for nationalism, hegemonies or, as ever, the past, only fun. Perhaps they and the world they are creating are all the better for that?

 

- Dr. Colin Woollcott Mallett, 29 October 2021 (revised 29 October 2022).

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[1] Ralph Linton, ‘Halloween’, Scientific American, 185, 4 (1951), p. 63. The link between Samhain and Halloween is sometimes debated but that is not the focus of this essay; I assume there is a connection. Even if that isn’t the case, historically there was a perception of a link. So even if the connection is not an actuality, the widespread belief that Halloween had pagan origins can be evidenced and arguably provided grounds for cultural resistance in Australia.

[2] While the term Celtic naturally refers to both Scottish and Irish people, it is the latter term ‘Irish’ that can be problematic if not contentious. Scotland exists as a definable region sharing a distinct nationality, albeit within a wider political union; in contrast, Ireland remains a politically partitioned and contested land with multiple Irish identities. In this article I define the term ‘Irish’ to be what J. C. Beckett more specifically referred to as the ‘native Irish’ who descended from Gaelic people who themselves conquered and settled Ireland probably around the first century BCE. Therefore, my use of the word ‘Irish’ refers to both the peoples and the cultural practices of those Celtic settlers who inhabited Ireland from that time and who became almost universally Catholic from the Fifth Century CE. The subsequent colonisations of Ireland arguably began during the Ninth Century CE with the Vikings and persisted into Tudor times in various forms (including a Scottish invasion in the Fourteenth Century CE) before culminating in the plantations established in six counties in Ulster during the rule of James I and involving largely Protestant English and Scottish settlers. See: J. C. Beckett, A Short History of Ireland (Melbourne, 1986), pp. 9-90.

[3] Paul Harrison, ‘Should we really be celebrating Halloween in Australia?’, Deakin University, https://this.deakin.edu.au/society/should-we-really-be-celebrating-halloween-in-australia , accessed 5 March 2021.

[4] National Archives of Ireland, Irish Convict Transportation Records, 1787-1868 Reels M2125-229 (Australian Joint Copying Project), p.3.

[5] John Williams, ‘Irish Convicts and Van Diemen’s Land’, unpublished Masters’ Thesis, UTAS (1972), p. 1.

[6] David Fitzpatrick, ‘The Irish in Australia’, Encyclopedia of Irish History and Culture, https://www.encyclopedia.com/international/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/diaspora-irish-australia , accessed 28 October 2021.

[7] This equates to about 5.6% of the total 162, 000 convicts transported to the Australian colonies between 1788 and 1868. Benjamin Wilkie argues that this is because the Scottish legal system used transportation more sparingly only inflicting it on the worst class of criminals. See: ‘Scottish convicts in Australia’, History Scotland, 14, 6 (2014), p. 23.

[8] Benjamin Wilkie, ‘Lairds of suburbia: Scottish migrant settlement and housing in Australian cities, 1880-1930’, Journal of Scottish Historical Studies, 36, 1 (2016), pp. 1, 5-6, 22.

[9] Ralph Linton, op.cit., pp. 63-4.

[10] Canberra Times, ‘Halloween’, Good Times supplement, 30 October 1986, pp. 1-2.

[11] Jack Santino, ‘Halloween in America: Contemporary customs and performances’, Western Folklore, 42, 1 (1983), p. 4.

[12] Eoghan McTigue, ‘Transgressive Events’, Circa, 89 (1999), p. 34.

[13] Ralph Linton, op.cit., pp. 63-4.

[14] A. M. Sellar, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England A Revised Translation With Introduction, Life, and Notes (London 1907), pp. 102-4.

[15] Robert Burns, ‘Halloween’, https://www.public-domain-poetry.com/robert-burns/halloween-9914 , accessed 19 October 2021.

[16] Derick Moore, Gerson Vasquez & Ryan Dolan, ‘Residents With Irish Ancestry Are in All 3,142 U.S. Counties and Make Up 20% of the Population in Some’, United States Census Bureau, 16 March 2021. URL: https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2021/03/happy-saint-patricks-day-to-one-of-ten-americans-who-claim-irish-ancestry.html , accessed 28 October 2021.

[17] Jack Santino, op.cit., (1983), p. 13.

[18] ‘March is Irish American Heritage Month’, Prince William Living, 3 March 2021. URL: https://princewilliamliving.com/march-is-irish-american-heritage-month/ , accessed 12 August 2021.

[19] Ralph Linton, op.cit., pp. 62-3, 66.

[20] Canberra Times, ‘Halloween’, Good Times supplement, 30 October 1986, pp. 1-2.

[21] Ralph Linton, op.cit., p. 66.

[22] Jack Santino, op.cit., (1983), p. 14.

[23] Jack Santino, ‘Light up the Sky: Halloween Bonfires and Cultural Hegemony in Northern Ireland’, Western Folklore, 55, 3 (Summer, 1996), p. 229.

[24] Canberra Times, ‘Halloween’, Good Times supplement, 30 October 1986, pp. 1-2.

[25] Mercury, 7 January 1878, p. 3.

[26] Denis O’Donoho, The Dublin Penny Journal, 3, 121 (October, 1834), pp. 129-131.

[27] Lloyd Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia (Melbourne, 1965), p. 189.

[28] John Williams, op.cit., pp. 8, 264, 276, 282.

[29] Manning Clark, A Short History of Australia, 2^nd Edition (Sydney, 1980), p. 37.

[30] David Fitzpatrick, op.cit.

[31] Grace Karskens, The Rocks: Life in Early Sydney (Carlton, 1997), p. 48.

[32] Robert Nelson, ‘The Irish Wake’, Pure Local Australia’s Business Directory, https://www.purelocal.com.au/articles/the-irish-wake-1211 , accessed 28 October 2021.

[33] Paul Harrison, op.cit.

[34] Brenda Niall, edited extract from Mannix from Australian, 21 October 1921.

[35] Arunabha Sengupta, ‘Cricketing Rifts-1: The Bradman-centric and religion-fuelled Australian feuds’, Cricket Country, 2014, https://www.cricketcountry.com/articles/cricketing-rifts-1-the-bradman-centric-and-religion-fuelled-australian-feuds-11838 , accessed 21 October 2021.

[36] Canberra Times, 10 September 1983, p.2.

[37] Philip and Roger Bell, "Americanization": Political and Cultural Examples from the Perspective of "Americanized" Australia, American Studies, 37, 1 (Spring, 1996), p. 7.

[38] Ingeborg van Teeseling, ‘The relationship with Britain and America’, Australian Explained, https://australia-explained.com.au/history/the-relationship-with-britain-and-america , accessed 22 October 2021.

[39] Michael Ray, ‘Battle of Brisbane’, Britannica Online, https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Brisbane , accessed 28 October 2021. Indeed, the US forces were famously referred to as being ‘overpaid, over-sexed and over here.’!

[40] Gregory Melleuish, ‘No longer tied to Britain, Australia is still searching for its place in the world’, The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/no-longer-tied-to-britain-australia-is-still-searching-for-its-place-in-the-world-70407 , accessed 22 October 2021.

[41] Australian Government, Australian Trade and Investment Commission, ‘Export Markets United Kingdom: Market Profile’,  https://www.austrade.gov.au/australian/export/export-markets/countries/united-kingdom/market-profile/market-profile , accessed on 22 October 2021.

[42] Peter Hartcher, ‘Why was Washington so ecstatic about Morrison’s AUKUS pact?’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 September 2021, https://www.smh.com.au/national/why-washington-was-so-ecstatic-about-morrison-s-aukus-pact-20210927-p58v3c.html , accessed 22 October 2021.

[43] Philip and Roger Bell, op.cit., pp. 6-7.

[44] Brian Handwerk, ‘Love it or Hate it Halloween is Going Global’, National Geographic, 28 October 2017, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/article/halloween-world-costumes-germany-uk , accessed 21 October 2021.

[45] Canberra Times, ‘Halloween’, Good Times supplement, 30 October 1986, p. 1.

[46] Jack Santino, op.cit., (1983), p. 1.

[47] Paul Harrison, op.cit.

[48] Canberra Times, ‘Halloween’, Good Times supplement, 30 October 1986, p. 1.

[49] Brian Handwerk, op.cit.

[50] Linus Owens, ‘Why has Halloween become so popular among adults?’, The Big Smoke, 31 October 2020, https://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/2020/10/31/why-has-halloween-become-so-popular-among-adults-halloween/ , accessed 21 October 2021.