October 31st is a date that both children and adults alike look forward to with anticipation. For kids, it means the one day a year they’re allowed to become whatever or whoever they like and gorge themselves on candy. For adults, it means parties and get-togethers where they can dress up and become kids again, and partake of more adult type goodies. We decorate our homes and our yards and try to outspook the neighbours. We scare ourselves and each other with movies and pranks and haunted houses. Did you ever wonder how this tradition came about?
The origins of Halloween date back thousands of years ago to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts lived 2,000 years ago in what is now Ireland, northern France and the United Kingdom. Their calendar was different than ours is today, and they celebrated their New Year on November 1, the beginning of their cold, dark winters.
This time of year was often associated with hardships and human death. They also believed that on the day before the New Year, October 31, the worlds of the living and the dead co-mingled, and they would celebrate Samhain. During Samhain, it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. They believed the ghosts would run around causing havoc and damaging crops, and also that they made it made it easier for the Celtic priests to make predictions about the future. These prophecies were very comforting for these people who lived in this unpredictable, natural world.
The Celts celebrated the night before the New Year by wearing costumes that typically consisted of animal heads and skins. They built huge, sacred bonfires where they would burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. After the celebration, they would light their hearth fires from the sacred bonfire, and this was believed that it would help protect them during the coming winter.
After the Romans had conquered the majority of the Celtic territory, and later Christianity began to spread throughout their lands, the traditions of the Celts became absorbed into the celebrations of the Romans and the Catholic Church, who added their own traditions to the celebration, and many have carried over to today. Bobbing for apples, for example, may have come from the Roman holiday which honoured Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees, whose symbol is the apple. November 1 became All Saints’ Day, a day to honor saints and martyrs. All Saints’ Day was also called All-Hallows or All-hallowmas from the Middle English word Alholowmesse, meaning All Saints’ Day. The night before, October 31st, became All-hallows Eve and eventually Halloween. It’s widely believed that this was the Christian Church’s attempt to replace the Celtic traditions with a church-sanctioned holiday.
Halloween survived strongly with the Irish, Scottish, and Welsh Communities and immigrants from these countries brought the tradition to North America. The Irish brought over the idea of the children dressing up and going door to door to collect treats, mainly fruit, which was later used for playing games such as bobbing for apples. Carving pumpkins is believed to have come from the tradition of carving ghoulish faces into turnips to hold candles.
The tradition of Trick or Treating as it has developed in North America seems to have more obscure origins, especially the Trick part. Some believe that the original intention was that the spirits would be blamed for any mischievous behaviour that occurred. They would do things like hiding everyday items of those adults who were less popular. These harmless pranks have gradually developed into more harmful ones somehow, such as throwing raw eggs, soaping windows, and smashing pumpkins.
As this Halloween comes around, we can remember where this favourite holiday came from, and most importantly, let’s keep it all in good fun!