Halloween is an annual holiday, celebrated each year
on October 31, that has roots in age-old European traditions. It originated
with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires
and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III
designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints; soon, All Saints Day
incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as
All Hallows Eve, and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a day
of activities like trick-or-treating and carving jack-o-lanterns. Around the
world, as days grow shorter and nights get colder, people continue to usher in
the season with gatherings, costumes and sweet treats.
Ancient
Origins of Halloween
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.
Did You
Know?
One quarter of all the candy
sold annually in the U.S. is purchased for Halloween.
By 43 A.D., 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.
All Saints
Day
On May 13, 609 A.D., 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 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 A.D., the church would make
November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It’s widely believed today
that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with
a related 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 fleeing the Irish potato famine,
helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally.