As the leaves on the trees start to turn orange and fall down, the scary season approaches, bringing countless unforgettable memories and much more sugar than anyone needs. The time of year to dress up and go around for candy with your friends is finally just around the corner!
Celebrated mostly in the United States and Canada, Halloween became a major holiday just like Christmas or Thanksgiving. Yet, unlike those holidays where the meaning is widely known, Halloween’s origins have become forgotten over time.
In case you have been living under a rock, Halloween is a holiday celebrated every year on October 31 where kids dress up in costumes and go door to door asking for sweet treats. Over the years in the U.S., the holiday became more and more integrated into culture, having aisles in grocery stores filled to the brim with scary decorations, costumes, and candy the second September turns around.
Originating all the way back to two thousand years ago around what is now Ireland, the United Kingdom, and northern France, Halloween began taking shape from an ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. Due to the end of summer and harvest, November 1 was celebrated as the Celts’ New Year or the festival of Samhain. This colder and darker time of the year was associated with death and ghosts, causing the Celts to believe that on the night of October 31, the line between the world of the living and the dead was blurred. To celebrate this festival, the Celts wore costumes and gathered around a bonfire to offer sacrifices to the Celtic deities, where they also often told each other’s stories.
In what we believe was an attempt to replace the festival of the dead, Pope Gregory III moved a Christian holiday to honor all martyrs and saints to November 1 and created All Souls’ Day on November 2 to honor the dead. And because the day before All Saints’ Day was known as All Hallows’ Eve, it soon became called Halloween.
When reaching America, Halloween began to be celebrated like the Samhain, as a way to commemorate the harvest, where people would tell stories, dance, and sing. With the rise of immigrants in the U.S., the holiday started borrowing the European tradition of dressing up in costumes and going door to door asking for food. Through the years, the holiday became more and more associated with children and pranks, which over time blended into the trick-or-treating we have today.
In addition, Jack-O-Lanterns began to be integrated into the holiday as the tale of the Jack Spirit, which introduced the lantern, began to be told around Halloween. Through time, the lantern’s tale blended so much with the holiday that it became integrated into it.
All these things, originating from way back then, added up to create the holiday we all know and love. And truly, nothing is quite like listening to some scary songs while carving a pumpkin with your friends, putting up scary decorations, planning your homemade costume for that one scary night, and watching a scary movie while filling your bloodstream with sugar once all the trick-or-treating is done.
