Origins of Halloween

Origins of Halloween

Halloween, celebrated each year on October 31, is a mix of ancient Celtic practices, Catholic and Roman religious rituals and European folk traditions that blended together over time
to create the holiday we know today. Straddling the line between fall and
winter, plenty and paucity and life and death, Halloween is a time of
celebration and superstition. Halloween has long been thought of as a day when
the dead can return to the earth, and ancient Celts would light bonfires and
wear costumes to ward off these roaming ghosts. The Celtic holiday of Samhain,
the Catholic Hallowmas period of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day and the
Roman festival of Feralia all influenced the modern holiday of Halloween. In
the 19th century, Halloween began to lose its religious
connotation, becoming a more secular community-based children's
holiday. Although the superstitions and beliefs surrounding Halloween may have
evolved over the years, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder,
people can still look forward to parades, costumes and sweet treats to usher in
the winter season.

Ancient Origins of Halloween

Halloween's origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in).

The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the
dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death.
Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the
worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31,
they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead
returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts
thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the
Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people
entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an
important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities.

During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other's fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had
extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them
during the coming winter.

By A.D. 43, Romans had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration
of Samhain.

The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the
incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition
of "bobbing" for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

By the 800s, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands. In the seventh century, Pope Boniface IV designated November 1 All Saints' Day, a time to honor saints and martyrs. It is widely believed today that the pope was
attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but
church-sanctioned holiday. The celebration was also called All-hallows or
All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints' Day) and
the night before it, the night of Samhain, began to be called All-hallows Eve
and, eventually, Halloween. Even later, in A.D. 1000, the church would make
November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor the dead. It was celebrated similarly
to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints,
angels, and devils. Together, the three celebrations, the eve of All Saints',
All Saints', and All Souls', were called Hallowmas.

Halloween Comes to America

As European immigrants came to America, they brought their varied Halloween customs with them. Because of the rigid Protestant belief systems that characterized early New England, celebration of Halloween in colonial times was

extremely limited there.

It was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups, as well as the American Indians, meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to
emerge. The first celebrations included "play parties," public events
held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead,
tell each other's fortunes, dance, and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities
also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By
the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common,
but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland's potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of
Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began
to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice
that eventually became today's "trick-or-treat" tradition. Young
women believed that, on Halloween, they could divine the name or appearance of
their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings, or mirrors.

In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers, than about ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft.

At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season, and festive costumes. Parents were encouraged by
newspapers and community leaders to take anything "frightening" or
"grotesque" out of Halloween celebrations. Because of their efforts,
Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the
beginning of the twentieth century.

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities,
vandalism began to plague Halloween celebrations in many communities during
this time. By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and
Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the
high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from
town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily
accommodated. Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating
was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an
entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could
also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children
with small treats. A new American tradition was born, and it has continued to
grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6.9 billion annually on Halloween,
making it the country's second largest commercial holiday.

Today's Traditions

The American Halloween tradition of "trick-or-treating" probably dates back to the early All Souls' Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them
pastries called "soul cakes" in return for their promise to pray for
the family's dead relatives.

The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as "going a-souling" was eventually
taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be
given ale, food, and money.

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark,
the short days of winter were full of constant worry. On Halloween, when it was
believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they
would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by
these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so
that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. On Halloween, to keep
ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their
homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

Superstitions

Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly
spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and
along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way
back to the spirit world.

Today's Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots
in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by
turning themselves into cats. We try not to walk under ladders for the same
reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who
believed that triangles were sacred; it also may have something to do with the
fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And around
Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in
the road or spilling salt.

But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today's trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead.
In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future
husbands and reassuring them that they would someday--with luck, by next
Halloween!--be married.

In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it. In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name
a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace.
The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went,
represented the girl's future husband. (In some versions of this legend,
confusingly, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love
that would not last.) Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary
concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween
night, she would dream about her future husband. Young women tossed apple-peels
over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the
shape of their future husbands' initials; tried to learn about their futures by
peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water; and stood in front of mirrors
in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their
husbands' faces.

Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry; at others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first down the aisle.

Of course, whether we're asking for romantic advice or trying to avoid seven years of bad luck, each one of these Halloween superstitions relies on the good will of the very same "spirits" whose presence the early Celts felt
so keenly. Ours is not such a different holiday after all!