Say "Halloween" on the Isle of Man and you may be gently corrected. The island has Hop-tu-Naa, celebrated on 31 October, and it is not a Manx version of Halloween — it is an older, parallel survival of the same root, and it is often described as the oldest unbroken tradition on the island.
Moots, not pumpkins
Manx children carve turnips, not pumpkins. The carved lantern is called a moot, and the designs are not limited to faces — witches are common.
The island has held onto the original vegetable more tenaciously than almost anywhere else in the British Isles, and the reason is simply that the custom never lapsed and never had to be reimported. Where the rest of us gave up the turnip because the pumpkin was easier, the Manx just carried on. Schools and community groups run carving competitions, and turnip supply is a genuine seasonal concern.
Jinnie the Witch
Children go door to door singing, and the song most associated with the night concerns Jinnie the Witch — a figure unique to Manx folklore.
There is a real person behind her, or at least a plausible candidate. Research into the island's records points to a woman near Braddan in the eighteenth century tried for sorcery, sentenced to fourteen days' imprisonment, fined £3, and ordered to stand at the four market crosses dressed in sackcloth. A local woman punished for witchcraft, remembered three hundred years later in a children's song sung on the night the year turns.
Versions of the song vary across the island, as such things do, and the Manx Gaelic and English forms sit alongside each other.
The name
Hop-tu-Naa is generally taken as a rendering of Manx Gaelic marking the night the year turns — the same seasonal reckoning as Samhain, which the Manx knew as Sauin. This was the Celtic New Year: the end of harvest, the start of winter, and the point at which the coming year could be read.
That New Year framing explains why the night carried so much divination. If the year begins now, now is when you find out what it holds.
Seeing it
Hop-tu-Naa is a living community celebration rather than a commercial event — schools, villages, community carving competitions and children at doors. Visit Isle of Man publicises what is on each October.
For anyone building a picture of what a British Halloween looked like before the twentieth century, the Isle of Man is the best evidence available: the turnip, the song, the door-to-door, the New Year at the end of October — all still happening, on the correct night, without interruption.