The Legend of Halloween
On October 31st, thousands of kids will don their carefully selected costumes, grab their empty buckets and hit the streets, eager to collect as much candy as possible. This is how it goes each year on Halloween, but the roots of Halloween are much more complex than a bucket of candy.
Halloween’s origins date back over 2,000 years to the Celtic festival of Samhain. The Celtics celebrated their new year on November 1st, which marked the end of the harvest and the beginning of a long, cold winter. October 31st was a day the Celtics believed the boundary between the living and dead became blurred.
They would gather around a large bonfire, dressed in costumes made of animal skin, and burn sacrificial crops and animals. At the end of the night, each person would light their hearth fire with a flame from the bonfire to protect them during the winter.
Once the Roman Empire conquered the Celtic territory in 43 A.D., Samhain was combined with two of the Roman festivals. The first was to worship Pomona, the ancient goddess of fruit. Her symbol was an apple, which is where bobbing for apples in believed to come from. The second festival was Feralia, a day in late October when Roman’s commemorated the passing of the
When Christianity spread into the Celtic lands in the 9th century, All Saints’ Day became the celebration, believed to be started to replace Samhain with a related, church-sanctioned holiday.
All Saints’ Day was extremely similar to Samhain, and included bonfires, costumes and parades. People also called in All-hallows, or All-Hallowmas, which came from the Middle English Alholowmesse, meaning All Saints’ Day. The night before All Saints’ Day, which what was traditionally the festival of Samhain, became All-hallows Eve, and eventually, Halloween.
Halloween did not immediately make its way to colonial New England because of the strict Protestant belief system. Halloween in the states began to emerge slowly, starting with “play parties”, held to celebrate the harvest. Neighbors would gather and share stories of the dead.
By the late 1800s, Halloween was becoming a day focused on community, instead of ghosts and pranks. People would dress up and going door to door asking for money and food, which is now known as trick-or-treating.
Parties focused on games, food and festive costumes replaced most of the traditional celebrations, and people were encouraged to remove anything grotesque or frightening from the holiday. By the 20th century, Halloween shed most of its superstitious undertones.
By the 1950s, Halloween was officially a holiday aimed at the young. Schools and town civic center’s began throwing parties for the children.
Today, ¼ of all candy sold is purchased during Halloween. It is estimated that about 6 billion dollars is spent each year on candy for Halloween, making it the second largest commercial holiday, right behind Christmas.
