THE HISTORY OF
HALLOWEEN
Source: History.com Editors URL
Link: https://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween
Updated: October 28, 2020
Halloween
is a holiday celebrated each year on October 31, and Halloween 2020 will occur
on Saturday, October 31. The tradition originated with the ancient Celtic
festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward
off ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a
time to honor all saints. Soon, All Saints Day incorporated some of the
traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows Eve, and
later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a day of activities like
trick-or-treating, carving jack-o-lanterns, festive gatherings, donning
costumes and eating treats.
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, mostly 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
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.
Did you know? One quarter of all the
candy sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween.
By 43 A.D.,
the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course
of the 400 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.
All Saints' Day
On
May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of
all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was
established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III later expanded the festival
to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May
13 to November 1.
By
the 9th century, the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands,
where it gradually blended with and supplanted older Celtic rites. In 1000
A.D., the church made November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s
widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic
festival of the dead with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.
All Souls’ Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big
bonfires, parades and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The
All Saints’ Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from
Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night
before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be
called All-Hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.
Halloween Comes to America
The
celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because
of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in
Maryland and the southern colonies.
As
the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups and the American
Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The
first celebrations included “play parties,” which were public
events held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would share stories of the
dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing.
Did you know? More people,
especially millennials, are buying costumes for their pets. Twenty percent did
so in 2018, up from 16 percent in 2017.
Colonial
Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and
mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the 19th century, annual autumn
festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the
country.
In
the second half of the 19th century, America was flooded with new immigrants.
These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing the Irish Potato
Famine, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.
History of Trick-or-Treating
Borrowing
from European 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 these efforts, Halloween lost most of
its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth
century.
Halloween Parties
By
the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular but community-centered
holiday, with parades and town-wide Halloween parties as the featured
entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism
began to plague some 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.
Thus,
a new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today,
Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the
country’s second largest commercial holiday after Christmas.
Halloween Movies
Speaking of commercial success, scary Halloween movies have
a long history of being box office hits. Classic Halloween movies include the
“Halloween” franchise, based on the 1978 original film directed by John
Carpenter and starring Donald Pleasance, Nick Castle, Jamie Lee
Curtis and Tony Moran. In “Halloween,” a young boy named
Michael Myers murders his 17-year-old sister and is committed to jail, only to
escape as a teen on Halloween night and seek out his old home, and a new
target.
Considered
a classic horror film down to its spooky soundtrack, it inspired 11 other films
in the franchise and other “slasher films” like “Scream,”
“Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Friday the 13.” A direct sequel to
the original "Halloween" was released in 2018, starring Jamie Lee
Curtis and Nick Castle. More family-friendly Halloween movies include “Hocus
Pocus,” “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “Beetlejuice” and “It’s
the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”
All Souls Day and Soul Cakes
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.
Black Cats and Ghosts
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 black 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.
Halloween Matchmaking and
Lesser-Known Rituals
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 deadIn
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, 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 goodwill
of the very same “spirits” whose presence the early Celts felt so keenly.
