The History of Halloween
Part I
I fondly remember celebrating Halloween as a child. It was, and still is, my favorite “holiday”. Although not officially a holiday, Americans have celebrated Halloween for a number of years. This is the beginning of a series of articles I am going to write that will cover the history of Halloween simply because I love this time of year and have always been fascinated by the holidays.
Halloween (also spelled Hallowe’en) has been celebrated on October 31st for as long as it has been around. It has it’s roots in Samhain, a Celtic festival celebrating the harvest and the end of summer. This was a time to take stock of their supplies and to slaughter livestock for the winter stores. Halloween is mostly a secular celebration but many Christians and pagans have expressed very strong feelings as to the days religious meaning.
The traditions we associate with Halloween today were mostly carried to us by Irish immigrants escaping the potato famine of 1846. It is a day that is associated with the colors black and orange as well as symbols such as the jack-o-lantern.
Celtic pagans believed that on October 31st, the boundary between the living and the dead was very thin and the souls of the dead were free to walk the land of the living and cause no end of problems. The tradition of wearing costumes goes back to the Celtic pagans who would wear them to placate their ancestors or confuse evil spirits.
Part II
The name Halloween is derived from Hallowe’en which is a shortened version of All Hallows’ Even (All Hallows Eve). Even is an older abbreviation of evening which we have shortened further to -eve. Halloween gets its -een from abbreviating even to -een. It is the day before All Hallows Day.
Many people today are unaware of All Hallows Day. In the 9th century, Pope’s Gregory III and Gregory IV moved the Christian feast day of All Saints Day from May 13th to November 1st in an effort to convert more pagans to Christianity. By having a “holiday” on the same day as a pagan “holiday”, it was easier for a pagan to keep many of their old traditions and still convert to Christianity. As a matter of fact, the old feast day of May 13th was once the pagan holiday of Feast of the Lemures (an ancient Roman day of driving malevolent or vengeful ghosts from one’s home)
Although All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day are now celebrated as two separate days, at one time they were celebrated on the same day.
Part III
Halloween is full of symbols. Every year people decorate their house with ghosts, skeletons, mummies and more. We carve pumpkins, place a candle inside and put them on our doorstep. We dress up in costumes and for one night a year we get to be Superman, Batman or whoever we want to be.
These symbols and customs had their start with the pagan folklore of the British Isles. The ancient Celts would place a skeleton in their window on All Hallows Eve to represent the recently departed.
The Jack-O-Lantern might be the most widely recognized symbol of Halloween. Originating in Europe, they were originally carved from a turnip or rutabaga. The original story talks of a man named Stingy Jack who tricked the devil into a tree and carved a cross into the tree trunk to trap him there. The devil was so angry he cursed Jack, condemning him to wander the Earth at night forever with only the light he had with him: a candle inside a hollowed turnip. Today we carve pumpkins because they are so available in America and much larger making them easier to carve.
Other imagery surrounding Halloween is usually a conglomeration of the season itself and Gothic horror stories and movies. Dracula and Frankenstein have been popular at Halloween for almost a century. The overall imagery revolves around horror, death, skeletons, bats, ghosts, witches, spiders, black cats, scarecrows and more. Other signs of the season such as corn husks, apples, and pumpkins are also popular. The colors orange and black are most associated with Halloween.
Part IV
Trick or Treating is the part of Halloween most kids are familiar with. In 2005, 93% of all kids in the United States said they were planning on “Trick or Treating”. I fondly remember going door to door, saying “trick or treat” and receiving a handful of candy. Our neighborhood was so big, my friends and I wouldn’t take a plastic pumpkin, but instead a pillow case. Often we would do one half of the neighbor hood, stop by the house to empty the pillow case and go out again for the second half. It took us months to eat it all, but by Christmas we would have it mostly gone.
Dressing up in costumes and going door to door for treats goes back to the Middle Ages and includes Christmas wassailing (going door to door to sing Christmas Carols). Trick or treating most closely resembles the practice of souling, where the poor would go door to door on Hallowmas (November 1st) and receive food in return for prayers for the dead on All Souls Day (November 2nd). This started in Britain and Ireland and was even mentioned by Shakespeare in the play “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” (1593). The custom of wearing costumes goes back to the Celtic tradition of attempting to copy the dead souls in order to placate them.
The term trick or treat was confined to the western United States before 1940. After that it slowly made it’s way eastward until the sugar rationing of 1942 to 1947. The widespread use of the term didn’t make it to the east coast until 1952 when Walt Disney made the cartoon Trick or Treat.
In Scotland and northern England, children do what is known as guising. Children wear costumes, go door to door and tell a ghost story in order to receive their treats. The practice goes back to the middle ages but became associated with Halloween in the 20th century. As a matter of fact, guising has made it’s way to America and in some parts of the country is now practiced exclusively on Halloween.