History of Halloween

The History of Halloween

Halloween today is one of children’s favorite holidays and rightfully so. It is the single best day of the year for kids everywhere to acquire as much sugar as they possibly can at the simple cost of knocking a door and repeating the same line over and over. Perhaps a child will never work harder and more diligently than on Halloween. To get what they want, young people are determined. But has building a chocolate arsenal always been the main objective of Halloween?

No. In fact, when we look back to the origin of Halloween, it can seem a little more serious and maybe less fun. And in some cases, a lot less. Halloween dates back over 2,000 years and began with the Celts. In that time they inhabited what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France. They celebrated November 1st as their new year and the end of summer marking the beginning of the dark and dreary winter. They believed that on the night before new years day that the lines betweens the living and the dead were erased and the ghosts and dead returned to the earth. This day was known originally as Samhain.

In their minds, this created a number of problems. Some believed that the evil spirits would damage crops. It was also a common concept that the spirits would take possession of any desirable mortal living person’s body and inhabit it for the next year. The obvious solution to such a large problem was to make oneself look quite undesirable. And that is the origin of dressing up on October 31st. People would dress up and make themselves as ugly as possible so that the evil sprits would not want to possess them. This made costumes such as invisible woman quite undesirable although The Thing and Harry Potter were in. But seriously speaking, the Celts would wear animal skins and heads and other unappealing things available at the time.

Some sources say that if a person was thought to be possessed, they would sometimes be burned alive. This would make dressing up quite a serious issue because if you didn’t dress up good or bad enough, you could be liable to death.

In the first century AD, the Romans had conquered most of the Celtic territory. During the 400 years that followed, 2 Roman festivals were combined with the Celtic Samhain. The first Roman festival was a commemoration of the dead. The second was a day of honor to Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. Her symbol is the apple which could possibly explain the tradition of bobbing for apples and caramel apples on Halloween today.

Some people think that Trick or Treating was probably developed independently. It obviously was not a part of the original holiday, but developed in the 20th century possibly as an idea from the candy companies to boost sales way up. Other sources, possibly more reliable, believe that it is a little bit older than that.  There is an old Irish peasant practice of going door to door to collect money, bread cake, cheese, eggs, nuts, apples, and other similar items, to prepare for the St. Columbus Kill festival. Trick or treat possibly originated from this. In reality, there are probably several origins that combined creating our modern entertainment.

Halloween has evolved much in many ways over the years. There have been many factors and influences such as mixing cultures and commercialism. But all in all the idea remains the same. It’s just more fun these days.