There is something particularly lovely about celebrating Halloween here in Ireland.

Not because we do it better than anyone else — although we might reasonably claim to have been at it for quite a while — but because underneath the pumpkins, sweets, costumes and plastic spiders are traces of much older traditions.

Long before Halloween became the celebration we recognise today, the Gaelic festival of Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. It was one of the great seasonal turning points of the year: a threshold between the lighter and darker halves of the calendar.

Over centuries, customs changed. Older seasonal practices became intertwined with Christian observances around All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days. Traditions travelled, disappeared, reappeared and evolved again — particularly as generations of Irish people carried their customs abroad.

So the story of Halloween isn’t quite as simple as saying that every pumpkin, costume or Halloween game comes directly from ancient Samhain.

History is rarely that tidy.

But Ireland undoubtedly has a deep and fascinating relationship with Halloween, and some of the traditions that survived here are wonderfully peculiar.

There were turnips hacked into terrifying lanterns. Rings hidden in barmbrack. Apples dangling from strings. Fortune-telling games. Ghost stories. Bonfires. Neighbourhood mischief.

And an alarming number of activities that involved trying to eat something without using your hands.

Some of these traditions are still familiar. Others have almost disappeared.

Here are 13 Irish Halloween traditions, the stories behind them, and simple ways we can bring a little of their spirit into our celebrations today.

1. Bonfires on Halloween Night

Fire has long been associated with seasonal gatherings around Samhain, and bonfires remained part of Halloween celebrations in many Irish communities for generations.

For anyone who grew up with Halloween bonfires, however, the memory may have considerably less to do with solemn ancient ritual and rather more to do with everybody in the neighbourhood knowing exactly where the bonfire was being built.

Halloween has always had that mixture of the mysterious and the wonderfully ordinary.

Bring it into Halloween today

You certainly don’t need an enormous community bonfire.

If you have a suitable outdoor space, light a firepit, bring out a few blankets and something warm to drink, and sit outside for a while as darkness falls.

Toast marshmallows. Tell stories. Talk.

The modern version can be much smaller and safer while still retaining something of that old instinct to gather around a fire as the year turns towards winter.

2. Carving Turnip Lanterns

Before the enormous orange pumpkin became the face of Halloween, people in Ireland and Britain carved lanterns from root vegetables — particularly turnips and swedes.

And if you’ve never seen an old-fashioned carved turnip lantern, they are genuinely unsettling.

Pumpkins can look jolly.

A hollowed-out turnip illuminated from within has absolutely no interest in looking jolly.

Lanterns with grotesque faces became associated with Halloween traditions and supernatural folklore. When Irish customs travelled across the Atlantic, pumpkins — plentiful in North America and significantly easier to hollow out — eventually became the perfect alternative.

Try it yourself

Carve your usual pumpkins, but buy one turnip as well.

Just one.

Attempt to carve it.

You will simultaneously experience an old Halloween tradition and develop enormous gratitude for the invention of the pumpkin.

Display it beside your modern jack-o’-lantern and you have a lovely little visual connection between old and new.

3. Colcannon at Halloween

Colcannon — mashed potatoes mixed with cabbage or kale, usually enriched with butter and milk — has long been associated with Irish food and with Halloween traditions in particular.

Like several Halloween foods, it also became connected with fortune-telling.

Small objects or charms could be concealed in food, with whatever a person discovered supposedly offering a clue about their future.

A ring might suggest marriage, for example, while other objects represented wealth or different fortunes.

Which is fascinating folklore.

It is perhaps less appealing when considered from a modern dental perspective.

Bring it back today

Make a big bowl of colcannon for an autumn dinner.

If you’d like to recreate the fortune-telling element, don’t hide hard objects in the food. Instead, write a few playful fortunes or symbols on folded pieces of paper and let everyone choose one from a bowl at the table.

Same fun.

Considerably fewer emergency dental appointments.

4. Barmbrack and the Ring

This is probably one of the best-known Irish Halloween food traditions — and one that has survived remarkably well.

Barmbrack, or báirín breac, is a fruit bread traditionally eaten around Halloween.

Historically, various objects could be baked inside, each carrying a supposed meaning for the person who discovered it: perhaps a coin for prosperity, a piece of cloth for difficult times or, most famously, a ring associated with marriage.

The range of fortunes varied by place and period, but the ring is the one most people recognise today.

You can still buy Halloween barmbracks containing a ring.

Celebrate it today

Buy a barmbrack or bake your own and serve thick slices with plenty of butter and tea.

If you’re making one at home and want to include a traditional token, use an appropriately food-safe method and make absolutely sure everyone knows something has been hidden inside.

Or skip the physical charms altogether and make paper fortunes for the table.

The barmbrack is good enough to survive without the possibility of somebody swallowing jewellery.

5. Dressing Up and Guising

Costumes feel thoroughly modern now, but disguises have been associated with seasonal celebrations in Ireland, Scotland and elsewhere for centuries.

The history is more complicated than the often-repeated claim that people simply dressed as spirits so ghosts wouldn’t recognise them. Masking, mumming and guising developed in different forms and at different times.

By the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, disguising and visiting houses had become part of Halloween customs in various places.

Today’s witches, vampires, skeletons and increasingly obscure pop-culture costumes are part of a tradition that has continued to evolve.

Celebrate it today

Let dressing up be playful rather than perfect.

Use old clothes.

Visit charity shops.

Make something.

Experiment with makeup.

Let teenagers create costumes that make absolutely no sense to you but apparently everybody their age will understand instantly.

Traditions are allowed to move with the times.

6. Halloween Fortune-Telling

One of the most fascinating things about older Irish Halloween celebrations is just how preoccupied everybody appears to have been with finding out what would happen next.

Marriage prospects were particularly popular.

Apples, nuts, mirrors, food, bowls, objects and various household games were used to supposedly reveal future husbands and wives, wealth, luck and what the coming year might bring.

For young people especially, Halloween was a night for divination as much as disguise.

Try it today

Treat these as folklore and party games rather than predictions.

Put several symbolic objects beneath cups or saucers and let everyone choose one.

Or write silly fortunes for the year ahead.

A journey. An unexpected opportunity. More cake. A mysterious stranger. A really excellent nap.

I know which fortune I’m hoping for.

For more peculiar beliefs from the season, have a look at 12 Quirky Halloween Superstitions and Where They Come From.

7. Snap Apple

For generations in Ireland, Halloween was also known as Snap-Apple Night, and apples featured heavily in the evening’s games.

Apple bobbing is the version most people immediately recognise: apples floating in water while players attempt to catch one using only their teeth.

Another version involved suspending an apple from a string and trying to bite it as it swung about.

No hands, naturally.

That would apparently have made things far too easy.

Bring it back

Try an apple game after Halloween dinner.

If a communal basin of water doesn’t appeal — entirely understandable — hang individual apples from strings instead, or simply adapt the idea into another hands-free challenge.

The point is less historical accuracy and more rediscovering the wonderfully ridiculous social games people once played together.

You’ll find several more in 10 Forgotten Halloween Games to Bring Back This Year.

8. Ghost Stories and Irish Folklore

Dark evenings and Irish folklore are extremely good companions.

Halloween was associated with the supernatural, and Ireland certainly wasn’t short of stories to tell: banshees, púcas, fairies, restless spirits, haunted houses and places nobody sensible was supposed to visit after dark.

Stories were entertainment, but folklore also helped communities explain the strange, the frightening and the unknown.

Long before we could put on a horror film, people frightened one another perfectly effectively with a good story beside the fire.

Try it this Halloween

Turn down the lights.

Light a few candles.

Put the phones away for half an hour.

Read an Irish ghost story or ask older family members whether they remember any local stories or superstitions from when they were young.

Even better, tell the stories you grew up hearing.

Those small pieces of family folklore are very easy to lose if nobody thinks to ask.

If books are more your thing, I’ve also gathered 10 Cosy & Creepy Books to Read in October.

9. The Halloween House Party

Before Halloween became so focused on trick-or-treating, the evening could revolve around gatherings at home.

Food, music, games, storytelling and fortune-telling all had their place.

The house itself became the centre of the celebration.

I rather love this one because it translates beautifully into modern family life.

Bring it back today

Invite a few people over.

Nothing elaborate.

Make something warm to eat, put out barmbrack and apples, light candles and choose two or three old Halloween games.

Teenagers can invite friends.

Younger children can dress up.

Adults can sit around the kitchen table with tea while pretending they are far too mature to participate in the fortune-telling.

There is a whole collection of ideas in 25 Halloween Activities for Families & Teens if you’re looking for ways to make an evening of it.

10. The Treacle Bread Game

This is one of those old Halloween games that immediately makes you realise previous generations had a very different attitude towards mess.

A piece of bread covered in treacle could be suspended from a string, and participants attempted to take a bite with their hands behind their backs.

Treacle inevitably ended up everywhere.

Faces.

Hair.

Clothes.

Probably furniture.

Excellent entertainment.

Try a slightly less catastrophic version

Hang doughnuts or another suitable treat from strings and challenge everyone to eat without using their hands.

It preserves the ridiculousness while reducing the likelihood that you’ll spend November removing treacle from the curtains.

Although if you’re feeling historically committed, by all means proceed.

11. Halloween Superstitions, Fairies and Offerings

Halloween accumulated an extraordinary collection of beliefs and superstitions.

Certain places were best avoided. Strange encounters could be interpreted as omens. The supernatural world felt unusually close.

Food was sometimes left aside or offered in connection with the dead or otherworldly visitors, although practices varied considerably by region, period and household.

This is one of those areas where folklore is especially rich — and where there often isn’t one single definitive “Irish Halloween tradition.”

A quieter modern interpretation

You don’t need to recreate a belief you don’t personally hold.

Instead, you might light a candle for someone you miss.

Put photographs of grandparents or older generations on the table.

Tell the children a family story.

Or simply pause for a moment and remember the people who came before you.

For anyone interested in exploring the quieter seasonal side of Samhain, you might also enjoy 10 Simple Samhain Rituals You Can Try at Home (No Cauldron Required).

12. Halloween Mischief

Halloween wasn’t always quite as wholesome as matching pyjamas, pumpkin-shaped biscuits and carefully styled front porches.

There was mischief.

Lots of it.

Knocking on doors, moving things, playing tricks and generally taking advantage of the fact that Halloween gave young people a certain amount of permission to cause harmless chaos.

Not all of the old tricks were particularly harmless, admittedly.

We can leave those in the past.

Keep the fun, lose the destruction

Set up a family scavenger hunt.

Leave a Halloween surprise at someone’s door.

Hide ridiculous objects around the house.

Play a prank that everyone will actually find funny.

Or give teenagers enough freedom to create their own Halloween fun without organising every minute for them.

Sometimes the best way to preserve the spirit of an old tradition is not to recreate it exactly.

13. Marking the End of the Harvest

At the heart of Samhain was a seasonal change.

The harvest was ending.

Winter was coming.

Animals, food stores, fires, homes and communities all had to be prepared for the darker months ahead.

That reality is very far removed from the way most of us experience Halloween now.

And yet I think we can still recognise something of it.

By late October, the garden has changed. The evenings are properly dark. Leaves are falling quickly. We begin closing curtains earlier, lighting lamps and making different food.

The house turns inward.

Mark the season in your own way

Make a dinner from autumn produce.

Bake with apples.

Cook soup.

Gather the last things from the garden.

Bring in logs.

Light the fire.

Invite somebody to share a meal.

It doesn’t have to be labelled a ritual to be meaningful.

Sometimes simply noticing that the season has changed is enough.

Free Printable: 13 Irish Halloween Traditions

I’ve created a special 13 Irish Halloween Traditions printable to accompany this post.

Rather than another checklist, this one is designed as a little illustrated folklore sheet — something lovely to print for your seasonal binder, use with older children or teenagers, or simply keep as a reminder of some of the stories and customs connected with Halloween in Ireland.

It brings together all 13 traditions in one place, with small illustrations and snippets of their stories — from barmbrack and carved turnips to Snap Apple, ghost stories, bonfires and old Halloween games.

Download the Free 13 Irish Halloween Traditions Printable →

You could even choose one tradition from the page to try this year.

No need to recreate all thirteen.

Especially the treacle bread.

You’ve been warned.

Want More Halloween Ideas?

If you’d like to turn a few of these old traditions into part of your own October, you might also enjoy our Ultimate Halloween Bucket List Companion.

It’s a larger collection of Halloween printables filled with simple ideas for celebrating the season — family activities, cosy moments, traditions and little ways to make October feel special without trying to turn the entire month into a project.

[Explore the Ultimate Halloween Bucket List Companion →]

Print the pages you’ll actually use and leave the rest.

That’s always the rule around here.

Old Traditions Don’t Have to Stay Frozen in Time

I think this is the part of old traditions I find most interesting.

We sometimes talk about keeping traditions “alive” as though that means recreating them perfectly.

But traditions have never really worked that way.

They travel.

Families alter them.

Children grow up.

Ingredients change.

New customs appear.

Some things are forgotten completely, while others somehow survive for generations.

The turnip became a pumpkin.

The old house gathering became a Halloween party.

Fortune-telling games became something we do for a laugh.

And somewhere along the way, children began arriving home with enough sweets to see them comfortably through until Christmas.

Yet underneath all of that, some remarkably familiar things remain.

Food.

Fire.

Stories.

Darkness.

Family.

A little mischief.

And that very human instinct to mark the moment when one season becomes another.

Perhaps that’s why Halloween continues to fascinate us.

We don’t have to pretend we’re living hundreds of years ago to appreciate where some of our traditions came from.

We can take the pieces that still speak to us, adapt them to the lives we’re actually living and let the rest remain as fascinating stories from another time.

So perhaps this Halloween we’ll carve the pumpkin.

And maybe a turnip too.

We’ll slice the barmbrack, tell an old story, light a candle and laugh at some ridiculous game around the kitchen table.

Old traditions.

New memories.

I think there’s room for both.

Chat soon,

Ciara x

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Continue Exploring Halloween

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🍂 Continue Exploring Autumn

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