By: BHS Features Staff
October 30, 2024
Tomorrow is the day for free candy, costumes, and many scares, but today, we decided to shine our Jack-o’-lantern on the history of this spooky holiday.
The Halloween tradition started with an ancient Celtic festival titled Samhain. People used to dress up in scary costumes and light bonfires to scare off ghosts, believed to be real.
During the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor saints; this day is now known as All Saints Day. All Saints Day includes traditions from Samhain.
The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of Summertime and the start of a cold Winter. Winter was associated with the death of many people, so the Celts believed that the night before the new year was a blurred boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead.
On the night of October 31, they celebrated Samhain, which was believed to be the ghosts of the dead returning to earth.
Coco, anyone?
The New England Colonies had a rigid Protestant belief system in The United States. However, the Halloween tradition was more common in Maryland and the southern colonies.
Due to the different customs and beliefs of European ethnic groups and Native Americans, they meshed together, and an American version of Halloween began to surface. The first reported celebrations included “play parties,” which were public events to celebrate the harvests. People shared stories of the dead, told fortunes, sang, and danced.
Other types of Colonial Halloween festivities included ghost stories and general mischief-making. By the middle of the 19th century, annual Fall festivities were common but only adopted by some.
During this time, America was having a big wave of new immigrants, most of which were Irish. Millions of Irish fled to the United States because of the Irish Potato Famine.
How did Trick-or-Treat originate? Well, we kindly “borrowed” it from the European tradition of dressing up and going house-to-house, asking for food and money. Many young women, during this time, believed that on Halloween, they could trick their future husbands by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings, or mirrors.
In the late 1800s, people in America tried to mold Halloween to be less about ghosts, pranks, and witchcraft, and more about community and neighborly get-togethers.
Due to Halloween becoming a community-centered holiday in the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween parties became the most common way for people to celebrate Halloween. Many cities and towns had small parades in conjunction with these parties.
Carving pumpkins is also common, especially among families wanting to bond with their children. Pumpkin carving originated from a tradition in Ireland. The origin of this tradition comes from an Irish myth about a guy named Stingy Jack. Jack tricked the devil for his own gain. When Jack died, he was not allowed in Heaven or Hell, so he was sentenced to roam the Earth for eternity. Irish people carved demonic faces into pumpkins to scare the spirit of Jack away. This is why these pumpkins are called Jack-o’-lanterns.
The history behind Halloween is very interesting, and it is cool to see how the holiday originated and grew throughout the centuries.
Now, you are smarter, so tomorrow, make sure to have some fun, especially knowing the history behind Halloween.
{Information for this article is sourced from The History Channel.}
THE RETURN OF THE EYE 