{"id":318519,"date":"2026-10-31T21:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T21:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/318519\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T21:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T21:32:08","slug":"philadelphia-region-embraces-halloweens-celtic-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/318519\/","title":{"rendered":"Philadelphia region embraces Halloween\u2019s Celtic roots"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Delco to Chesco and Montco to Bucks, what about life in Philly\u2019s suburbs do you want WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Through Saturday evening, Philadelphia\u2019s streets will be filled with ghouls and goblins, ghosts and witches, and countless other more niche costumes<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

Dressing up in disguises, from the fantastical to the terrifying, is just one of the modern-day Halloween traditions that come from the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain \u2014\u00a0a celebration that people in the Philadelphia region and beyond are increasingly exploring on its own terms amid the usual spooky season revelries.\n<\/p>\n

From spiritual practices<\/a> to business owners\u2019 events<\/a>, Samhain is getting its turn in the spotlight.\n <\/p>\n

What is Samhain?<\/p>\n

Samhain, pronounced SOW-in, is the Irish word for November, said Joseph Lennon, director of the Center for Irish Studies at Villanova University.\n<\/p>\n

The holiday was first celebrated throughout Ireland, Britain and other places where Celtic people lived stretching as far back as Neolithic times, according to some historians<\/a>. People dressed up in costumes, carved turnip heads, built fires and ate sweets on the night halfway between the fall equinox and the winter solstice, marking the end of the harvest season and the start of the darker time of the year.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s folk stories. There\u2019s pseudo-history stories. There are medieval tales. There are legends,\u201d Lennon said. \u201cSo all woven throughout that are stories of this night when the door between the worlds is the most porous.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Samhain\u2019s rituals were characterized as existing in a liminal space, between the past and future, at a time when the afterlife and the spiritual world are closer to the world of the living, he said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cSamhain is a way to venerate the dead and to think about the dead,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s also a way to revere the future, because it\u2019s a children\u2019s holiday here, and it\u2019s about celebrating children. So I love that it\u2019s both backward-looking and forward-looking.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

The tradition of children dressing up in costume, Lennon said, came out of people\u2019s fears of this perceived proximity to unearthly realms.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s when you have to be careful of the good people from the other side coming over to snatch children,\u201d he said. \u201cSo you have to disguise your children, preferably as something ugly and and grimy or grubby or scary, so that they won\u2019t look like the sweet innocents that they are to be taken away to the other side.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Bringing Samhain to Old City<\/p>\n

Neill Laughlin, co-owner of Sassafras Bar and Restaurant<\/a> in Philadelphia\u2019s Old City neighborhood, recalls carving turnips \u2014\u00a0\u201dpumpkins were unheard of\u201d \u2014\u00a0and donning a mask as a child in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He and his peers performed songs and recited rhymes to receive money from his neighbors on the night of Oct. 31. They then would go out for a meal with their families and tell stories.\n<\/p>\n

The focus was on community, Laughlin said, \u201cthe old heritage of people gathering together, over a cocktail or a beer and some food, and remembering the past and what it signifies to them today.\u201d
\n\"ANeill Laughlin and Donal McCoy, co-owners of Sassafras Bar and Restaurant in Philadelphia\u2019s Old City neighborhood, decided to host the first-ever Samhain street festival outside of their restaurant on Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026. Laughlin and McCoy are both Irish, and wanted to celebrate the ancient Celtic festival that helped form Halloween. Decorations inside the restaurant included carved turnip heads. (Courtesy of Neill Laughlin)\n<\/p>\n

Laughlin and his business partner, Donal McCoy, who is also Irish, are inviting more people to share that aspect of their heritage with their first-ever Samhain street festival<\/a> Saturday evening.\n<\/p>\n

Musicians, jugglers, stilt walkers and fire dancers will entertain guests and passersby starting at 5:30 p.m., Laughlin said, and the restaurant will feature a suite of Samhain-themed cocktails.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like Halloween\u2019s kind of gotten away from its origins, where it\u2019s more for children collecting candy, and I think today people are interested in the origins of events and what starts them and where did they come from,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

Saturday\u2019s event is also a way for Irish people to \u201chold on to our heritage,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s part of the adventure of the evening, will be to have people learn something new about what Halloween really is and where it all came from,\u201d Laughlin said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Delco to Chesco and Montco to Bucks, what about life in Philly\u2019s suburbs do you want WHYY…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318520,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[732,69,71,70,1384],"class_list":["post-318519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-halloween","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news","tag-philly-suburbs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}