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Ancient Origins of Halloween [Link]
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 43 AD, the Roman Empire 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.
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On May 13, 609 AD, 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 (731–741)
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 the older Celtic rites. In 1000
AD, the church would make November 2 All Souls' Day, a day to honor
the dead. It is widely believed today that the church was attempting to
replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but 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
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 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
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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 these 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 (non-
religious) and community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide
parties as the featured entertainment. However, despite the best efforts of
many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague Halloween
celebrations in many communities during this time, but 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
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grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on
Halloween, making it the country's second largest commercial holiday.
Today's Halloween 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
who were 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.