Halloween: Origins, Meaning & Traditions - HISTORY
CONTENTS
1. Ancient Origins of
Halloween
2. All Saints' Day
3. Halloween Comes to
America
4. History of
Trick-or-Treating
5. Halloween Parties
6. Halloween Movies
7. All Souls Day and Soul
Cakes
8. Black Cats and Ghosts
9. Halloween Matchmaking and
Lesser-Known Rituals
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.
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.
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 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, 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.
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